Deep Dives
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‘I had four meetings, one in a restaurant with great Texas steaks’: Inside Infineon’s IR-only day in Dallas
If you’re going to travel from Germany to the US to roadshow, what’s a few extra miles here or there? For Alexander Foltin, head of IR and group treasurer at Infineon Technologies, it makes sense to try to maximize the return on a transatlantic travel – which is what brought him to Dallas and Denver last year. Foltin shares his wider thoughts on Dallas in the IR Impact Roadshow Report 2026, where you can also find tips, tricks and roadshow commentary from other leading IR professionals. ‘Dallas was first put on the map for us from the debt side,’ he…
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‘We believe many ESG-driven decisions lack objectivity’: NLPC director Paul Chesser on why companies should shun culture-war activism
For more than two decades, the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) has positioned itself as a prominent conservative watchdog challenging what it sees as the growing politicization of corporate America. As director of the organization’s Corporate Integrity Project – an initiative that uses shareholder proposals and public campaigns to target corporations it believes are adopting excessively progressive policies – Paul Chesser embodies that mission.
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‘We went public into a bear market’: Lithium Royalty Corp’s head of IR on the buy-side-into-IR learning curve
Lithium Royalty Corp’s IR lead didn’t come to the profession through the more typical paths of corporate finance or a transition from the sell side. As Jonida Zaganjori tells IR Impact, she took on her first IR role fresh from working at a Toronto money manager, an experience that has guided her approach to relationship building on the other side of the table. You can read more from Zaganjori in the IR Impact Global Roadshow Report 2026, where she shares her views on divvying up the CFO and the CEO’s time as well as her favorite city to visit. We…
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The Polish miracle: How IR is finally catching up in the ‘second Japan’ predicted to outstrip the UK’s GDP
A new wave of Polish tech firms are bringing IR into the spotlight – shown by record attendance at the Polish IR Association conference at the end of 2025 Something is changing on the Polish IR scene. While the country’s economy has been booming – and booming – it is only in the past year […]
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The CFO: ‘Good investor conversations are indicative of really good IR,’ says Essentra finance chief
Rowan Baker talks to IR Impact from inside the world of hidden – but essential – components In our first installment of The CFO for 2026, we talk to Rowan Baker, Essentra finance chief, about what she looks for from investor relations, why should moved out of the capital markets and back again and why being lower profile but essential helps drive a ‘great business’.
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‘Our performance is driven by embracing as many views and voices as possible’: James Thomson on how the Rathbone Global Opportunities Fund ranks so highly
The Rathbone Global Opportunities Fund (GOF), with AUM of around $5.3 bn, has been ranked consistently highly in the global equity sector since James Thomson became lead manager in 2003. Rathbones Asset Management has a boutique structure which fosters autonomy, accountability and entrepreneurial spirit but the Rathbones Group is a trusted long-term partner with more than 100 years in wealth and investment management and $146 bn in client assets.
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‘You sit down with tax collectors and prostitutes’: How Bowyer Research is reshaping proxy voting on the right
Bowyer Research first came to the attention of IR Impact – and many on the mainstream governance scene – when the firm’s ESG-skeptic voting policies were picked up by ISS. Today, those policies are available through all the major proxy voting advisory firms and Bowyer Research, which is essentially a mom-and-pop (plus kids) shop run out of Pennsylvania, advises many millions of dollars, including the $57 bn Texas Permanent School Fund. Jerry Bowyer, co-founded Bowyer Research with Susan, his wife of 31 years, , feels the right is playing catch up when it comes to equities and proxy voting –…
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Proxy season 2026: What to expect from rule 14a-8 changes
Governance experts share their predictions for the upcoming proxy season following the SEC’s pullback around shareholder proposals Among the tumult of 2025 was a November announcement from the SEC stating that it would reduce oversight of shareholder proposal disputes. Blaming ‘current resource and timing considerations following the lengthy government shutdown,’ the regulator said that it would end ‘substantial’ reviews of no-action requests under rule 14a-8, with the change applying to the proxy season running from October 2025 to September 2026 – as well as anything it hadn’t got to before the decision was made. You can read more about the…
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Inside IR at Advanced Energy: ‘IR can talk to the world, but we can’t disclose everything,’ says Edwin Mok
Investor relations draws people who are attracted to the art of weaving complex sets of facts into coherent narratives. They are finance people, they are storytellers and, because IR may be the most personal area of business, they often find their way to the profession from distant parts of the corporate universe. Edwin Mok is senior vice president, strategic marketing and investor relations at Advanced Energy. The company is a global leader in engineered, precision power conversion, measurement and control solutions.
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Beyond the quarter: Rethinking corporate reporting in the US
Amid a growing debate over the future of quarterly reporting, experts are weighing what a slower cadence of disclosure could mean As policymakers and corporate leaders debate the future of quarterly financial reporting in the US, a significant shift looms over how public companies communicate with investors and how they are held accountable. Beginning in […]
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Looking back at a year of ‘The CFO’: How finance chiefs measure IR success
We’re rounding up another year of IR Impact’s flagship interview series The CFO, where we talk investor relations with finance chiefs from around the world. January 2026 will mark two years of speaking to finance leaders about all things IR. Kurt Barton from Tractor Supply Company was first in The CFO seat two years ago and Dominique Barker, CFO and head of sustainability at Canada’s Lithium Royalties Corp, closed 2025. We always ask CFOs a question about how they measure the success of their IR program, as the nature of the profession makes it notoriously difficult to assess. But proving…
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The CFO: ‘Too much material can be a detractor to investment,’ says Lithium Royalty Corp finance chief
When she took the top finance role at Toronto-headquartered Lithium Royalty Corp, Dominique Barker brought her experience on the buy side, the sell side and in ESG advisory – all of which feeds into her approach to investor relations and sustainability. In the closing interview of our 2025 series of The CFO, Barker talks to IR Impact about finding a host of women in charge at a high-altitude brine, bridging the gap between mining and the energy transition, and the supper club she’s part of with multi-award winning IR Impact Awards judge Janet Craig.
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‘If you’ve worked in politics, the stock market doesn’t scare you’: Håkan Tribell on swapping writing a prime minister’s speeches for managing IR at AAC Clyde Space
Most people’s route into IR follows one of two predictable paths: either a start on the sell-side, where they gain an aptitude for understanding financial research, or via an internal route that may take in financial planning, treasury or accountancy roles. For Håkan Tribell, it was a career writing speeches for the Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson that set him up perfectly to join satellite technology and services company AAC Clyde Space as its head of communications for investor relations and public affairs earlier this year. In July, that role expanded to take on ‘the full spectrum of marketing and…
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As Trump signs executive order targeting ISS and Glass Lewis, experts say change is already happening
‘Unbeknownst to many Americans, two foreign-owned proxy advisors, ISS and Glass Lewis, play a significant role in shaping the policies and priorities of America’s largest companies through the shareholder voting process,’ wrote US President Donald Trump on Thursday as – after weeks of rumor – he signed an executive order targeting the two firms. In it, Trump advises everyone from the SEC to the Federal Trade Commission, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Labor to put a regulatory spotlight on the big two. The rhetoric leading up to the signing was fierce: SEC chairman Paul Atkins talked about the ‘weaponization…
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‘I have a love-hate relationship with earnings season’: Stonehage Fleming’s head of equity funds Tom Jeffcoate on working with IR
When Stonehage and Fleming Family & Partners merged in 2015, the resulting institution became one of Europe’s largest multi-family offices which today manages more than $175 bn on behalf of some of the world’s high net worth dynasties in 14 geographies. Tom Jeffcoate, who serves as the fund’s head of equity funds today, joined Stonehage before the merger in 2009, working side-by-side with Gerrit Smit, global best ideas lead fund manager and today head of the company’s global equity offering. Now he oversees company research within the equity management team, with a special focus on in-depth, bottom-up research covering firms…
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Inside IR at Itron: ‘Part of IR’s DNA is being immune to being surprised,’ says Paul Vincent
How do IROs leverage their expertise within their companies? For Paul Vincent, VP of IR at Itron, the core of IR lies not only in conveying the company’s message but doing so in a way particular to each investor and analyst. Itron supplies innovative technologies that help utilities and cities manage energy and water. Vincent believes IR should help management shape strategy based on its own best judgment, not by deferring to investors’ views. IR’s job, he says, is to understand every individual investor and analyst so thoroughly as to communicate management’s thinking in the way each is prepared to…
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The CFO: ‘I always tell my team to respect the conversation,’ says UEM Sunrise’s finance chief Hafiz Sulaiman
Occupying the CFO chair is a significant challenge in itself. But what happens when your company calls on you to also fill in for the CEO when they unexpectedly resign? This is exactly the situation that Hafiz Sulaiman, CFO at Malaysian property developer UEM Sunrise, found himself in. Just a few days after speaking eloquently at an event in Singapore about the power of IR to make a lasting impact on companies, he was unveiled as the officer in charge (OIC) at the company after the departure of former CEO Sufian Abdullah.
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‘We have radically rethought how to look at sustainability’: Christian Granquist on AP7’s new outlook
Christian Granquist joined AP7, one of Sweden’s national public pension funds – into which some 6 mn Swedes pay – in August 2025. Working alongside Jessica Eskilsson Frank, Granquist is senior portfolio manager, impact investments, climate transition at the globally invested fund that has total assets of around $150 bn. Before joining AP7, Granquist – who has a master’s in economics from Uppsala University – had a 10-year stint at Lancelot and worked at Handelsbanken for 13 years in a number of roles including chief investment strategist and co-head, equities. He talks to IR Impact about how the fund is…
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Tesla: How do you get support for a $1 trn pay package? Give shareholders a slice of the pie
ISS is recommending against Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $1 tn compensation package. Glass Lewis too. CalPERS and NBIM, manager of the world’s most valuable sovereign wealth fund, have each come out publicly against. But with the Tesla AGM happening today online and at Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas, one small, family-run proxy advisory firm – whose ESG-skeptic voting guidelines are offered by ISS, and which boasted the $57 bn Texas Permanent School Fund as the first state fund to sign up – is backing Musk’s compensation. ‘We’re strongly focused on the alignment of incentives,’ says Jerry Bowyer, CEO of Bowyer Research, who…
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The sell side talks IR – part four: analyst forecasts and negative ratings
How accurate do you find analyst reports on your company? And what do you do if you think there’s a mistake? How does a negative rating affect your relationship? We put these questions and more to hundreds of IROs around the world in a bid to craft a picture of the IR view on forecasts and ratings. Then, as with each of the themes in this sell-side-IR-relationship series, we put those findings to the analysts themselves in a series of in-depth, honest and anonymous conversations.
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The CFO: ‘IR professionals are like Swiss Army knives,’ says Unite Group’s finance chief Mike Burt
The student accommodation finance chief on an exciting acquisition, why IROs need to be good listeners and why analysts are like sports commentators who never played the game For many students in the UK and further afield, your first year of study is spent in a halls of residence – or purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA), […]
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‘Profit and purpose have been our yin and yang’: TPXimpact’s Luke Murphy on a first IR Impact award win
When the small-cap UK firm TPXimpact cropped up on the shortlists ahead of the IR Impact Awards – Europe 2025, it was a name unfamiliar to many of the judges – and perhaps many other onlookers. The company, which enables digital transformation projects for a range of organizations, including public sector bodies in the UK, may not be well-known in general, but Luke Murphy, head of IR and chief of staff, was among the names for the rising star award. The company’s annual and ESG reporting were also nominated.
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Meira Muscat 2025: From the role of the exchange to SWFs and debt IR
Over the past few years, the IR platform in the Middle East has been evolving quickly. Exchanges are maturing, listings are more regular and IR is moving beyond ‘results day’ toward a steadier focus on access, liquidity and clear communication. We’re seeing more structured targeting, more emphasis on guidance and capital allocation and better use of data that investors can actually work with. Sovereign funds are engaging in more targeted ways and many issuers are doing a better job of aligning the equity and debt stories. This came through clearly in Muscat. With more than 1,200 attendees in town, the…
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The sell side talks IR – part three: when and how analysts want to be engaged
There is no denying the ways in which Covid-19 and the rapid shift to virtual changed investor relations – most notably engagement. Driving home just how dramatic that change has been, one of our anonymous analyst interviewees – anonymous in order to encourage openness – says this: ‘Before 2020, I think I’d done probably two video calls in 20 years. This call is the third one of the day. So that’s changed dramatically.’ In the third part of our series on the sell-side-IR-relationship, we look at how IR teams interact with their analysts, how often analysts want to hear from…
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‘I felt a mix of respect and fear’ going into IR, says Infineon’s multiple award-winning IR lead
German semiconductor firm Infineon Technologies has had a busy year. To start with, as revealed in the latest instalment of The CFO column, Dr Sven Schneider, the firm’s finance chief, told IR Impact about the 30 conferences and 20 roadshows the company has held this year. It has also been a year of huge success for the IR team, which took home some of the most prestigious IR Impact trophies at the Europe Awards in June, winning the best overall investor relations (large cap) category as well as the gong for best in sector, technology. The same night also saw…
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‘Sometimes I have to play some Witcher or Cyberpunk during my work day’: CD Projekt’s Karolina Gnas on heading IR at a video game developer
The Polish company appeared on two IR Impact Award shortlists at this year’s Europe awards Many IR professionals may have found themselves working at companies they have a deep personal interest in. For Karolina Gnas, head of IR at the Polish video game developer CD Projekt, this means that she gets to enjoy the studio’s […]
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Why listed companies should engage with hedge funds
I have been working as an IR professional for almost 15 years. To my continued surprise, I still meet peers who remain negative around hedge funds. In fact, they actively seek to minimize interaction. And if they do allow such meetings, they squeeze hedge fund managers into large group meetings, normally led by IR rather than management. To me, this approach is counterproductive. The role of the IR department is to safeguard a fair valuation of the share by communicating correctly to all relevant corners of the financial markets. I strongly believe that open doors and strong relationships improve liquidity…
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‘The word ‘Texas’ means friend, and all are welcome!’ Barrow Hanley on its long-term value focus
Patricia Barron and Mark Giambrone talk about Texas, when IR-only meetings work and how often the investment management firm likes to meet before it buys in As companies eye Texas – and Dallas in particular – as a roadshow destination, the Lone Star State has been pushing forward its business-friendly appeal with the new Texas Stock Exchange poised to begin trading next year, listings already in place on NYSE Texas and new legislation. Patricia Barron, executive director, chief operating officer and head of risk at Barrow Hanley, and Mark Giambrone, the investment management firm’s executive director, head of US equities…
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The sell side talks IR – part two: those crucial coverage numbers
In a series of anonymous conversations – with identifies protected in order to get frank responses – IR Impact talked to sell-side analysts about their relationships with IR professionals. In part one, we looked at the value of research – from both the IR viewpoint and from the sell side, including advice from analysts on how they felt IR could improve data sharing, face time, responsiveness and more – all the elements that go into a good IR-sell-side relationship.
