Ups and downs in the world of IR
BP Amoco
It's going well for the petrochemicals giant. Almost too well. In fact, these oily globalizers must be getting worried. Psychologists have affirmed that there's such a thing as Paradise Syndrome, a state of suicidal, anxious depression that crops up when things appear to be going too well. The thinking is that if Fortuna's wheel can go no higher then the downward cycle has to begin. In which case, poor BP Amoco. If the recent purchase of Arco and the frothing praise heaped on its new-look web site, BP Amoco Alive, haven't caused delighted but anxiety-racked IR executives to jump headlong from oil rigs then this'll get the doom-mongers working: BP Amoco is cleaning up at this year's Investor Relations Magazine UK Awards, winning five awards. Things literally don't get any better than that. The only way is down?
Australasia
For so long the nearly men (and women) of IR – in terms of IR sophistication, a hairsbreadth behind the UK and the US, and spurned for being quite unnecessarily far away. Things are looking up now, mind. With the imminent formal inception of its own society/institute/association/order/club /sodality /guild /clique /gaggle, the region can galvanize its disparate IR community, finally join the IIRF, and mount a serious challenge for the mantle of top dog in IR...if such a thing exists.
The Royal Albert Hall
Who says the Albert Hall has had its day? The building has been content with staging buttock-clenchingly embarrassing spectacles in recent years – the truly dire annual horror of Last Night of the Proms is a case in point. Adding insult is the newly refurbished and now garishly gold Albert Memorial across the street, jumping on the disco bandwagon 20 years too late.
But fears that the hall is just a muffled hark back to the days of Victorian pomp have been categorically blown out of the water as the UK IR community deign to descend en masse for what is without any doubt whatsoever the most prestigious event in the RAH's long history – the tenth annual Investor Relations Magazine UK Awards. A celebration, a networking opportunity and a damn fine night out. It should just put the Royal Albert Hall back on the map.
UK CEOs
There's a habitually drunk vagrant that sits outside Kings Cross Station in London. He drinks, swears and claims to be the chief executive of a FTSE 100 company. Ordinarily, you'd feign deafness and walk by, but what if the poor pauper speaks the truth? Ignore the fact that he wears a pie as a hat and spends his afternoon barking at dogs and entertain the idea that the guy might be a CEO that has fallen on hard times. In this month's Register, there's talk of a new remuneration study by HR consultants Towers Perrin, which reveals that your average UK chief exec has to scrape by on an insulting $1.5 mn compared to $7.6 mn for their US counterparts. Sickening but true. So after your next meeting with your CEO, slip a few pounds into his top pocket and wink. He'll thank you for it.
Microsoft
Microsoft are currently licking their wounds (if you can call being ripped in half a wound). The punch-drunk software giant is appealing against a federal judge's decision that it should split into an operating systems business, managing Windows, and an applications business. Being branded 'untrustworthy' must have stung, too. But the firm isn't stamping its feet in temper – it plans to appeal sharpish. And if that fails, who knows what will happen? But if the computer system of the US Justice Department starts crashing, expect fingers to point.
UK dot-coms
There's a slightly less famous version of the David and Goliath story in which, having been popped on the head by Dave's pebble, Goliath turns round and gives the smug little upstart a real drubbing. That's the current plight of UK dot-coms, who have now been put right back in their place. As if watching their stock price take a pounding wasn't bad enough, a hype of UK new economy firms (to give it its proper collective noun) has had to face the horrific ignominy of being dragged out of the FTSE 100 and left to flounder in less prestigious indexes. These fickle investors! With their damnable aversion to shaky businesses and their penchant for firms with the prospect of profits! They're just so nineties....