Grant Bartucci, associate director of corporate access and broker relations at Point72 Asset Management, is speaking at the IR Magazine Think Tank – West Coast II on September 16. Below, he explains his role at Point72, the impact of Mifid II on corporate access and how companies should engage with his firm.
Click here for more information on the think tank or to book your place.
As associate director of corporate access and broker relations, can you describe the responsibilities of your role?
Let me start by explaining how we look at the companies we want to meet with. We are investors who do deep fundamental research into companies and part of my job is to make sure that our portfolio managers, as investors, have the opportunities to learn about the companies we may invest in. My role at Point72 can be defined very broadly, but I like to boil it down to two main components:
1. Cultivate and expand direct relationships with IROs and their management teams so that our investors can engage with them in a unique, two-way dialogue on a consistent basis
2. Enhance the depth and quality of corporate access for Point72’s investment professionals that is tailored to their specific needs. Meeting with companies is such an integral part of our fundamental research process and we want to support this effort by providing for more meaningful, high-value interactions on a regular basis.
Has Mifid II affected your firm’s interactions with brokers? If so, in what way?
Yes, Mifid II has affected how we interact with brokers. Broadly, it has changed how we think about consuming research and corporate access resources. We are more cognizant of the volume of resources we consume and the cost of those resources.
What incentives are there for hedge funds to engage in a more direct manner with companies?
As I mentioned in describing my role at Point72, we want to develop meaningful relationships with companies so that we can create a consistent and compliant two-way dialogue. Engaging with companies in a more direct manner helps us achieve this objective and further enhances these essential relationships.
If a company wanted to engage directly with your firm, what advice would you give it?
We tell companies all the time to just call us if they want to engage with us directly. If they don’t already have a relationship with one of our investment professionals, or even if they already do, they can always contact me or my team. We can help facilitate any interactions, whether that be a corporate access meeting or just a request to gain insight from one of our investment professionals about their sector, industry, the markets, and so on. We want companies to know we are here to help and we welcome all forms of dialogue.
How do you expect the corporate access landscape to evolve over the next couple of years?
I think we are still in a proving ground of figuring out what the industry will look like in the near term. Companies, brokers and buy-side investors are all evaluating their options and making changes simultaneously and I think this will cause the future of corporate access to move toward a hybrid model, one where brokers will still provide corporate access resources, but investors and companies will continue to have more and more direct interactions to supplement sell-side offerings.
