Capital Markets
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‘Be the filter, be the synthesis’: How IR teams are staying organized and informed in volatile times
At a time when geopolitical events seem more unpredictable than ever, the capital markets are in a corresponding state of flux in 2026. For any IRO trying to both parse market events for their own understanding and to keep their investors and other stakeholders well informed, it poses an increasingly complicated challenge – one that requires keeping up with sector peers and macroeconomic events externally as well as keeping internal audiences abreast of developments.
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How IR teams are driving value with market intelligence in an increasingly passive market
The structure of the global equity market has transformed dramatically over the last three decades – and investor relations teams now operate in a landscape where passive capital is not just influential, but dominant. Passive strategies represented only a sliver of US equity fund assets in the early 1990s. Today, they account for more than half of the investable market, and their share is still expanding.
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Playbook: The value of IR in an increasingly passive investment landscape
ETFs, index funds and other ‘passive’ instruments are making up an increasingly large part of the investment universe. But such investors are far from passive in their appetite for engagement from IR teams and are increasingly demanding specialized attention from issuers. Understanding how fund flows are impacting companies – and turning that data into actionable, strategic intelligence – is a key challenge facing IROs in 2026.
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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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Why do IR teams prefer London as a roadshow destination? – IR Voice
Where are companies travelling when they go on the road? Which brokers are putting on the best roadshows? Which members of the C-suite are putting in more time for these vital events and are they more likely to attend in-person or virtually?
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Why companies and investors need AI performance scorings
During the panic of 1873, 36 percent of corporate bonds in the US defaulted and over 100 railroad companies issuing bonds collapsed. There were no scorings or ratings to objectively assess the underlying financial strength of these bonds.
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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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How investor relations teams tackled roadshows last year
How long did you and your IR colleagues spend on the road last year? According to our latest research, you were travelling an average of 12.1 days for in-person roadshows in 2025 and a further 5.4 days on virtual roadshows. In total, according to our deputy editor Garnet Roach and the IR Impact research department, that means our readers spent a total of 3,520 days travelling for roadshows last year – or, if you like, a total of a decade.
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Global Roadshow Report 2026 available now
Where are companies travelling when they go on the road? Which brokers are putting on the best roadshows? Which members of the C-suite are putting in more time for these vital events and are they more likely to attend in-person or virtually? These are just some of the insights you can pull from IR Impact’s […]
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Global Roadshow Report 2026
Marking 16 years of IR Impact’s research into global roadshow trends: where companies go, who goes along and the brokers they travel with
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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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Top market trends 2026
In this report, AlphaSense examines the trends and themes shaping 2026, the sector-specific forces driving divergence and opportunity, and the critical inflection points executives and investors must navigate in the year ahead — all based on insights surfaced from across the AlphaSense platform.
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Managing expectations in 2026: Why valuation stability depends on perception, not just performance
As companies move through 2026, one lesson stands out clearly: delivering strong results is no longer sufficient to protect valuation. Across markets in 2025, share-price volatility was driven less by execution and more by misalignment between investor expectations and management’s forward-looking narrative. In this environment, the IR function has become a strategic discipline. Beyond communicating performance, IR teams are increasingly responsible for aligning market perception with a company’s long-term value creation path. When that alignment breaks down, even earnings beats can result in sharp corrections, elevated volatility and weakened investor confidence.
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Passive investors driving active opportunities: how fund flows are shaping how IR teams direct their time
Recent IR Impact briefing, held alongside Nasdaq, explores the implications of the ongoing passive shift As passive ownership continues to grow, how companies interpret trading activity and allocate their investor engagement efforts is shifting in parallel. A recent IR Impact briefing, in association with Nasdaq, brought together Jacquelynn Bohlen (head of IR, Columbia Banking System), Stephanie Bui (co-head, investor engagement, Americas, Nasdaq) and Prabhdeep Sagoo (senior director, market and shareholder […]
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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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‘If you’re good at IR it’s going to make a big difference to your share price’: Gervais Williams from Premier Miton Investors on making the most of volatility
In a global equity market still defined by volatility and political uncertainty, how can IR teams make the most of the opportunities available to them? According to Gervais Williams, head of equities at Premier Miton Investors, good IR professionals can make a world of difference to their organizations by communicating clearly. With so much capital moving around, it could also make a significant difference to a company’s share price he adds.
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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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The 2025 state of AI for business and finance
2025, the teams seeing the biggest gains aren’t chasing shiny tools, they are quietly transforming how work gets done. Organizations adopting workflow-integrated, expert-driven AI are seeing measurable gains in efficiency and insight generation. This new report from AlphaSense sets out the findings based on a survey conducted in May 2025, into the perspectives of 300 professionals in the United States, across areas like consulting, corporate strategy, competitive intelligence, asset management and investment banking.
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Nuance over polish: Leveraging the conference calendar and other top tips for your 2026 meeting schedule
What do investors want when it comes to capital markets days (CMDs)? Or other Street-facing events for that matter? It was with that investor view in mind that Sylvie Harton, chief business strategy officer at Lumi Global – partner on the IR Impact Briefing: Making your 2026 investor meetings count – kicked off the conversation.
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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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Enhancing valuation: optimizing your equity story for the right investors
In Asia’s dynamic capital markets, the challenge for listed companies is clear: how to enhance valuation and ensure the right story resonates with the right investors. High ownership concentration, regional shareholder dominance and fragmented analyst coverage mean that earning the attention – and conviction – of global investors requires more than traditional broker-driven outreach or routine disclosures. What’s needed is an integrated approach built around three collar pillars: independent investor feedback, rigorous investor targeting and high-impact capital markets events.
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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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Earnings tracker
Download this comprehensive, data-driven review of recent earnings calls across leading companies. It covers emerging trends across sectors and industries, uncovering how top companies are navigating the current economic landscape.
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Valuation drivers in utilities: insights from the sector for GCC-listed companies
Study points to an opportunity to align equity narratives more closely with international valuation expectations The utilities sector globally remains a cornerstone of defensive investing, valued for its stable cash flows and predictable returns. As Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) markets mature and attract a broader investor base, understanding the valuation drivers that influence market perceptions […]
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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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Navigating volatile stock price movements: a playbook for public company executives and boards
Corporate executives often wake up to unsettling stock price swings with no clear catalyst, news, filings or obvious events. In today’s markets, volatile price movements frequently extend well beyond the fundamentals. Algorithmic trading, macro-overlay strategies and ETF flows often drive disconnects, making market reactions appear irrational.
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Finding out what the sell side really thinks about IR
Would you like to know exactly what your analysts are thinking? No, I’m not here to tell you about some new sell-side telepathy service – though I’m sure many of our readers would jump at the option and maybe that’s one for Elon Musk’s Neuralink to figure out – but rather some new research that exposes just how analysts think about IR.
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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…
