Top IR teams request more personnel as number of investor meetings rise
Budgets at the majority of Europe’s top IR teams have remained stable over the last 12 months, according to an IR Insight poll of the top IR teams in Europe.
The survey of the soon-to-be announced Euro Top 100 2012, IR magazine’s annual ranking of the top 100 companies for IR in Europe, finds 59 percent of IR teams report having stable budgets year on year, compared with a budget increase at 21 percent of companies and a decrease at 16 percent (with the remainder electing not to comment).
If given the chance, half of the Euro Top 100 would ask senior management for either a bigger IR team or a larger budget. Of the two requests, a bigger team is the more popular choice, yet both prove more pressing to Europe’s leading IR teams than the one-in-five respondents who would ask for greater access to the CEO or CFO.
Europe’s preference for bigger budgets and teams over greater management access contrasts with the results of a similar poll, conducted by IR Insight earlier this year, involving the leading companies in North America. Given the same choice, leading IROs in both the US Top 100 and the Canada Top 50 prioritize access to management above all else. In fact, twice as many IROs from the US rankings choose access in comparison with their counterparts in the Euro Top 100.
This European and North American division is particularly interesting because of the existing IR resources on either side of the Atlantic. The average size of an IR department at a Euro Top 100 company is 5.5 people this year, while the equivalent in the US and Canada is just over three apiece. What’s more, the biggest team in the Euro Top 100 2012 is 19, compared with 13 in the US and 10 in Canada.
In Europe, this hypothetical request to management for a larger team and a bigger budget may reflect the increased activities being conducted at the moment by IR teams from the crisis-stricken continent. When asked what they were doing more of this year, the most popular answer is investor meetings, followed by greater geographical coverage. Increased roadshow activity also makes the list of top five mentions.
The full results of the IRO poll will feature in IR magazine’s Investor Perception Study, Europe 2012, which will be published shortly after the IR Magazine Europe Awards, being held this year on June 26 at the London Hilton on Park Lane.
The investor perception study includes full details about the IR awards, interviews with the leading IROs, CFOs and CEOs in Europe, research into the European investor community’s views on the macro-economy, and the all important Euro Top 100 2012 – topped last year by BASF.
