January 2, 2012 – 9:04 pm
Happy new year. A chatty column in the Financial Times, “Three cheers for new year trepidation,” touches on a central issue for investor relations in 2012: How should companies communicate with shareholders about what we can’t foresee? Citing the obvious risks in trying to predict what will happen in a fragile global economy, FT management editor [...]
September 27, 2011 – 10:30 am
In the “things could be worse” category: Unless you work for Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo! or News Corporation, your company isn’t discussed in “The Worst Board in America,” a video by Thomson Reuters tech correspondent Peter Lauria. “There’s basically a race to the bottom. They’re all dysfunctional in their own way,” Lauria says of the trio of [...]
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 [...]
August 10, 2011 – 2:36 pm
While the markets are going crazy, Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., is out visiting bank customers and employees on a bus tour in California – and giving an interview today with CNBC. His core message: Cheer up, America! That’s not bad advice for investor relations folks, either. Dimon doesn’t mince words about shortcomings [...]
To gain a seat at the table with senior management, investor relations people must talk their way into helping their companies formulate strategy, George Barrett, chairman and CEO of Cardinal Health, told several hundred IROs today in a keynote address at the 2011 NIRI Annual Conference in Orlando. “I really do feel that you’ve got [...]
Gaining access to the C-suite is critical for investor relations professionals, both to know what we need to know about the company for effective communication with investors – and to build personal success in our own careers – according to NIRI‘s June/July 2011 issue of IR Update. The tips and ideas on raising your professional profile apply [...]
The April 2011 Harvard Business Review is “The Failure Issue” – with lots of good stories and lessons. In one, former Blockbuster CEO John Antioco talks about his run-in with activist investor Carl Icahn – and Icahn responds (both available here). Two different views emerge, as you might guess, from the corporate raider who calls Blockbuster “the [...]
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 [...]
March 11, 2011 – 12:35 pm
Our prayers go out for the Japanese people after the massive quake and tsunami. From the Wall Street Journal page live-blogging the quake comes one small vignette that may amaze investor relations colleagues: Calbee, a snack food maker that is 20% owned by PepsiCo, had its IPO today on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The WSJ [...]
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 [...]
