IR Masterclass: Practical Skills for IR Teams

Investor Relations is a broad-ranging role, in which you will have a diverse range of practical skills to master in order to successfully engage with both the investment community and your internal stakeholders. This masterclass will be beneficial to both experienced in-house practitioners looking to share best practice and hear about new strategies, as well as less experienced IROs looking to understand the options available and de-code the jargon. This interactive in-person event will cover some of the most critical skills that all IR teams need to consider. The roundtable discussion format will also provide you with lots of opportunities to share thoughts and network with your peers.

Topics that will be covered:

  • Content – creating impactful content to engage investors and analysts
  • Consensus – tips and best practice for building your consensus framework
  • Feedback – capturing market feedback and taking action with this data
  • Strategy – developing your IR Strategy and writing your IR Programme

Agenda

08:30 - Registration, networking and breakfast

09:00 - Welcome and introductions 

09:10 - Roundtable discussions 

10:45 - Thank you and close

Networking until 11:00

"Really good session - case studies particularly helpful at bringing it to life."

“ The course made my interest in IR increase hugely – all my objectives were met and there were a lot of high quality discussions. A lot covered, and delivered very well, particularly on topics which could be considered dry!”

"Very useful overview of the regulations, especially as a newcomer to the IR function, and bringing my knowledge up to date. I especially liked all the real life examples - companies, fines, outcomes of tougher regulation. Excellent course!"

Course tutor: Deborah Morton-Dare

Deborah specialises in financial training for all levels from beginners to advanced. She presents a comprehensive range of courses to a diverse range of corporate clients and financial institutions and specialises in making complex technical subjects comprehensible. 

Deborah qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Young and then worked in Corporate Finance gaining wide ranging experience in a variety of corporate and financial institutions. She then worked as a financial consultant to companies assisting them in raising finance and structuring.

Programme

  • Understanding the regulatory framework
  • Role of a Sponsor
  • Insider dealing and market abuse; how to deal with price sensitive information
  • Disclosure Guidance and Transparency Rules (DTRs)– continuing obligations
  • Dealing with the sell-side
  • Knowing your shareholders
  • Financial calendar and reporting
  • Recent case studies and current issues

"Excellent, jargon free teaching with plenty of time for examples and discussion. Very grounded in the real world of IR / accounting."

"Excellent course - I now have a much fuller understanding of accounts and valuations. Very helpful."

"Really enjoyed the structure of the course. Concise but very informative. Great use of real life examples which made complicated topics easier to understand such as the different ratios used."

Course tutor: Deborah Morton-Dare

Deborah specialises in financial training for all levels from beginners to advanced. She presents a comprehensive range of courses to a diverse range of corporate clients and financial institutions and specialises in making complex technical subjects comprehensible. 

Deborah qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Young and then worked in Corporate Finance gaining wide ranging experience in a variety of corporate and financial institutions. She then worked as a financial consultant to companies assisting them in raising finance and structuring.

Programme

Module One

  • Introduction
  • The Accounting Foundations - what is financial information?
  • The components of a balance sheet
  • The components of a Profit and Loss Account
  • Cashflow statements

Module Two

  • Introduction
  • Fundamental concept of discounted cash flow
  • Risk vs return
  • Business strategy
  • Introduction to valuation methods
  • Conclusion: What really matters

"The course was thoroughly enjoyable. It was highly engaging, informative and very well-presented. It was a great introduction to investor relations, listed companies and the financial markets in which they operate" - December 2021

"It was hugely insightful and informative and feel like I've taken away a lot of knowledge and insight that I'll be able to apply in my day to day job" - December 2021

"I really liked the fact that Deborah made the course so easy to follow. It is not easy to conduct remote sessions, in fact this was the first training I attended remotely. Thank you for organising the break out room activities" - December 2021

"Excellent course, thoroughly enjoyed. Deborah was a fantastic facilitator and kept it interesting and engaging. Definitely taking away some suggestions for my team and for myself. Course materials were excellent and packs provided great" - March 2023

Course tutor: Deborah Morton-Dare

Deborah specialises in financial training for all levels from beginners to advanced. She presents a comprehensive range of courses to a diverse range of corporate clients and financial institutions and specialises in making complex technical subjects comprehensible. 

Deborah qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Young and then worked in Corporate Finance gaining wide ranging experience in a variety of corporate and financial institutions. She then worked as a financial consultant to companies assisting them in raising finance and structuring.

Programme

  • Companies
  • Financial markets
  • Stock exchanges
  • Equity investors and investment principles
  • Role of IR
  • Summary and conclusion

"The revision course really helped prepare me for the exam. Deborah is a fantastic tutor"

"The revision course was well put together and really helped develop my knowledge. It also helped with all the difficult areas I may not have been able to grasp alone"

"I thought the course was extremely useful. The format of the course, broken up by some quiz questions to test our knowledge and an emphasis on our exam technique and how to approach the questions was great"

Course tutor: Deborah Morton-Dare

Deborah specialises in financial training for all levels from beginners to advanced. She presents a comprehensive range of courses to a diverse range of corporate clients and financial institutions and specialises in making complex technical subjects comprehensible. 

Deborah qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Young and then worked in Corporate Finance gaining wide ranging experience in a variety of corporate and financial institutions. She then worked as a financial consultant to companies assisting them in raising finance and structuring.

Programme

To run through keys sections of the study guide

Section 3 : Corporate Entities and Corporate Governance

Section 4 : Market Conduct

Section 5 : Reporting

"Very informative and easy to follow. Deborah is a great presenter and engaging."

"The course gave a good in depth review of Investor Relations. At the same time, it was targeted to this audience, which made it easy to understand the content. It was also very valuable to meet other personal and executive assistants, and others in support roles."

Course tutor: Deborah Morton-Dare

Deborah specialises in financial training for all levels from beginners to advanced. She presents a comprehensive range of courses to a diverse range of corporate clients and financial institutions and specialises in making complex technical subjects comprehensible. 

Deborah qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Young and then worked in Corporate Finance gaining wide ranging experience in a variety of corporate and financial institutions. She then worked as a financial consultant to companies assisting them in raising finance and structuring.

Programme

  • Introduction to Investor Relations
  • An overview of financial markets
  • Practical tips for creating value in your role
  • Facilitating the investor relations calendar

"Very good to understand the targeting approach, ways to identify/ interpret information and look to maximise value from using management time."

"Really good insights from people with lots of industry experience. Took away three to four interesting things that will assist me in the future. Coming from a background without much exposure to IR, this was a great way to get a wide introduction and beneficial for future work."

"Very informative - being a third party service it's great to hear what IRO's are facing in this uncertain climate. Great coverage of topics."

Course tutor: Lorraine Rees - MD, IR-connect

Lorraine established the IR-connect consultancy in 2015 which specialises in IR for IPOs, and personalised IR mentoring for executive and non-executive directors, IR Directors and IROs. She runs a number of courses for the IR Society including the Diploma modules. Prior to setting up her consultancy company, she was IR Director at Standard Life plc, Head of IR at The Phoenix Group, and an equity analyst at Exane BNP Paribas. She originally trained as a chartered accountant, and has also worked in strategy, corporate finance, private equity and banking.

Programme

  • Introduction and developing your targeting strategy
  • Understanding Investor trends
  • Broker perspective - how to maximise the benefit of using a house broking team
  • Using an IR firm effectively
  • What the buy-side wants
  • Best Practice, new technologies

"Very good, concise, to the point and backed by real life examples and applications. Thoroughly enjoyed it."

"Very well explained and balanced between 'theory' and case studies."

"Very useful, I liked that it was interactive. We had good debates and discussions. Very comprehesive, good content, videos were useful. Excellent session."

Course tutor: Lorraine Rees - MD, IR-connect

Lorraine established the IR-connect consultancy in 2015 which specialises in IR for IPOs, and personalised IR mentoring for executive and non-executive directors, IR Directors and IROs. She runs a number of courses for the IR Society including the Diploma modules. Prior to setting up her consultancy company, she was IR Director at Standard Life plc, Head of IR at The Phoenix Group, and an equity analyst at Exane BNP Paribas. She originally trained as a chartered accountant, and has also worked in strategy, corporate finance, private equity and banking.

Programme

  • Understanding your debt investor base and capital structure
  • Rating Agencies
  • Benefits of pro-active debt investor engagement
  • Development of a Debt IR programme
  • Best practice disclosure and presentations

"I enjoyed the course and found it to be a useful overview. The main challenge is that it's a topic with so much to cover but some useful practical elements were covered in one day."

"The course was engaging and useful, pitched at the right level. An excellent tutor too, and the exercises and materials provided were great - both to guide the course itself, keeping it practical and also for future reference."

"Good session. Very well presented and exercises are very to the point and helpful."

Course tutor: Kenneth Lee

Director of Postgraduate Taught programmes at Loughborough Business School

Director of Postgraduate Taught programmes at Loughborough Business School

Kenneth is a Professor in the Accounting and Finance research group of Loughborough Business school and the Director of Postgraduate Taught programmes. Prior to this he was an Associate Professorial Lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science, for 5 years. He is a member of the Capital Markets Advisory Committee (CMAC), a body supported by the IFRS Foundation, which interprets proposed accounting changes from the perspective of capital market participants.


Before academia Kenneth was a Managing Director & Head of European Equity Research at Barclays Capital, where he worked for 8 years before leaving in August 2017 to take up a number of academic positions. Prior to this he was also a Managing Director and a ranked accounting and valuation analyst at Citi Investment Research in London. During this time Kenneth published extensively on accounting and valuation topics for investors and was ranked in the top 3 in the Institutional Investor Survey over more than a continuous 10-year period.


He holds a doctorate from Aston Business School, a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, a member of the Institute of Taxation and a CFA Charterholder.  He is the co-author of Financial Statement Analysis under IFRS (2018, 6th Ed.) and Company Valuation under IFRS (2020, 3rd ed.).

Programme

  • Financial Modelling House Keeping
  • The model starting point: An integrated set of P&L, Balance Sheet & Cash Flow forecasts
  • Analysis of Business Performance
  • An overview of valuation methodologies: Absolute & Relative approaches to valuation
  • Discounted Cash Flow
  • Relative Valuation approaches
  • Putting it all together: A case study

(Attendees will receive an information pack in advance containing the basic model to be used for the course, including historic P&L, Cash Flow and Balance Sheet statements).

"A very refreshing look at how to write with more clarity and a reminder of pitfalls to avoid."

"Found balance of practical and theoretical discussions good."

"Well pitched, useful real life applications."

Course tutor: Jon Harris

Jon’s unique background means that he is ideally suited to helping professionals develop their writing skills. Jon is a Cambridge English graduate, a qualified teacher of adults and an Associate Tutor at Goldsmiths University, where he teaches management at BA and MA level, giving him a deep understanding of the challenges and requirements for effective business writing. He has been commissioned by several IR teams to assist in writing critical communications at times of significant change and has lots of experience helping businesses frame and couch language for both internal and external communications. He has delivered writing skills training for the IR Society for several years and has also trained special-interest professional groups in writing skills, including banks, regulators and government departments. Jon is also a qualified business psychologist and a chartered management accountant. 

Programme

  • Welcome, introduction, objectives and quiz
  • 10 principles for getting your message scross
  • How to select the best words and avoid the worst ones – Exercise 1
  • How to select the best words and avoid the worst ones – Exercise 2
  • Moving with the times – how to keep pace with changing language in a variety of media
  • Analysing your own material
  • Summary and evaluation

"Excellent, jargon free teaching with plenty of time for examples and discussion. Very grounded in the real world of IR / accounting."

"Excellent course - I now have a much fuller understanding of accounts and valuations. Very helpful."

"Really enjoyed the structure of the course. Concise but very informative. Great use of real life examples which made complicated topics easier to understand such as the different ratios used."

Course tutor: Deborah Morton-Dare

Deborah specialises in financial training for all levels from beginners to advanced. She presents a comprehensive range of courses to a diverse range of corporate clients and financial institutions and specialises in making complex technical subjects comprehensible. 

Deborah qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Young and then worked in Corporate Finance gaining wide ranging experience in a variety of corporate and financial institutions. She then worked as a financial consultant to companies assisting them in raising finance and structuring.

Programme

Module One

  • Introduction
  • The Accounting Foundations - what is financial information?
  • The components of a balance sheet
  • The components of a Profit and Loss Account
  • Cashflow statements

Module Two

  • Introduction
  • Fundamental concept of discounted cash flow
  • Risk vs return
  • Business strategy
  • Introduction to valuation methods
  • Conclusion: What really matters

Course tutor: Sallie Pilot

Senior Advisor, The Investor Forum

Senior Advisor, The Investor Forum

Sallie is an experienced executive director and communications professional with deep expertise in company-investor relations, corporate disclosure and stakeholder engagement. She combines strategic and practical experience with a solid understanding of corporate governance and stewardship, ESG and sustainability, and financial and non-financial reporting.

Currently, Sallie is a senior advisor to The Investor Forum, a not-for-profit, practitioner-led membership organisation, set up by institutional investors in UK Equities focused on positioning stewardship at the heart of investment decision-making. There she leading on an initiative to improve dialogue between Boards and Investors and encourage a more meaningful debate on long term value creation, laying the groundwork for the evolution of the Investor Forum to the Investor and Issuer Forum

She is an Advisory Panel and Stakeholder Insight Group Member of the FRC, Communications Group Member of the Accounting for Sustainability (A4S), and fellow of the Investor Relations Society. Until recently she was an owner and Executive Director of Black Sun plc a Stakeholder Communications Business where she ran a global advisory and research team, of Investor, ESG, Sustainability, and Communications specialists to deliver a more holistic view of corporate performance.

Course tutor: Helena Walsh - Managing Partner, Agendi

Helena Walsh is a dedicated multidisciplined climate and sustainability expert with vast experience leading organisations of all sizes to increase their action on ESG issues. Climate and sustainability has been the focus on her career starting out in engineering consultancy in the early 2000s and progressing into strategic management consulting. Her experience spans sectors offering sustainable design, strategic risk analysis and planning, renewable energy procurement, and best practice frameworks and reporting. 

Course tutor: Victoria Tetzlaff - Manager, Agendi

With over a decade of experience in various Real Estate functions, Victoria Tetzlaff decided it was time for a change. Pursuing an MBA was the first step in broadening her business knowledge and seeking international opportunities. She discovered a passion for purpose-driven work, especially in sustainability and achieved the CFA in ESG Investing, equipping her to bridge the financesustainability gap. Currently, Victoria holds the position of Manager, where she leads diverse projects centered around sustainability strategy, reporting, target setting, and a range of other critical topics for a wide array of clients.

Book now

Course level

Core courses

Course dates

7 August 2024
9.30am to 4.30pm

6 November 2024
9.30am to 4.30pm

  • IR Society members (£620 + VAT)
    £744
  • IR Society Premium members (course allowance included in membership package)
    £0
  • Non-members (£860 + VAT)
    £1,032
Book now

Register interest

Discounts for multiple bookings
We offer a 10% discount on course fees when booking two professional development courses, and 20% when you book three or more.
Book now

Course level

Core courses

Course dates

20 August 2024
9.30am to 4.30pm

  • IR Society members (£1,240 + VAT, Module One and Module Two)
    £1,488
  • IR Society members (£620 + VAT, Module One only)
    £744
  • IR Society Premium members (course allowance included in membership package, one licence per Module)
    £0
  • Non-members (£1,720 + VAT, Module One and Module Two)
    £2,064
  • Non-members (£860 + VAT, Module One only)
    £1,032
Book now

Register interest

Discounts for multiple bookings
We offer a 10% discount on course fees when booking two professional development courses, and 20% when you book three or more.

Book now

Course level

Core courses

Course dates

6 August 2024
9.30am to 4.30pm

2 October 2024
9.30am to 4.30pm

31 October 2024
9.30am to 4.30pm

Book now

Register interest

Discounts for multiple bookings
We offer a 10% discount on course fees when booking two professional development courses, and 20% when you book three or more.

Book now

Course level

Certificate in IR (CIR)

Location

London

Course dates

1 October 2024
9.30am to 4.30pm

5 December 2024
9.30am to 4.30pm

Book now

Register interest

Discounts for multiple bookings
We offer a 10% discount on course fees when booking two professional development courses, and 20% when you book three or more.

Book now

Course level

Specialist courses

Course dates

22 August 2024
9.30am to 4.30pm

Book now

Register interest

Discounts for multiple bookings
We offer a 10% discount on course fees when booking two professional development courses, and 20% when you book three or more.

Book now

Course level

Core courses

Course dates

27 August 2024
9.30am to 1.30pm

8 October 2024
9.30am to 1.30pm

Book now

Register interest

Discounts for multiple bookings
We offer a 10% discount on course fees when booking two professional development courses, and 20% when you book three or more.

Book now

Course level

Specialist courses

Course dates

5 November 2024
9.30am to 1.30pm

Book now

Register interest

Discounts for multiple bookings
We offer a 10% discount on course fees when booking two professional development courses, and 20% when you book three or more.

Book now

Course level

Specialist courses

Location

London

CPD points

40

Course dates

5 December 2024
9.00am to 4.30pm

Book now

Register interest

Discounts for multiple bookings
We offer a 10% discount on course fees when booking two professional development courses, and 20% when you book three or more.

Book now

Course level

Advanced courses

Course dates

10 September 2024
12.30pm to 4.00pm

19 November 2024
12.30pm to 4.00pm

Book now

Register interest

Discounts for multiple bookings
We offer a 10% discount on course fees when booking two professional development courses, and 20% when you book three or more.

Book now

Course level

Core courses

Course dates

21 August 2024
9.30am to 4.30pm

Book now

Register interest

Discounts for multiple bookings
We offer a 10% discount on course fees when booking two professional development courses, and 20% when you book three or more.

Book now

Course level

Core courses

Location

In-Person, City of London

Course dates

3 September 2024
9.30am to 4.30pm

Book now

Register interest

Discounts for multiple bookings
We offer a 10% discount on course fees when booking two professional development courses, and 20% when you book three or more.