‘There are maybe 150 top equity analysts in the Twin Cities and they’re all here today,’ observed Tony Carideo, former chapter president of the CFA Society of Minnesota, surveying the scene at the organization’s InvestMNt conference. The one-day event held last week at a local university in downtown Minneapolis followed last year’s successful inaugural conference.
Touted as ‘a conference for investors by investors’, the CFA-sponsored event was the brainchild of Carideo, president of IR consulting firm the Carideo Group, and Robert Buss, managing director at Minneapolis-based Disciplined Growth Investors, who was CFA Society of Minnesota chapter president last year.
Promoted as a way to break free from broker-sponsored conferences with their inherent conflicts, this year’s InvestMNt saw the number of presenting companies rise from 36 to 48, attending qualified investors jump to 176 from 104 and prescheduled one on ones more than double to 211.
Carideo says the society made a deliberate push to schedule more one-on-one meetings this year. Describing this as the biggest change from a year ago, he says feedback from attending companies emphasized the importance of both maximizing executive time and engaging with potential investors in one on ones.
While promoted as an upper-Midwest regional event, the conference pulled in a handful of investors and presenting companies from beyond the six-state area.
Nina Goworek, IRO at Switzerland-based pharma giant Roche Holdings, flew in from her offices in San Francisco to present. The company, with a significant number of US shareholders, makes an effort to reach institutional investors through the CFA societies around the country, she says, and the conference enabled her to present in a group setting and hold several prescheduled one on ones, just like at a broker-sponsored conference.
Other presenting companies came from suburban Virginia and Massachusetts, while investors came from as far away as Georgia and Washington state.
While touting its independence from investment banking conflicts, InvestMNt had at least one sell-side supporter: Rick Rinkoff, director of research at Craig-Hallum, attended with several of his analysts. He had previously worked with the society to make sure its event did not conflict with his firm’s May conference, held in Minneapolis. There is ‘very little overlap’ among presenting companies, he says, noting that his firm concentrates on smaller tech companies.
Mark Salter, the CFA Society of Minnesota’s executive director, says the chapter made a profit on the event, generated from fees – $199 per investor and $500 per presenting company (which included a webcast) – as well as vendor sponsorships. Salter presented the concept at a regional CFA event last year and says other CFA chapters around the country are watching the Minnesota experiment with interest, but ‘are not yet ready’ to try their own version. ‘It’s a massive undertaking,’ he adds.
While Minnesota in recent years has seen its status as a major money center slip, with the notable exits of Alliance Capital and American Express, the local investment community remains upbeat. With nearly 500 public companies including 20 Fortune 500 firms calling the Twin Cities home, and a still sizable institutional presence, the area views itself as unique.
Perhaps reflecting more parochial pride, one very senior investment manager, who wishes to remain anonymous, observes that it would be difficult to replicate this conference in anything other than one of the largest money centers. ‘You couldn’t do this in Cleveland,’ he opines.
