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Janet Dignan, founder of IR Magazine, introduces this year's report
In the course of a working life one comes across a range of different tasks and challenges, some difficult, some less so, some downright easy. Writing the introduction to this report definitely comes into the first – the ‘difficult’ – category. That’s odd, you might be thinking, she writes the introductions to these investor perception studies regularly, several times a year, for the Europe Awards, the US Awards, the Canada Awards… And you’d be right. But in the words of the old phrase: this time it’s different. And that’s because, between carrying out the awards research and the announcement of the award winners and publication of this report, the world changed. It got struck by a virus that changed pretty much everything for pretty much everyone. Not least companies, their IROs and their investment communities. That might be a bit of an exaggeration but only a small one. For IR Magazine, it meant the Europe Awards couldn’t take place in June, as normal; and yet, to publish anything in the second half of 2020 without discussing the impact of Covid-19 seems absurd. To talk about how a company performed from an investor relations perspective without addressing Covid-19 seems barely credible. But this research was completed just before the WHO announced that the world was facing a pandemic: in other words, just before the world as we knew it ceased to be. Of course, that in no way detracts from the success of the companies named and discussed in this report. Allianz, this year’s best overall winner, and BASF, the runner-up, are already established as first-class IR performers. Sixth-ranked AstraZeneca has excelled in the field for many years and, if its vaccine for Covid-19 does as well as many expect, it may end up with one of the better virus stories to tell the world, including analysts and investors. The problem is simply that the research reported here predates one of the most impactful events the modern world has ever faced. And as we all know too well, what happens out there in the world always affects the way IR professionals need to do their jobs. That’s one of the things that makes investor relations so interesting and challenging as a profession. It’s one of the reasons we do this research every year.
It’s just that this year’s research report is more of an historical document than an up-to-the minute one. And it makes very different reading from today’s norm. That will be rectified in next year’s report, which will doubtless be Covid-19-dominated. For now, however, this belatedly published 2020 report provides the background to a 2021 version. While still full of comments about IROs’ successes, it is bound to seem a little dated. Those successes will in large part be a result of the strong relationships those IROs have built over time with their investor audiences, not least by talking to them honestly and openly in both good times and bad.
Here’s to those successes and to all the companies and individuals named in this report. However strange the circumstances, they fully deserve their recognition, and their standing in the investment community will have equipped them well for the stresses and strains of 2020.
To your very good health.
