IR Magazine has a long history of honoring those men, women and companies around the world that excel at investor relations. In celebration of 30 years of IR Magazine, we selected 30 IR stars that have shone particularly brightly over the past three decades and will be posting one profile each day for 30 days, giving you the gift of an IR advent calendar.
Banco Santander has had a good year. It won three awards by nomination at this year’s IR Magazine Awards – Europe 2018, with two coming off the back of the company’s tech focus. And it really is at the cutting edge when it comes to technology, this year becoming the first company to use blockchain for its AGM voting – with shareholders being able to cast votes via a dedicated app. Sergio Gámez, the bank’s head of shareholder and investor relations, told IR Magazine following the firm’s AGM in March that it had ‘been congratulated by investors for bridging the gap of communication between the corporate issuer and the investor using this pioneer technology.’
One of the judges at this year’s Europe Awards had just one word to describe Banco Santander’s AGM app: awesome. But while the bank has attracted attention this year for its use of blockchain – the technology that drives bitcoin – its tech focus is actually broad and clearly very dedicated. Santander is hugely successful on social media, with LinkedIn posts regularly racking up tens of thousands of views, while the investor section of the corporate website is the most-visited segment of the site. The 75 pages of interactive documents and embedded videos attract more than half of corporate site traffic, according to Google Analytics, says the bank.
While Santander might not be an IR star that has shone for the past three decades, it certainly looks to be one that has an eye on the future, if Gámez’s tech strategy is anything to go by.
Stay tuned for more IR stars this week and pick up a copy of the winter issue of IR Magazine to see the full list.
A version of this article was published in the winter 2018 issue of IR Magazine – the 30th anniversary issue of the industry’s premier publication.
