A global IR village

Once upon a time there was the IIRF – the International Investor Relations Federation, a coming together of professional investor relations associations round the world. Starting in the late 1980s, it held annual conferences in London, New York and so on, but eventually fizzled out, to be replaced by GIRN, the Global Investor Relations Network, which gave the leaders of the various IR associations a chance to talk among themselves. But now we have GIRF, whose initials may sound almost familiar but which is in fact an event rather than an institution. Organized by NIRI and IR Magazine, GIRF was held in November last year in New York.


Members of the 2013 Global Top 50

GIRF – the Global IR Forum – launched on the evening of Monday, November 18 with a cocktail reception at the Citibank Executive Conference Center in the group’s iconic mid-town building on 53rd and Lexington Avenue, which featured a fireside chat between Nick Rolli, Philip Morris International’s (PMI) head of IR and financial communications, and Neil Stewart, IR Magazine‘s editorial and research director. And a delightful chat it was too, with plenty of entertaining anecdotes and memories to amuse the mixed crowd. 

Rolli is known as ‘the Mayor’, as much for his ebullient personality as for having once held that office in his hometown of Verona, NJ. He told of getting into IR at Colgate in the early 1980s on the strength of his campaign communiqués. ‘And when you’re elected Mayor, you’re always Mayor,’ he said.

Rolli went on to run investor relations at Philip Morris in 1987 and stayed with the company through its name change to Altria Group and eventual PMI spin-off in 2008, when he went with the new company to Lausanne in Switzerland.

One member of the audience asked Rolli about how Altria successfully navigated huge social resistance, governmental resistance and societal changes. In other words, what’s it like talking to the market when it seems like the whole world is coming after you?

‘When you’re in the tobacco industry, and everyone’s piling in with potentially bankrupting lawsuits, it takes a lot of hand-holding with investors,’ Rolli conceded. ‘We told people it was a long-term story, that there were sure to be short-term losses. There were a lot of crazy, long days. We lost some of our shareholder base, but less than you’d think.’

If it’s Tuesday, it must be BofA

On the second day of the conference, delegates decamped to the Bank of America building on 6th Avenue for a further day and a half of sessions and socializing. The crowd comprised around 200 delegates with a genuinely cross-border profile: 22 countries were represented and it was encouraging to see the way they behaved. Rather than gravitating toward existing contacts or friends, perhaps from the same city or region, coffee breaks saw delegates seek out others from different continents, never mind countries or towns, to compare notes and exchange tricks of the trade.

To some extent this was inspired by the sessions, which included some extremely impressive case studies and other presentations that provided real insight into the breadth and variety of investor relations programs at different companies around the world. BASF’s Magdalena Moll wowed the crowd with a truly inspiring explanation of how her 14-strong team meets its IR remit and prompted the person sitting next to me to elbow me in the ribs and exclaim: ‘I want to work for her!’

There were other inspiring case studies from corporate IROs, too, including Rudy Sankovic of TD Bank in Canada, Dr Elizabeth Sun of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Mickey Foster of Fedex and Mao Zefeng of Petrochina, who all offered insights into their own programs. In other sessions we learnt how different teams deal with the various aspects of IR: selection of service providers; meeting the needs of investor groups as diverse as hedge funds, exchange-traded funds and sovereign wealth funds; coping with the demands of the sell side; and making the best use of available technology, for instance to bridge distances by means of videoconferences, websites and apps.

It was a wide-ranging program with highlights including seeing two IROs based at very different kinds of companies in completely unrelated sectors who’d come from geographically disparate continents making a beeline for each other during a break because something said in a session had made one – or perhaps both – of them realize that, despite all those differences, they had things to talk to each other about. Which they proceeded to do.

But given my position at the center of one of the two organizations putting on the event, I fear this report would lack a degree of objectivity – and therefore credibility – if you were to hear only my view. So here are some comments from Dr Sun: ‘I thought the event was great. It was totally sincere, all the IR officers were there to share their experiences and to learn from each other. All the presentations and talks were good – I was able to learn something from each session. I was particularly happy to have a chance to chat with Maggie, the IR head at BASF, and then to hear her talk on BASF’s practice.

‘I also greatly enjoyed the fireside chat on the evening of the reception... I would love to be able to attend more such events in the future if my time and resources permit.’

The Global IR Awards

At the end of the second day of the Global IR Forum, a modest awards ceremony paid homage to the immodest achievement of the winners of IR Magazine’s first Global Top 50 Awards. The very top honors went to German chemicals company BASF, whose head of IR Magdalena Moll was presented with the award for best global IR by Chris Kearns of Bank of New York, whose firm sponsored the awards. This had to be a first for Moll, given the novelty of the Global IR Awards, but she’s received more IR awards in her time than some can remember, including at least five at last year’s IR Magazine Awards – Europe alone.

The Ireland-incorporated, Massachusetts-based Covidien is also a multi-award winner and was named runner up to BASF at the New York ceremony. Cole Lannum, vice president of investor relations at the global healthcare company, also won the individual award for the Global Top IRO.

Global Top Large Cap (>$10 bn)

Winner: BASF (Germany)

Runners-up
China Telecom (China)
Covidien (US)
Intel (US)
Lanxess (Germany)

Global Top IRO

Winner: Cole Lannum, Covidien (US)

Runners-up
Rolf Woller, Continental (Germany)
Oliver Stratmann, Lanxess (Germany)
Jeffrey Chastain, Noble Corporation (US)

Global Top Mid-Cap ($5 bn–$10 bn)

Winner: China Resources Enterprise (Hong Kong)

Runners-up
Lenovo (China)
Natura (Brazil)
Wyndham Worldwide (US)

Global Top Small Cap (<$5 bn)

Winner: Lanxess (Germany)

Runners-up
Agile Property (China)
Kroton (Brazil)
Pacific Basin Shipping (Hong Kong) 

Global Top Gold

Global Top Silver (alphabetical order)

The Global Top 50, in partnership with BNY Mellon, was calculated based on IR Magazine’s annual surveys of investors and analysts for its awards in the US, Canada, Europe, Greater China, South East Asia and Brazil.