Extrait du IR Magazine, avril 2008 - www.thecrossbordergroup.com

Top tips from Anne Guimard of Fineo

• ■AGMs can eat up a substantial part of an IR budget, even if the total is split across various departments. Conduct a thorough analysis of who attended your last AGM and how big an audience your CEO actually wants to have in the room. Local regulation permitting, and before proxy voting is solely online, compare the number of proxy forms printed and mailed with the number returned and work out how many documents have been discarded. Adjusting printing and banking fees accordingly can generate substantial savings.
• ■Organize investor lunches at your head office instead of using fancy – and expensive – venues.
• ■Consider outsourcing consensus and market intelligence, or hire IR staff on an interim basis to lower your overall payroll.
• ■Review your free float structure: is it worth continuing to travel to Italy, for example, if you haven’t had an Italian investor in years?
• ■Don’t bring handouts to your one-on-ones. Have your own copy and offer to send a PDF version in a follow-up email to anyone who wants one.
• ■Clean up your contact list. If you don’t remember how someone came to be on it, he or she is probably out of date or no longer active.
• ■Use video interviews of your management, post them on your website and inform your contacts. This will save time on roadshows and conference calls.
• ■Stop timing roadshows with earnings announcements. The chances are investors are well-enough informed at this time and overwhelmed by any further meeting requests. Plan one or two roadshows a year, away from the earnings season, and focus on strategy. The level of questions will be much higher.
• ■Train your staff members to become Excel and PowerPoint artists and increase their expertise in IR. You will be traveling less, so you might need more help spreading the company’s message throughout the investment community.
• ■See whether the local securities analysts’ association can do a better and cheaper job than a broker at organizing meetings with the investment community.

For more handy tips, visit www.thecrossbordergroup.com to buy Guimard's book, Investor relations principles and international best practices of financial communications.