It is my firm conviction, to paraphrase the Great Bard of Stratford on Avon, that some are born to investor relations, some achieve investor relations, and some have investor relations thrust upon them. Personally, I know I fall into the first of these categories.
It’s not only what I do, it’s what I do best. No matter how bad a day I’ve had, I will always find time to see an investor to talk about Schering-Plough, and I always enjoy it. I consider it a huge and worthwhile challenge to convert the unwashed non-shareholders into card carrying Schering-Plough investors. Nothing – and I mean nothing – gets me as revved up as going out to talk before a group of investors or meeting with a new analyst.
You might say, okay, the reason I like investor relations so much is that it’s all that I’ve ever done, but that’s not true. I have strayed from the fray including stints in various investment jobs and short stints in retailing, consumer credit and – a job that no-one who loves marketing as much as I do should ever have – strategic planning.
Still, just because my own personal predilection runs towards investor relations as a lifetime career doesn’t mean everyone shares my view. The truth is that many see IR as just a training ground or a jumping off platform for other positions in finance, or some quite different career.
And what a good springboard it is. Where else can one get exposure to the principles of finance and marketing at work in the corporation, meeting and befriending not only senior level executives but also high-powered and influential investment community professionals? What other corporate department offers the advantage of being in a position to understand the Big Picture at the same time as being completely familiar with, and up-to-date on, the inner workings of the organisation? Perhaps the office of the chief executive – but certainly nowhere else, except investor relations.
You don’t have to look very far for examples of people who have put their IR education to good use, both within their own corporations and outside. Take, for example, the comings and goings of a number of our current and former esteemed colleagues on the IIRF Governing Council.
Some have left their IR positions to take up other, usually financially-oriented jobs elsewhere in their companies. For example, Andrea Hauswirth, our Austrian delegate, left her position in IR at Bank Austria in December 1994 for a job in the bank’s accounting department.
Ann Guimard, who has been in charge of investor relations at Saint-Gobain in Paris, has moved on now to the position of financial controller for the company. Ann says she knew she shouldn’t – or couldn’t – be in investor relations forever, and had come to a point in life where she felt she needed to broaden her horizons, both personally and professionally. She specifically set out to find a position that would be more of a technical nature so she could gain more financial knowledge and expertise, and found it right under her nose.
Ann now works with a team of six and is responsible for managing the financial aspects of Saint-Gobain’s largest division and largest geographical area. She says her IR experience is helpful in her new job since it familiarised her with the workings of the company and with the thousands of diplomacies involved in everyday business.
In another instance, the chairman of the IIRF who directly preceded me, Ann Westergren Ekstedt, was promoted in mid-1994 to her present title as director of the corporate treasury at Telefon AB Ericsson. Here is a prime example of the potential for upward mobility that investor relations affords its practitioners. Ann started at Ericsson in 1985 as a project manager, and subsequently spent some time as controller and financial manager. She took over the IR function in 1990.
Ann says IR prepared her well for her present duties, which include taking primary responsibility for long-term funding for the company, as well as overseeing strategic issues. Ann thinks the most valuable aspect of her investor relations tenure was that it gave her a good feel for what investors really think about the company – something that’s quite valuable when it comes to dealing with bank relations. She will also tell you that although she had a great time working in investor relations, she has enjoyed moving on to some new challenges.
Nigel Taylor provides another instance of IR being not just a stepping stone but also a springboard to a much higher level position. Nigel was manager of investor relations for ICI in the UK, but then moved on to take over as managing director of a Belgian joint venture.
Others choose to leave their corporate investor relations positions for the rough-and-tumble life of consulting. The most obvious example of this is our own IIRF board secretary Neil Ryder, who served in various positions between 1982 and 1991 at BET, his last job there being as director of corporate affairs. Now he’s one of the principals at Sage Partners, which was formed by Neil and four of his former BET cohorts to provide cross-border IR advice.
Joanne Lawrence is another familiar name to those who have followed the history of the IIRF. She headed up investor relations for the pharmaceutical company SmithKline when it merged with the UK’s Beecham to become SmithKline Beecham.
Joanne subsequently became involved with helping to engineer that particularly delicate part of any merger: figuring out how to blend two quite strong, and radically distinct cultures. So successful was she at this that she decided to hang out her own shingle – and thus is not only out of the corporate IR seat but out of investor relations altogether.
Finally, there’s the ultimate life-after-IR job which I personally believe offers the greenest pastures. It is retirement. Away from ringing phones and stacks of mail, airports and hotels. My esteemed former IIRF co-delegate, Dave Knapp of Westinghouse Corporation, took this route in December 1994, moving to his second home in Hidden Valley, Pennsylvania, from where he reports that investor relations prepared him well for a life chock full of pleasures.
I think investor relations and all its hectic activities will prepare me well for sitting on my swing with a good book overlooking my garden and pond while listening to the bullfrogs. I might even find the time to mulch the roses – or at least smell them.
