This week, I’ve encountered a problem with my home-writing setup that I’m all too happy to welcome in again: something about the position of my computer and my office windows means that suddenly I can see every mote of dust that’s ever landed on my monitor. Really, it means London has been blessed with some gorgeous sunshine in what feels like the first time in forever – realistically, just the first time this year – and suddenly it feels very much like summer. Grass is being mown, parks are jam-packed and the football seasons is – mercifully, for me – coming to a close.
More importantly, it means the IR Magazine Awards – Europe 2024 are rapidly approaching, one of the glitziest and most glamorous nights in our calendar, where we welcome hundreds of leading European IROs to a huge knees-up in London. Though it’s always a riotously fun time – and we’re delighted to have stand-up star Hal Cruttenden as master of ceremonies this year – it’s also an important occasion for marking the achievements of the capital markets’ hardest-working folk.
Nowhere can that hard work be more clearly seen than in the hundreds of entries that come in for our judged awards each year. While several of the trophies we hand out on the evening are determined by polling hundreds of analysts and investors across Europe, we also give IR teams the opportunity to nominate themselves for particular pieces of work they’ve undertaken in the past year.
It was a record-breaking year for self-nominations this time round: across 11 categories, we had more than 300 individual entries, beating last year’s record of 267. Among those, the award for best annual report is going to be the most keenly fought: we had more than 100 entries for this category alone, so we’ve split the short lists into separate awards for large, mid, small and micro-cap companies. Spare a thought for our wonderful awards judges who had to get their heads around more than 100 annual reports to form our short lists.
Elsewhere, we had more than 40 entries for the best ESG reporting category, 38 for the best IR website and 36 for the best investor event.
For us at IR Magazine, it’s a great reminder that we’re recognizing the right people, and we’re delighted that so many IROs enter each year. We’re only sorry we can’t recognize all of you individually but, as I’ll say on stage at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms on Thursday, June 20, even being short-listed is a mark of honor in itself.
For those of you who may not be able to make it to London on the night, don’t worry: we’ll be publishing video interviews with winners and nominees in the weeks following, as well as highlighting some of the leading companies with special deep dives and interviews. We’ve already done this for our US and Canada awards, such as this piece with Shivani Kak, head of IR at Moody’s, about how she uses AI to streamline the company’s IR program.
For those of you we will see next month, we’re very much looking forward to partying with you there. If you want to make sure we link up on the night, drop us a line at editorial@irmagazine.com.
Thank you to Booths of London and its sister company Showtime Photo Booth for partnering with us for this year’s event.
Laurie Havelock
Laurie has been part of the IR Magazine team for more than a decade, starting out as a reporter and research editor before becoming editor in 2023. He was previously acting business editor at the i newspaper and deputy business editor at The Daily...
