The IR Society Celebrates Excellence in IR at The Landmark, London
The IR Society celebrated the annual Investor Relations Society Best Practice Awards dinner at The Landmark, London,on Tuesday 22 November.
London, 23 November 2022
The IR Society Celebrates Excellence in IR at The Landmark, London
At Tuesday night’s annual Investor Relations Society Best Practice Awards dinner at The Landmark in London, the IR Society celebrated the achievements of those companies demonstrating their commitment to delivering best-in-class investor and stakeholder communications.
The event saw 450 IR professionals gathered together for this highlight of the IR calendar, which was hosted by comedian, Jo Caulfield.
Our Best Practice Awards are presented across four categories in the self-entry section, with the winners determined by a judging panel of experienced professionals led by Paul Lee, Head of Stewardship & Sustainable Investment Strategy at Redington. In addition, there are four categories in the voted section, which is run in partnership with Institutional Investor and solicits the views of the buy-side and sell-side.
We awarded 11 trophies to companies across the self-entry categories for their outstanding work in investor relations, and highly commended a further four companies that had demonstrated significant progress in their communications.
In the voted awards, this year we introduced Small-, Mid- and Large-cap category winners for both the ‘Best company IR’ and ‘Best IRO’ awards, to encourage and promote best practice across all company sizes.
Congratulations to all our 2022 winners. Access a full list of the winners and visit the Best Practice Awards Website for photos of the winners on each awards page.
Laura Hayter, CEO of the IR Society, said:
“Promoting best practice in IR is a key tenet of the Society’s mission and our annual Best Practice Awards are a great way for companies to showcase how they are leading the way in their IR engagement, innovation, sustainability and annual reporting and what they are doing differently. Thank you to all those who put their work forward for an award. Those companies shortlisted for Tuesday’s awards have all demonstrated excellence in IR, and the calibre and quality of their entries was again very high across the board. Many congratulations to all of our winners, who demonstrated best in class investor relations in their respective categories.”
Paul Lee, Chair of the Judging Panel, said:
“It’s now the third time that I’ve had the privilege of chairing the judging panel for these awards and it remains a pleasure – both to lead the excellent group of diligent and thoughtful judges and to identify some really good practice out there in terms of investor relations work. It was particularly welcome to see such a number of smaller and younger businesses delivering some excellent communications – in some ways they are already showing more established companies what can be done.”
Honorary Fellowship Awards
The IR Society also announced at Tuesday night’s awards ceremony, that Emma Burdett, David Lloyd-Seed and Sallie Pilot are the recipients of its 2022 IR Society Fellowship Awards.
The IR Society Fellowship Award was launched in 2011 to recognise outstanding individuals who have made a significant contribution to the investor relations industry and the IR Society, either through their own work or by developing others in their organisations and beyond.
About the Best Practice Awards
Now in their 22nd year, the self-entry awards are open to all companies that wish to demonstrate their commitment to leading investor communications. Entries are scored against criteria based on the IR Society’s guidelines for best practice in investor relations. We also ask companies to complete a Q&A-style entry form to support their 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 of experts included participants from the investor relations profession, investment banks, asset managers, accountancy firms and other professional bodies. The judging of all categories is overseen by a Chair from the investment community. The winners were chosen from the shortlisted entries for each category.
2022 Judging Panel:
Chair of the Judging Panel: Paul Lee – Redington
Habib Anous – Independent
Yasmine Chahed – Independent
Hamish Clark – Fidelity
Hilary Eastman – PwC
Phil Fitz-Gerald – FRC
Abigail Herron – Aviva Investors
Elli Irving – Lazard Asset Management
Ken Lee – London School of Economics
Sue Scholes – Independent, Former Chair of the IR Society
Caroline Stockmann – ACT
Sachi Suzuki - HSBC
Thomas Toomse-Smith – FRC
Martin Walker – Manchester Business School
Freddie Woolfe – Jupiter Asset Management
Steven Young – Lancaster Business School
For the voted awards, which recognise excellence in individual and team investor relations, we were delighted to be working in partnership once again with Institutional Investor, who have helped us to address a larger audience and voting universe from the buy-side and sell-side. The nominations included 267 companies and 432 IROs, of which 17 were newcomers to the industry. The ‘Best Investor Engagement’ award included 90 buy-side company nominations.
For further information contact:
The Investor Relations Society
Laura Hayter, CEO Tel: 020 7379 1763
Robert Dann, Head of Operations and Marketing Tel: 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 23 November, 2022