After Egypt, the international network of IR bodies has welcomed its second association from the African continent. An initiative launched ‘by IROs for IROs’, the Johannesburg-based Investor Relations Society of South Africa’s primary role is to elevate the strategic status of IR in the country, explains chairman Nikki Catrakilis-Wagner.
‘The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) was for a long time dominated by mining companies that would often raise capital in the US and have secondary listings on the NYSE,’ she tells IR Magazine. ‘At a majority of those firms, IR would invariably be passed on to public relations or the media person, or it would be the responsibility of the CFO.’
During the past five years, however, more companies have understood the value of IR and appointed dedicated IROs. The idea of an association has emerged from the informal networking functions organized by local IR professionals.
‘We would get together to share ideas and discuss our own approach to handling the headwinds or challenges we were presented with,’ Catrakilis-Wagner recalls. ‘More and more people were getting interested in those chats and platforms to share information or just to check that their programs were on track. We decided that formalizing the networking opportunities into an IR society would be beneficial for the local IR community.’
The new entity was launched in November 2015 by founding members Tiger Brands, Naspers, Nedbank, Growthpoint Properties, the JSE and Imperial Bank, with funding from Deutsche Bank and BNY Mellon, among others.
The association’s primary objective for its maiden year is to ramp up membership, targeting the country’s top 100 listed companies. It plans to host an IR and strategic communications conference, as well as smaller events to discuss South African economy issues ‘that could impact the investment proposition of some of the companies listed on the JSE,’ Catrakilis-Wagner says. The association will also partner with the JSE for IR training programs, and with Business Day and the Financial Times.
