Two firms with a vision of how the annual report will be distributed in the future have joined forces.
Issuer Direct, the disclosure and compliance firm that last year acquired Precision IR, has announced a partnership with annual report design firm Curran & Connors.
The agreement will see C&C clients receive access to Issuer Direct’s annual report distribution and investor hotline services. At the same time, Issuer Direct clients will get access to C&C’s design team.
‘This links in compliance and distribution with message building and communications design,’ Noah Butensky, chief operating officer at C&C, tells IR Magazine.
The two firms also plan to develop a new distribution system for annual reports, offering users the option to pick and choose the parts of the report they want. The new service might also offer access to a company’s most recent press releases and quarterly reports, notes Butensky.
Issuer Direct already operates the annual report service, which distributes reports via financial media outlets and stock exchanges, while C&C has an annual report builder as part of its product range. The aim is to extend the functionality of the annual report service using C&C’s existing technology.
‘You’ll be able to control what you get via simple selections and check boxes, and then it will generate the report for you right there,’ explains Brian Balbirnie, CEO of Issuer Direct.
The ability to cherry pick different sections will prove especially useful once a report has been out for a while, says Balbirnie, because certain parts will have started to go out of date.
‘[Investors] may not want all two hundred-plus pages of the annual report, he says. ‘I may want the financial summary overview and the CEO letter, I may want the facing financials, but I don’t want the notes, and I want a little bit of the MD&A, and that’s it.’
