Technology & Social Media Archive

Earlier this month, IR Magazine chatted to Darrell Heaps, CEO of Q4, about his predictions for the biggest technology trends of 2020, including data protection laws, a move toward more actionable insights and progression toward ESG reporting standardization. Heaps points to the changes occurring on the sell side as a result of Mifid II as the biggest cause of upheaval and change in the IR profession, noting that ‘technology is there to serve business need...

Earlier this month I was at the NIRI Senior Roundtable in Santa Barbara, which members must have a decade in the profession to join. Investor relations practitioners qualifying now would have been on the job less than a year when the Flash Crash hit.   Remember that? On May 6, 2010 at 2.32 pm Eastern Time, the stock market came unhinged. For 36 minutes stocks screamed groundward and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 999 points. Accenture traded for a penny. ...

Given our team’s different backgrounds and experiences, we thought it would be fun to work together to develop a top 10 list of the biggest changes in IR during the last decade. Here goes (in no particular order!): 1. The shrinking sell side and high number of analysts leaving Wall Street to pursue jobs in IR – including our own Gabe Ratcliff and some of our former covering analysts. Financial story-telling, valuation analysis and financial acum...

Capital markets are on the verge of a tremendous transformation due to the emergence of blockchain technology and digital assets. IROs should be aware of these emerging developments to arm themselves with the new knowledge, skills and tools their future jobs may require. Blockchain has ushered in new forms of digital money, like bitcoin, and is dis...