IR Society Best Practice Awards 2019: Leading the way in excellence in investor relations

London, 20 November 2019

At Tuesday night’s annual Investor Relations Society Best Practice Awards, the IR Society gathered together with over 450 industry professionals to recognise the companies leading the way in engaging with the capital markets, demonstrating trust, and strengthening corporate reputation through investor relations.

Two categories of awards were presented – the Self-entry awards, with the winners determined by a panel of experienced professionals and the Voted awards, determined by votes cast by the buy- and sell-sides.

The breadth of quality of investor relations across the market was demonstrated as fifteen different companies collected the seventeen Self-entry awards. There were two double award winners on the night with U+I winning ‘Most Effective Use of Digital Communications’ and ‘Best Annual Report’ in the Small Cap category, and Polymetal winning ‘Best Communication of ESG’ and ‘Best Annual Report’ in the International category. This year a new award was introduced, ‘Best IR Communications in a Corporate Transaction’, for which Phoenix Group and Serco were the winners in the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 categories respectively.

In the Voted awards, BAE Systems celebrated winning ‘Best Overall Company IR’. The award-winning team was credited for an excellent IR programme, always being available and providing valuable insights. Congratulations also go to Edward Thacker at Landsec for winning ‘Best IRO’, and Clio Adams at Unilever for winning ‘Best Newcomer to IR’.

Laura Hayter, CEO of the IR Society, said:

“The promotion of best practice in IR is one of the cornerstones of the IR Society's existence, and the annual Best Practice Awards, now in their 19th year, play a crucial part in this. The changing dynamics of the regulatory environment, along with the increasing demands from responsible investors have challenged IR teams to continue to push the boundaries in best practice IR and to ensure their company’s investment case and long-term strategy is clearly communicated.

Each year we are delighted by the calibre of our nominees, with this one being no exception. Many congratulations to all of our winners, who demonstrated best in class investor relations in their respective categories.”

Click here for a full list of award winners.

About the awards
Now in their 19th year, the Self-entry Awards are open to all companies that wish to demonstrate their commitment to leading investor communications. This year’s awards saw approximately 150 entries. The overall quality of entries remains high and the process thorough and competitive.

Entries are scored against criteria based on the Society’s guidelines for best practice in investor communications. We also ask companies to add a statement of their own to support the entry. This gives companies an opportunity to share their approach to the award and to highlight what works for them and their audience. Having completed the scoring on both a quantitative and qualitative basis, with expert input from independent third parties, the shortlists are submitted to a panel of judges. This year’s judging panel has further evolved to draw on the expertise of specialists from across the IR universe including from fund management, financial reporting, capital markets advisory, company secretaries, CSR and IR. The winners were chosen from the shortlist.

The judging panel for 2019 was:

David Lloyd-Seed – Chair, IR Society and Powerscourt

Hamish Clark – Fidelity

John Dawson – Statera Partners

Hilary Eastman – PWC

Rob Farrington – Citi

Phil Fitz-Gerald – FRC

Richard Good – Linklaters

Will Goodhart – CFA Society

Jessica Ground – Schroders

Jennie Guay – Independent Consultant

Caroline Stockman – ACT

Jeremy Richardson – RBC

Thomas Toomse-Smith – FRC

Peter Swabey – The Governance Institute

For the Voted awards, which recognise excellence in individual and team investor relations, we were delighted to be working in partnership once again with Extel, an Institutional Investor company, who has helped us to address a larger audience and voting universe comprising the buy- and sell-sides. The nominations included 317 companies and 355 IROs, of which 44 were newcomers to the industry. The ‘Best Investor Engagement’ award included 128 buy-side company nominations.

For further information contact:

The Investor Relations Society
Laura Hayter – CEO Tel. No: 020 7379 1763

Kate Heseltine – Head of Policy and Communications Tel. No: 020 7379 1763

Notes for editors:

The Investor Relations Society
The Investor Relations Society (IR Society) is a membership organisation that exists to promote best practice investor relations in the UK and beyond. It is run by IR professionals for IR professionals.
Established in 1980, the IR Society’s mission is to promote best practice in investor relations; to support the professional development of its members; to represent their views to regulatory bodies, the investment community and government; and to act as a forum for issuers and the investment community.

The Society has over 850 members from the UK, Europe and beyond, including representatives from most of the FTSE 100, a large number of FTSE 250 companies and a number of AIM and smaller companies as well as IR advisors and service providers. For more information visit www.irs.org.uk or connect with us on Twitter (@IRSocietyUK) or LinkedIn

Published 20 November, 2019