What an Investor Relations Company Can Do For You

Are you looking for ways to push your company to grow and succeed in this 21st century? If yes, start taking investor relations much more seriously. This is the part of the company that will supervise your marketing, communications, finance, and following of securities laws. Why do you need this? Basically, it ensures that communication is smooth-sailing between your company and all the external stakeholders. Investor relations will handle the questions from people who hold shares in the company as well as those who are interested in investing.

Your company could either have its own special team tasked with these duties, or you could tap an outside firm to do the job for you. Of course, in order to understand the importance of this, you need to have an idea of what they can do for you. These types of firms organize meetings from personal shareholder meetings to press conferences. They also handle shareholder assemblies. Agencies also provide information on the company’s policies of corporate social responsibility and even corporate governance. Usually, the dissemination of this information is done through technologically advanced programs like the XBRL.

An investment relations company is also like the media, they should be updated on any kind of new regarding the company and every issue that a company might face. Some of the issues like organizational movements or fiduciary changes should be taken into consideration. They are also responsible for looking at certain patterns of stock trading to provide shareholders the information they needed for investing.

Aside from this, the team should also be present during times of crisis or significant moments in a company’s financial climate. Problems like product recalls, downsizing, as well as industrial disasters must be handled. Are you currently experiencing a bear market? Then the investor relations team should be transparent and yet, still highlight the strengths of the company in order to calm any investor concerns.

This group is also your company’s media spokesperson. If anything goes wrong, they should be there to work with your PR team to inform everyone about it in a positive way. Also, they should be ready to create and distribute positive press releases about any news, whether positive or negative, so that the investors and the public are always in the know about the company.

Historically investor relations were more of a sales team, their role has grown to include finance and communication activities. Making sure that the shareholders have a say and a voice in comapny activities is another one of their responsibilities.

Like in any field, this one also has a best practices. To improve their performance, officers of an investor relations company often consult with other investor relations professionals. Their participation and membership in professional circles such as the Investor Relations Association could also help them gain insight on how to perform better. Avenues for feedback like phone calls and surveys may be necessary so that the members of this arena can give their input on how to improve the service.

Servicing traders and shareholders, is the principal objective of investor relations. A good and reliable investor relations team can assist you in forging better relationships, increasing profits, and bringing in the needed working capital.

Josh Yudell is widely considered to be an expert in the fields of investor relations, SEC compliance, corporate finance and capital structure and is a frequent contributor to blogs and publications, both online and in print.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 3:20 am and is filed under Site Promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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