BioSig Technologies has announced the appointment of Andrew Ballou, an experienced equity salesperson, as its new vice president of investor relations.
Ballou joins from Janney Montgomery Scott where he served as head of institutional equity sales. Prior to that, he worked as a director in institutional sales at RBC Capital Markets, where he managed accounts including Millennium Partners, Soros Fund Management and Two Sigma Investments.
Earlier in his career, Ballou held research positions on both the buy side and sell side at Red Coat Capital Management, CIBC World Markets and Credit Suisse.
‘In my roles on the sell side and buy side, I spent a lot of time with investor relations professionals,’ Ballou tells IR Magazine. ‘So for me moving into IR is a natural extension of what I’ve done. It’s still operating in the same sphere, just from a different seat at the table.’
One of the lessons Ballou brings to the IR role from the sell side is the importance to the investment community of getting in front of management. ‘During my time on the sell side, what the buy side has been willing to pay for has evolved and now the number one thing it values most is access to corporates,’ he says. ‘And it’s not just the sell side doing it: investment firms are doing it themselves, Nasdaq and the NYSE are doing it. There’s always a need for investors to kick the tires.’
Thinking about his new role, Ballou says the chief aim will be to spread the BioSig story and increase the shareholder base. ‘It’s a challenge for a small-cap company with trading liquidity issues to get institutions involved. But institutions need to understand new, burgeoning platforms,’ he says.
‘Even if they can’t invest today because of constraints, they can still be aware of the story. We’ll lay out some markers for them to keep an eye on. And as we hit those markers and execute on our plan, the idea is that they will develop more and more confidence in us and eventually become shareholders.’
BioSig, which listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market last year, develops signal-processing solutions for the medical industry. Initially it is focused on the electrophysiology market, which studies abnormal heartbeats to diagnose a range of illnesses.
‘The product BioSig has can really make a difference in patient outcomes and can be really cost-effective for insurance payers, hospitals and patients,’ says Ballou.
