February 5, 2012 – 1:32 pm
Yes, I know, investor relations people should be thrilled to see life returning to the IPO market in 2012 – and here comes Facebook, the biggest Internet IPO of all, to stir up interest in public markets. But I’m wavering on whether to click “Like” or “Not-so-much.” I can’t help feeling that all the hoopla around the social media giant’s pending [...]
December 19, 2011 – 11:14 pm
Private companies contemplating an IPO – and small caps debating whether it’s worth it to stay public – sometimes tally up the costs of complying with Sarbanes-Oxley, filing SEC reports, releasing earnings and so on. Now Ernst & Young has gathered data from 26 companies that did IPOs in the past two years to come up with an [...]
October 14, 2011 – 2:27 pm
Andrew Ross Sorkin, the New York Times M&A columnist, CNBC “Squawk Box” co-host and author of Too Big to Fail, says we’re kidding ourselves when we say we want corporate leaders to think long-term. The problem, he says, is all of us. “We are the ultimate ADD society,” Sorkin said today in a speech to [...]
September 13, 2011 – 8:45 am
If you’re not already doing an “analyst day” every year or two, maybe you should be. That’s my takeaway from “NIRI Survey Reveals Current Analyst/Investor Day Practices” - a benchmarking study released Monday by NIRI. Key finding: 71% of the 431 investor relations professionals responding to NIRI’s survey hold a periodic analyst/investor day. It’s a chance [...]
National Investor Relations Institute President and CEO Jeff Morgan follows up on Warren Buffett’s public comments about communicating with investors (see “Buffett takes a poke at IR”) today in NIRI’s IR Weekly e-newsletter. The Berkshire Hathaway CEO, you may recall, told CNBC in a recent interview that as an investor he doesn’t need to be [...]
Some folks in the investor relations community are bothered – even angered – by Warren Buffett’s recent verbal jabs at IR people and the profession as a whole. March 15 Update: a few additional thoughts here. Maybe I’m thick-skinned. I don’t think we need to feel threatened by what the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway says about [...]
September 20, 2010 – 1:52 pm
Chatting with colleagues last week, someone tossed out the phrase “the new normal.” And a co-worker shot back: “What is the new normal, anyway?” Ever so conveniently, then, on Thursday and Friday I attended the client conference of DeMarche Associates, a Kansas City-based investment consultant. The theme: “The New Normal and How It Affects Investment Strategy.” [...]
OK, this is not my usual earnest, well-reasoned post. Just so you’re forewarned: Here’s a bit of summer fluff. And this may be in bad taste, or even sexist. Sex appeal isn’t an aspect of investor relations I ever considered, well, an aspect of investor relations. I’ve always thought of IR professionals as a cross [...]
Institutional investors are relying a bit more for equity research on mid-sized firms, regional brokers and industry-sector specialists as the bulge-bracket investment banks continue to reel from the effects of the financial crisis, Greenwich Associates reports in its 2010 U.S. Equity Analysts Study. Investor relations people reaching out to analysts might consider the changing sell side [...]
Think twice – maybe you should even take a third, fourth or fifth look – before going public, Erik Birkerts advises private-company owners in a piece called ”Hey, Where’s My Gulfstream?!” in the July 2010 issue of Mergers & Acquisitions. Birkerts, a veteran of venture-backed companies that did IPOs in 1999 and 2007, now is a partner [...]
