Nov 30, 1997

Quiet, Please

By Richard Carpenter

Cancel all meetings, divert phone calls and get to grips with keeping one's mouth shut. It's a tough call

Keeping information under wraps seems to go against the very spirit of investor relations. Indeed, leading practitioners preach about the art of disclosure and transparency, the need to be honest and open in good times and bad. Yet good IR is equally about knowing when and where to draw the line; when to talk and when to keep quiet. Competitive information falls into this category and companies have to work out the balance between a desire to inform the market of future plans and the fear