Was I wrong about Black & Decker?
IN A recent post I called out Black & Decker Corporation (NYSE: BDK), one of the highest rated companies for corporate governance among U.S. large-caps, for ignoring its annual meeting on its website. In that post, I said Institutional Shareholder Services was wrong to say BDK’s governance practices are better than 99% of S&P 500 [...]
On the web, annual meetings matter
THIS is a good year to put more effort into how your company handles its annual shareholder meeting on the Web. Think of it as a dry run for future years when annual reporting to shareholders will mostly be handled online.
E-proxy misunderstood
I AM seeing a number of reports and law firm memos that are failing to grasp the fundamental objectives of the SEC’s voluntary and proposed universal e-proxy process. There’s an interesting article from Corporate Secretary magazine that quotes a couple of folks who think retail investors aren’t ready to give up printed proxy statements and [...]
If retail investors don’t matter, IR is in trouble
RETAIL investors’ direct ownership of U.S. stocks has dwindled to new lows. According to a survey released by the Conference Board, institutional investors owned 68% of the top 1,000 companies in 2005. To put that in perspective, consider that in 1950 individual investors directly held 92% of stocks. Today they own just 32%. Indirect ownership [...]
Health care companies’ unhealthy attitude to online investor communications
AS A GROUP, big health care companies have the weakest overall performance when it comes to communicating with investors on the Web. The sector has the lowest average score out of the 10 sectors we track in our 134-point survey covering more than 525 of the world’s biggest companies. In the rankings we released yesterday, [...]
Familiarity Key To Retail Investor Stock Picks, Survey Finds
By IR Web Report Staff ALMOST one in three investors who use online brokerages select their investments based on whether they use a particular product or company service, according to the 2006 Scottrade American Investor Study. The study also found that 28% of online investors select investments based on a company or product they have [...]
Survey: good service makes investors loyal
By IR Web Report Staff Even when they are not specifically designed to answer IR questions, surveys of investors provide useful insight for investor relations communicators. Take the the J.D. Power and Associates 2006 Full-Service Investor Satisfaction Study released yesterday. It analyzes the key factors that make investors loyal and satisfied with full service brokerage [...]
90% of S&P Global 100 companies fail annual report usability standards
LESS than 10% of the world’s 100 largest public companies are meeting basic usability requirements for their online annual reports to shareholders — and standards have worsened over the past three years. These are the main findings of an in-depth comparison of the online annual reports of the S&P Global 100 Index companies, the world’s [...]
Big companies snub small shareholders
LAST week saw the deadline for big American companies to file their annual 10-K reports with the SEC. There was quite a bit of hoopla this year because it was the first time companies were filing their internal control reports in compliance with the much-hyped Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley act. Most companies made the [...]
Why corporate boards should blog
DESPITE all the changes that new laws like Sarbanes-Oxley have brought to how companies are governed and managed, one thing has still not changed: directors still don’t talk to their shareholders. Sure, boards and directors may have private meetings with high powered institutional investors on issues of corporate governance, but they almost never communicate in [...]
Investor relations contacts pages
GOOD investor relations contacts pages demonstrate companies’ accountability to their shareholders and give potential investors confidence that they have a reliable avenue to get answers to questions that might come up. Currently, fewer than 20 per cent of companies in our survey are providing credible IR contact information on their websites. Most contacts pages are [...]
Managing email inquiries from investors
THERE were a few surprises in a recent study we conducted of how top companies invite and deal with email questions sent to the investor relations department. Our objective was to test how responsive these blue-chip companies are to email inquiries directed via their IR websites. We also wanted to measure the quality of the [...]
Examples of investor relations email newsletters
Updated: January 29, 2006 EMAIL newsletters have long been one of the most favored — and effective — tools of online marketers. Everyone from Amazon.com to the esteemed Wharton School of business uses them. And now some investor relations departments are catching on to the opportunities which email newsletters can provide. Newsletters, as opposed to [...]
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