News and analysis
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People moves: Rithm Capital brings in Ann DeVries as head of IR and Ati Modak joins MasTec
Alternative asset manager Rithm Capital has appointed Ann DeVries as its new head of investor relations.
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The new face of corporate governance: re-introducing you to Governance Intelligence
Most weeks that I write this newsletter, I’m increasingly aware of the converging challenges facing most people working in the capital markets: ongoing macroeconomic unrest, shifting regulatory goalposts and – of course – the growing impact of AI on our daily lives.
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The joys and challenges of explaining beauty products to portfolio managers: Ulta Beauty’s Kiley Rawlins reflects on a 30-year IR career
Kiley Rawlins, SVP of investor relations of Ulta Beauty, is an IR veteran with more than 30 years’ experience. She joined Ulta Beauty as a VP of IR in May 2019, becoming SVP IR in January 2025. She has also worked at the Michaels Companies, Family Dollar and Dollar General.
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Are companies still writing disclosures for humans? How AI is reshaping information in the capital markets
For a long time, the IR ecosystem was built around narratives crafted for human readers. Lengthy executive meetings were convened to debate the nuance of an adjective in a Notice to the Market or a Material Fact, the precise tone of an explanatory paragraph in the annual report or the emphasis the CEO should place on certain points during earnings calls.
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People moves: Simon Gleadhill joins Reckitt as Johnson Controls appoints Eric Swanson
Johnson Controls has appointed former Sherwin-Williams IR chief Eric Swanson as its new vice president of investor relations.
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‘Learning from those who came before you is instrumental to success’: FedEx’s Matt DeBerry on becoming an IR Impact rising star
It’s often said that IR is always a team sport. Even for solo IROs, who somehow manage to juggle all their responsibilities alone, the profession is always about making connections both internal and external, getting up to speed with your company, your market and your wider ecosystem.
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Measuring site tour success: what it takes to get people out of offices and into yours – and why these events remain as important as ever
‘One of the biggest benefits of getting investors on the ground with us is that they get to experience the culture of Tractor Supply,’ explains Mary Winn Pilkington, the firm’s senior vice president, investor relations and public relations, talking about some of the drivers behind bringing analysts and investors out of their financial centers and into the real world of Tractor Supply Company. ‘You can talk about culture on an earnings call or put it on a slide, but it is very different when you see it firsthand. When investors spend time with our store managers, meet our vendor partners,…
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UK government’s proposals to tackle ‘Hobbit-length’ annual reports will benefit investors, say IROs
Annual report preparers rejoice: the UK government wants to save you time and money by ditching ‘Hobbit-length’ documents in favour of shorter, digital-first disclosures.
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People moves: Nathalie Megann to retire as president and CEO of Canadian IR association at end of year
CIRI has announced that Nathalie Megann is set to retire from her role as president and CEO of the IR association at the end of the year after 10 years of serving in the organization’s leadership.
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‘Our goal is to automate as much of the surrounding work as possible, so we can spend more time talking with investors’: how Block’s IR team made an AI bot
How much time do IR teams spend answering very similar questions from investors? Probably more than they’d like to publicly disclose. But for the team at US payments company Block, freeing up that time was the focus of developing a first-of-its-kind AI tool.
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The shareholder you cannot win but cannot ignore: why IR should take a new look at the idea of passive ownership
The rise of index investing has created a strange problem for investor relations. Some of the largest shareholders on a company’s register may be investors that IR cannot persuade to buy another share. You can improve disclosure, sharpen the equity story, hold a brilliant capital markets day and convince the market that the company is materially undervalued. An active fund manager can respond by increasing their position. An index tracker generally cannot. Its mandate, rather than its conviction, largely determines how much it owns. And yet that same shareholder may have a meaningful say on remuneration, board appointments, capital allocation,…
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People moves: What’s that shiny thing? A new IR director at Umicore
Materials technology and recycling firm Umicore has named Maxime Lopes as its new director of investor relations. Announcing his move on LinkedIn, Lopes posted a picture of a mystery, shiny nugget of…something. ‘What’s this shiny thing?’ he asked his network on the site. ‘It’s one of several critical raw materials refined as part of Umicore’s closed-loop activities and something you might be hearing more about soon. Brownie points to anyone who guesses. ‘In fact – it’s just one of the many fascinating topics I’ve been diving into since joining Umicore as director of investor relations in July. A big thank…
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Executive pay metrics in S&P 500 shift away from broad ESG criteria
Non-financial metrics now account for around 25 percent of short-term incentive pay at a typical Russell 3000 company, with financial measures making up the remaining 75 percent, according to new research. A report titled What Companies Reward: The Changing Mix of Metrics in Executive Incentive Pay, written by The Conference Board alongside ESGAUGE, FW Cook and Ropes & Gray, also found that in the S&P 500, the split is closer to 70 percent financial and 30 percent non-financial. A Harvard Law School article on the report, which examines 2023 through 2025 proxy filings, says boards are not abandoning non-financial measures…
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What investors can learn from the 2026 US proxy season
Despite a series of regulatory changes in the US at the beginning of the proxy season, the shareholder proposal process showed once again how valuable it is to investors and companies in addressing material business risks and investment opportunities In the 2026 proxy season, proposals produced more than 50 negotiated agreements and notable votes, demonstrating the value this long-standing system still holds. But federal regulators want to dismantle it. The SEC is planning to repeal, or significantly water down, Rule 14a-8, which governs shareholder proposals in corporate proxy statements. Investors and companies stand to lose, and the US economy will…
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Your investors are asking AI about you. Is it telling the right story?
Increasingly, investors are using generative AI to conduct preliminary due diligence, compare companies, summarize earnings calls and understand unfamiliar industries. While large language models (LLMs) do not replace fundamental research, they are rapidly becoming the first stop for many investment questions. Reflecting this shift, 30 percent of US retail investors now use AI tools to help make investment decisions, up 75 percent from a year earlier. Unlike traditional search engines, LLMs synthesize information from a network of public sources – including SEC filings, company websites, earnings call transcripts, news coverage, executive interviews and investor presentations. The more consistently your company’s…
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The CFO: ‘The biggest lesson is not to overcommit; that’s a surefire way to lose credibility,’ says Hut 8 finance chief
Mark Eidelman, who joined energy infrastructure firm Hut 8’s IR team from NextEra Energy in June 2026, isn’t the first person to hold the head of IR position at the company. But, as CFO Sean Glennan explains, there was something of a gap between Sue Ennis’ leaving in March 2026 and Eidelman’s appointment. That’s because of how important IR is to the company, explains Glennan: management wanted to take their time to make sure the hire was just right. In the interim, Glennan himself dived right into the IR work. Here, he talks to IR Impact about taking the conservative…
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People moves: Cummins powers up IR team with appointment of James Hopkins
Power solutions firm Cummins has amped up its IR team with the appointment of James Hopkins, formerly of its engine business finance and strategy team, into the role of vice president – financial planning, capital management and investor relations.
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How Prologis and The Williams Companies are turning proxy clutter into shareholder clarity
What does it take to turn a proxy statement from a regulatory requirement into a document that investors want to read? For Prologis, the answer has been to listen closely to shareholders, then use that feedback to reshape the document around the issues they care about.
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Is ‘quiet dissent’ growing in your shareholder base?
At the IR Impact Think Tank – Europe 2026, Maria Siano, general manager, corporate governance data and insights at Broadridge Financial Solutions, described a current challenge to IROs as activism becoming ‘broader, more sophisticated’ and ‘less visible at the onset’. She also warned that ‘shareholder pressure begins much more quietly’ than many companies may expect.
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People moves: IR Impact Hall of Fame honoree Paul Surdez joins Ionetix as former head of IR becomes Sallie Mae’s deputy CFO
Medical technology company Ionetix has brought in an IR Impact Hall of Fame honoree to lead its investor relations function ahead of a planned public float.
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SEC steps back as proxy referee as regulator ends involvement in Rule 14a-8 no-action process
The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance has ended its involvement in the Rule 14a-8 no-action process, announcing late last week that it will no longer respond to no-action requests of any kind, effective immediately.
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‘We start every earnings Q&A with retail shareholders’: inside IR at Robinhood
When Jack Riehemann, director and head of international investor relations at online broker-dealer Robinhood, talks about the biggest challenge of his career, he’s also talking about his biggest achievement: the turnaround in sentiment of a company that launched to democratize investing before finding itself in something of a post-Covid slump.
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People moves: Emily Chieng joins Barrick Mining as IR Impact award-winner Dennis Walsh leaves Udemy
Dennis Walsh has announced that he is stepping down from his role as vice president of investor relations at Udemy, following its acquisition by fellow online learning platform Coursera.
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‘It’s a great way for your CFO to bring AI into the storyline’: how NSI’s AI avatars represent the future of earnings calls
You’d be forgiven for thinking earnings calls tended to be a bit predictable. Management runs through the numbers, analysts lob in their questions and the format barely shifts whether you’re dialing in from London, New York or Sydney.
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CLARITY Act vote pushed to September as expectations build for SEC’s crypto and blockchain rules overhaul
Senate majority leader John Thune has filed cloture – which forces a final vote on a bill – on the proposed CLARITY Act for September 15, setting up a key procedural vote when lawmakers return. The bill needs 60 votes to pass, meaning Republicans will need to secure support from Democrats who, according to Reuters, remain opposed to parts of the legislation.
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London’s listing dilemma: Wise, SpaceX and the fight for control
The FCA’s 2024 listing reforms resulted in a faster rulebook, a lower eligibility bar and more flexible dual-class structures. And yet the steady flow of high-quality listings the City had hoped for still hasn’t shown up in the numbers. I want to step back from the mechanics and ask a harder question, one that goes to the heart of what London is actually for: does our market need to bend to keep pace with the world’s largest, fastest-growing companies, and if it does, what exactly are we trading away? And what are the implications from an IR perspective?
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People moves: Smart ring maker Oura brings in ex-DraftKings IRO Michael DeLalio as former CIRI chair Brian Ector retires
Brian Ector, former chair of CIRI and long-serving head of IR at Baytex Energy, has retired after a 32-year career in the Canadian capital markets.
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Why – and how – you should be building a meaningful relationship with retail shareholders
Ninety seven percent. That is number of retail investors who say dedicated communications from management would make them more likely to buy additional shares. It is also just one statistic in a new playbook looking at how to build a long-term relationship with retail. As well as looking at the current state how retail communications, data also explores what drives buying and selling, where loyalty comes into the mix and the ways in which retail shareholders are engaging with their holdings. The findings offer a clear message: what companies are doing at the moment is falling short. Click to read…
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If AI cannot understand your equity story, then neither can the market
For decades, investor relations focused on one overarching objective: shaping market perception. Companies invested in perception studies to understand how investors, analysts and the financial media viewed their strategy, competitive positioning, and long-term value creation.
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