A look at Asian IR budgets

The IR budgets of Asia-based firms grew rather than shrank for the first time last year, with the average IR team having $277,000 to spend. The reported $62,000 increase is also the second largest year-on-year rise globally after European firms, which received an additional $111,000 to spend.

This is good news for Asian IR teams, which, according to the last five years’ findings from the IR Magazine Global IR Practice Report, have consistently had to work with the smallest average budgets globally, and are still granted less than half the average sum enjoyed by their North American and European counterparts – a fact that is consistent in each market cap.

While Asian small caps have seen their average kitty more than double over the past year to reach $152,000 and large-cap budgets have increased by $22,000 to a total of $293,000, mid-caps now have $78,000 less to spend. Consequently, the gap between the small and mid-cap figures has greatly narrowed, down to $51,000 from $210,000 the previous year. In addition, this has reversed the former, not uncommon, trend that saw local mid-caps with $10,000 more to spend than their large-cap counterparts.

Interestingly, unlike trends seen in Europe and North America, Asian teams have not reduced their external IR spend as their overall budget has grown, instead increasing the proportion of outsourced services to 26 percent of their total bill ‒ up 6 percentage points year on year ‒ with the amount spent now averaging $72,000. Even so, this is the lowest share of external spend globally, which averages $157,000.

The average worldwide IR budget (excluding salaries and annual reporting costs) now stands at $491,000, a figure that represents a $50,000 increase on last year’s average and a return to levels seen in 2013.

Get your copy of the IR Magazine Global IR Practice Report 2015 here.