Continent’s leading IROs gathered in London to dissect the top issues facing the industry, including retail investors, AI use and investor activism
As Europe’s finest football teams gather in North America and Mexico for the World Cup, the continent’s finest IR teams gathered instead in London at the IR Impact Think Tank – Europe 2026 to discuss the burning issues facing the profession today and share best practices.
Though there was a VR football game to play in the breaks – courtesy of the event’s long-time partner and host Bank of America – both panellists and attendees alike were more focused on the increasing fragmentation of the capital markets, the pressures of needing to attract new pools of capital to European companies and, as has been top of the agenda for some time, the dual threat and opportunity represented by the use of AI.
Though the event is largely off-the-record – with attendees able to discuss the topics of the day in strict confidence – we pulled together a few things we heard at this year’s Think Tank to give you a flavour of what Europe’s IROs are talking about.
IR as the company ‘point guard’
Anyone who’s been to an IR Impact event before will know that open discussions are the currency of the day. This was no different at this Think Tank, where IROs in attendance had the chance to dissect the issues facing the profession directly with their peers.
To introduce one of these roundtable sessions, Nkem Ojougboh, head of IR at online sports betting company Super Group, set the pace for an exploration of how to build and upskill a future-proofed IR team. He likened the modern IR role to that of a point guard in basketball – or, for our European audience, a midfielder in a football team – due to the requirement to understand the lay of the market and then direct a team’s response to those factors.
As a former NBA basketball player himself, Ojougboh understood this better than most. ‘A good point guard reads the court,’ he told attendees. ‘In IR, you need to read the room, understand where the pressure is coming from, set the tone, communicate clearly and make the people around you better. Now, that is exactly where I think the IRO role is going. We all must be dynamic and unconventional.’
He added that five clear skills – the ability to handle pressure, good communication, emotional intelligence, technical ability and being able ‘to bring your best self forward’ – would be crucial to IR success in the coming years.
The nuances of two-way communication
The day’s first panel session tackled a theme that would run through the rest of day: how can IROs uniquely provide strategically impactful insights to their companies. The panel – Sonya Ghobrial, global head of investor relations and financial communications at Diageo, Joanna Kennedy, vice president of investor relations at Burberry, and Phillip Lindsay, vice president of investor relations at Technip Energies – explored how their IR functions serve as a two-way information conduit with the market.
Ghobrial said that a key part of building relationships internally and externally is ‘making sure that the shareholder voice is front of mind’ in internal conversations, which has the added benefit of helping to build leverage with her organization’s leaders.
A potential pitfall can be setting targets at, for example, a capital markets day that could trap you in lofty expectations, Kennedy said. Being realistic around those targets has helped her curry more influence with her CEO and CFO, as well as the market at large.
For Lindsay, it’s a risk to not provide the context around what you share – whether internal or external. ‘The wrong thing to do is reporting feedback or data without the interpretation or the view that goes alongside that,’ he added. ‘Too often we share raw data or numbers with limited analysis, or what investors said, but not really what it means or how representative it is.’
The power of a punchy cold approach
Later that morning, the topic of accessing international investors was explored by a panel including Jonathan Dickson, vice president, head of EMEA, international corporate services at OTC Markets, Nirav Karia, CEO and co-founder at Curation and Claire Mogford, head of investor relations at SEGRO.
All three agreed on the importance of having an integrated, long-term approach to attracting overseas capital, with in-person meetings and a need to tailor messaging to particular markets or types of investor a central pillar of success.
Even after the fallout of Mifid II and other market restructurings, they also agreed that brokers were still a key part of that strategic approach, as was conducting competitor analysis and the creation of different investor personas to help focus that targeted thinking.
But one of Mogford’s tips stood out in the session. She said that cold outreach of potential investor targets had proven its worth – so long as it is considered carefully.
‘If I can get hold of a list of investors that are at a conference and they haven’t requested to see us, I’ll drop a handful of them that I identify as targets an email,’ she explained. ‘You’ve got to be quite punchy, put your elevator pitch in as short a paragraph as you can to try and capture their attention.’ She added that she had managed to get a lot of extra meetings organized this way, leading to longer conversations.
AI as a ‘little intern’
AI was in focus for much of the day, but an afternoon session saw three leading IROs – Nathalie Pham, director of investor relations at Sanofi, Lauren Swales, director of investor relations at AstraZeneca and Sam van der Zalm, director of investor relations at ASML – discuss their various use cases for the technology.
Swales said she used a popular targeting platform for generative AI-powered searches of what other companies in the market were saying, plus Microsoft’s Copilot for checking sentiment analysis of her earnings materials. Van der Zalm used it for similar purposes, plus pre-results research and cross-reading ASML’s disclosures with peers and customers. ASML is also focusing on developing an AI agent, a project that is requiring a careful approach to ensure it produces water-tight responses for users.
Pham, meanwhile, said that Sanofi has developed an intelligent assistant to help her team prepare answers for investor queries, prep management for investor meetings and ensuring consistency across her team, saving time and improving the quality of information she has access to.
‘It will always require our input and our review, but I take it as my little intern who is next to me and can crunch all the data for me and write it nicely, make it shorter, expand here, bullet points only, or make it livelier, or in the tone of the CEO or CFO,’ she added. ‘We have embraced it and now we are opening it to our management.’
It echoes something we also heard at this year’s IR Impact Forum – AI and Technology in London. Before long, it seems most IR teams will have a little robotic companion to help them with such tasks.
