The tropical storm Julio threatened the fourth annual investor relations symposium organized by Milenio 3 and held in Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo on the Pacific coast of Mexico in late September. With most attendees stranded in airports around the country, the opening reception was canceled and the first day’s presentations were delayed by four hours.
Finally, as Julio ceased battering the coast, the conference took off with the news that Ameri, a Mexican investor relations association, is being launched with the aim of developing and spreading best practice financial communications and corporate governance. Moreover, it will professionalize investor relations in Mexico. So says Ameri’s first president, Ivan Vela, finance director at Corporación Geo.
Coinciding with its official launch, Ameri has been accepted as a new member of the International Investor Relations Federation (IIRF) along with organizations from Singapore and Greece, as announced at the IIRF’s annual conference in Madrid, also in late September.
Long-term commitment
Vela highlights the necessity of finding more long-term investors in the Mexican equity and debt markets. At the same time, Mexico needs to increase the number of retail investors, which is still low despite large potential.
Another objective of Ameri is to help Mexican companies reach a larger number of buy and sell-side analysts at a lower cost but at the same time with more and better information. Thus Vela proposes a huge meeting between all the country’s major issuers, analysts and investors. It’s expected that the first such conference will take place in August 2003. ‘If that is successful, then we will organize a similar event with Ibri [Brazil’s IR institute] in 2004 to get Brazilian and Mexican issuers together with the world’s largest investors.’
As Vela admits, Ameri is ‘a very ambitious project.’ The society hopes to cooperate with other national and international IR societies as well as leading companies in other parts of Central America and the Caribbean islands, where IR practices are still lagging. Another proposal is to create IR awards as well as awards for analysts, with IROs voting for the best sell-side researchers.
Ameri was inspired by existing IR societies like Niri in the US, Brazil’s Ibri, Aeri in Spain and the UK’s IRS. After four years of discussions, Ameri was born with over 20 founding members and at least a dozen more are expected to join soon, which Vela is proud of considering Ibri was founded eight years ago with five members and now has around 300. Ameri members can be individuals, public companies, service providers or others.
Perhaps one weak point is that some of Mexico’s largest companies including Telmex and institutions like the stock exchange have decided not to join yet but to ‘wait and see’ how Ameri progresses. According to Eduardo Trigueros, director of issuers and information at the exchange, ‘The Mexican bourse is very careful with its image and we have decided not to participate at the moment.’ Nevertheless, Trigueros’ personal point of view is that an IR society is ‘necessary’: ‘Due to the current world situation of listed companies needing specialist spokespeople, it’s important to promote and spread the transparency and integrity of issuer information.’
Both Vela and Trigueros took advantage of the September symposium to discuss alliances with Mexican universities and other educational institutions to foster future IR professionals. Humberto Bañuelos, president of the Mexican association of brokers, advanced a similar proposal.
The Milenio 3 conference gave ample evidence of the youth of Mexican IROs. The average age of attendees was around 30. Vela points out that Mexican companies only started to appoint dedicated IR people eight or ten years ago. Plus, the older generation are less savvy in new technology used for IR. Vela himself is 28.
Upcoming Investor Relations magazine events
The Asian Investor Relations Summit & Awards
November 19, Hong Kong
The 2nd Annual German Investor Relations Conference
December 5, das Kurhaus, Wiesbaden
Investor Relations for a Global Market – China
February 2003, Shanghai
If you would like to get involved, e-mail [email protected]
