Mega-caps buck trend, losing a team member in 2016
The average global IR team consists of 2.7 members, a marginal increase on the 2015 team size, according to the IR Magazine Global Investor Relations Practice Report 2016.
Global mega-caps have lost a whole member from their teams in 2016, while North American small-cap IR teams average just 1.2 members, the smallest of any group. Largest teams are found at European mega-cap companies, with an average of 6.9 members.
The global average size of an IR team in 2016 is 2.7 staff members. This is consistent with the figures for the past four years but there are differences in the size of IR teams both regionally and according to company market cap.
Typically, North American IR teams are smaller, European teams larger and Asian teams consistent with the global average. It also remains a standard rule that the higher a company’s market cap, the larger its IR team will likely be.
Although the global average IR team size has remained broadly the same as 2015 (having increased by just 0.1) there are larger variations among cap sizes.
Small-cap and large-cap teams have increased by 0.2 members, while mid-cap teams have risen by 0.3. On the other hand, mega-cap IR teams have lost an entire member, dropping from 6.2 people in 2015 to 5.2 this year. This means the difference in team size between the smallest and largest companies has dropped from nearly five bodies in 2015 to just 3.6 in 2016.
Global IR teams typically spend 30 cents of every dollar of their budget on external IR services, with small-cap IR teams spending more than a third and mega-caps just a quarter of their IR budgets on outsourced services. North American companies spend on average more than $200,000 on outsourcing, while Asian companies spend less than $50,000.
