Shaping the future of IR: a new era of opportunity and challenge

7th #Annual Investor Relations Survey

Research highlights

Credibility of guidance is at stake as 44% of European companies admit to having to revise their targets during 2014. In the face of changes to the EU Transparency Directive removing the obligatory quarterly reporting, 84% of companies have no plans to change their frequency of reporting in 2015. Despite growing popularity, paid-for research faces an uphill struggle as concerns over investor perceptions of this type of research persist.

Companies feel investor education in the absence of sufficient sell-side research is for senior management and the IR team.

Review of AGM preparation shows an overreliance on dialogue with individual portfolio managers who often do not have the final say on voting decisions.

Nearly half of companies do not review proxy voting guidelines published by their key shareholders and 56% do not engage with shareholder corporate governance teams in the run up to the AGM.

The scale of engagement with investors on executive remuneration has nearly doubled since last year to 30% of IROs stating they are fully engaged on the topic against just 17% in 2014
More than half of European IROs are now engaged with investors on board diversity.

37% of IROs state their companies have made further changes to improve gender diversity over the past 12 months.

Cyber security is cited as a key issue on the agenda by 37% of IROs as investors realise the importance of cyber preparedness as a valuation driver.

European companies are increasingly concerned about becoming the next target for activist investors.

60% monitor their shareholder base for activist investors, 46% have evaluated their vulnerability to an activist approach but just 31% have formulated a response strategy.

About the survey

Almost 200 participants from across Europe took part in our 2015 IR Survey. Citigate Dewe Rogerson first started investigating trends in investor relations in 2009 to gain insight into how companies were adapting to the uncertain times brought about by the 2008 financial crisis. Our first survey was based on responses from 80 IROs representing companies from a wide range of European markets, sectors and company size. Since then, our annual IR survey has gained a growing number of supporters, not least from IR societies across Europe including the UK IR Society, Germany’s Deutscher Investor Relations Verband (‘DIRK’) and IR Club. This has led to a record number of 193 IROs from Europe’s leading companies participating in this year’s survey to provide the most comprehensive insight to date into changing attitudes and practices from objective-setting, reporting and guidance to analyst coverage, investor and activist engagement to the changing use of technology.

Click here to open the survey.