For Investor Relations Managers

Understanding your shareholder base is the basis of an effective IR strategy.

Accuracy and detail are crucial to enable comprehensive investor engagement – which institution, which fund, which fund manager. Given ongoing regulatory changes in Europe, there is no excuse for not knowing who is invested in your shares, who is buying or selling, who needs to be prioritised for senior management attention. Investor Update has the experience and expertise to deliver accurate Shareholder IDs that give you the full picture, delivered on our interactive Share ID+ platform.

Don’t waste time chasing every possible investor. Focus your efforts.

Investor targeting needs to identify qualified targets that have the ability and desire to invest in your company, enabling more efficient and effective senior management IR activities. Understanding the behaviour of your current shareholders allows you to identify those at risk – monitoring their trading activity in you as well as the sector or region will complement feedback from direct interactions. Investor Update has developed a unique service including analysing trading behaviour across the peer group over time. And Investor Update has the experience and relationships to support engagement, from pre-qualification to outreach and setting up meetings.

Unbiased investor feedback can help shape management thinking ahead of critical decisions.

Many of the most successful C-suite executives are those who do not assume they already know what their investors think, and who are prepared to engage in a third-party perception study to uncover blind spots which, if identified and addressed, could drive great improvements. Investor Update’s perception studies – both general and ESG – gain insight and opinion from your investors on key aspects of your business and strategy, to understand what are the drivers behind their investment decision-making process and what are the barriers to increasing and maintaining investment in a competitive market for capital. Furthermore, Investor Update’s analytical heritage enables us to add shareholder benchmarking vs peers as an introduction for management teams or boards.

Understand your shareholders’ corporate governance policies and expectations.

Corporate Governance is an increasing focus for investors and at Investor Update and Okapi Partners it is a full-year exercise, not simply ahead of the AGM. Understanding your key shareholders’ policies and expectations on board issues, remuneration, issuance, ESG, enables you to manage internal expectations and optimise proposals for General Meetings – our Proxy Overlay assesses the risks of your shareholder base in terms of voting history, engagement behaviour, Proxy Advisor allegiance/depending, activism level, etc. We are able to advise and support around engagement, e.g. Corporate Governance roadshows and email updates, assess risks of AGM proposals, and predict and track voting on our interactive Proxy Portal platform.

How to maximise exposure to ESG investors, both active and passive.

Investor Update’s ESG Benchmarking helps focus your ESG needs by highlighting the levels of ESG-specialist investment vs peers to gauge how investors see your ESG strategy. The service also identifies ESG funds that are invested in your company and, more importantly, those that are not, whether active or passive. For active investors, Investor Update is able to target, profile and engage with key ESG funds; for passive, Investor Update is able to analyse which indices and ratings the funds follow in order to optimise ESG rating engagement.