By the time you read this, envelopes will have been opened, champagne corks will have been popped and celebrations started. Yes, it’s that time of the year again, when we hand out awards to the great and the good in the UK investor relations world.
The 1997 survey of UK analysts and fund managers on which the awards are based makes some telling points for investor relations professionals across the globe. The importance of accessibility to senior management is stressed repeatedly by the 600 or so members of the financial community we interviewed. The Board Level Communication Guide included with this issue is a timely reminder: good IR comes from the top.
‘The team is accessible although top management are a little more difficult to get hold of which can be a problem,’ comments one media analyst on Reed Elsevier. Compare that to the accolades heaped upon the senior executives at British Petroleum. This is just one example: ‘BP held a one-day conference at which the chief executive was present all day.’ Such dedication from top level management to keeping the financial community informed is well noted among investors and analysts.
The survey also pulls out some of the areas where improvements could be made across the whole of UK plc. Fund managers want greater attention paid to their information needs, rather than having to rely so heavily on analyst research.
‘Nothing new there’, we hear IROs cry. ‘Everyone wants more information all of the time.’ That may be true. But the demands of fund managers do have some substance as buy-side institutions increase their in-house research capabilities.
What can the stressed-out IRO do in the face of all these demands? New technology can certainly help out in distributing the same messages to a wider audience. Teleconferences are used relatively little in the UK compared with the US and few British companies have really seized upon the opportunity of online communication with shareholders.
Yet UK companies may well have good reason for not jumping at the opportunities technology offers to investor relations. The survey reveals that the UK’s financial community remains somewhat technophobic in its approach.
But that, too, is changing. As a new generation of analysts and fund managers moves into the City, the companies which have embraced new technology in their IR at an early stage will benefit. British Petroleum has already got that message. Others would do well to follow suit.
