IR Magazine has won the prize for investment publication of the year at the Willis Towers Watson Media Awards.
The awards, now in their 12th year, took place yesterday evening on the top floor of the Willis Towers Watson building in the City of London, where IR Magazine editor Tim Human and deputy editor Candice de Monts-Petit were called on stage to collect their gong.
The accolades program distinguishes ‘excellence in business journalism in the areas of (re)insurance and risk, human resources, M&A, pensions, benefits and institutional investment’, with prizes given out for eight topic-specific journalism categories as well as four publication of the year titles.
‘In today’s changing business environment, the media has an important role to play in bringing difficult issues to the front of people’s mind and providing analysis and debate,’ comments Nicolas Aubert, head of Willis Towers Watson, Great Britain, in a press release announcing the winners. ‘We were highly impressed with the quality, diversity and engaging style of this year’s media award submissions. We are also delighted to be recognizing the talent of younger journalists and their ability to write engagingly about often very technical topics.’
IR Magazine was distinguished for its work in uncovering a glass ceiling in the investor relations industry. While the global gender split is almost equal for all professionals working in IR (51:49 male to female), when it comes to climbing the IR ladder, women are at a disadvantage. Globally, just one third of IR heads are female, reveals the IR Magazine Global Investor Relations Practice Report 2016, with Europe seeing the biggest gender gap at the top with 76 percent of male IR heads. This finding makes it clear that more needs to be done to promote diversity at the top level of investor relations.
Among the specialist awards, which reportedly attracted more than 90 entries from journalists, were M&A journalist of the year, won by the Financial Times’ Arash Massoudi, pensions journalist of the year in national media, snatched up by Patrick Hosking of The Times, and fiduciary management journalist of the year, won by freelancer Louise Farrand.
The topic-specific awards were judged by an expert panel, while the winners for the publication of the year categories, including investment publication of the year, were determined by 1,500 industry votes.
