The New Investor Relations: Expert Perspectives on the State of the Art [Hardcover]

Benjamin Mark Cole (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bloomberg | Publication Date: October 29, 2003

Across America in thousnds of publicly traded companies, investor relations (IR) professionals and top executives are struggling to communicate corporate news effectively in an on-edge, suspicious environment of 24/7 financial information. Billions in stock value can be gained or obliterated quickly. based in no small part on how well the IR pros make the company's case and manage expectations. Earnings announcements, analyst reports, insider stock transactions (even if legal), and more all have a magnified impact on stock movements in today's climate. With contributions from leading IR experts, Benjamin Mark Cole has put together an incisive and practical blueprint for success in investor relations today. Filled with ancedotes and case studies of good--and bad--IR, this book provides indispensable, hands-on guidance.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An excellent, up-to-the-minute overview of IR. Both seasoned practitioners and newbies will find much of interest between these covers." -- PR Week, March 15, 2004

"This compendium by various experts adds significantly to the body of knowledge related to contemporary investor relations issues." -- Louis M. Thompson, Jr., President & CEO, National Investor Relations Institute

About the Author

BENJAMIN MARK COLE has been a financial journalist for more than twenty years. He has written for numerous publications and helped launch Investor's Business Daily. For the Los Angeles Business Journal he currently writes the "Wall Street West" column. He is the author of award-winning The Pied Pipers of Wall Street: How Analysis Sell You Down the River.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Bloomberg Press; 1 edition (October 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576601358
• ISBN-13: 978-1576601358
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,394,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Up-to-Date "Expert" View of the Minimum for Good IR Practice, May 20, 2004

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Investor Relations: Expert Perspectives on the State of the Art (Hardcover)

In the wake of rising class action lawsuits from shareholders and the wave of corporate accounting and fraud scandals in the United States, new regulations have required companies to change their investor relations practices. The primary legal shifts are caused by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Regulation Full Disclosure and Regulation M-A. Although it is hard to imagine that there are any public companies that are not familiar with these changes by now, this book draws on lawyers, public relations counsel, investor relations consultants and communications specialists to describe what the minimum requirements are now for "good" investor relations practices. The advice will be most helpful to companies who are going public for the first time or have only been traded outside the United States.

The book opens with "Fundamentals of Investor Relations" by Donald Allen of the Allen Group; "IR for Blue-Chip Companies: The New Look" by Heather Harper, Hollis Rafkin-Sax, and Bryce Goodwin of Edelman Financial Communications; "Litigation IR and the Duties of Corporate Disclosure and Governance" by Theodore J. Sawicki, Esq. and Scott P. Hilsen, Esq. of Alston & Bird LLP; and "The IR-PR Nexus" by David Silver of Silver Public Relations.

I found the next section more helpful because it outlined appropriate practices in the context of selected financing scenarios (stock buybacks, M&A, private placements, and IPOs). For those who haven't done these types of financings before, you can use these articles as helpful checklists.

Part 3 will be the least broadly applicable . . . but can be very helpful to the few who will need it: "IR Tactics in Proxy Wars and Other Crisis Scenarios". There aren't very many such proxy fights and crises, but most people haven't been through one . . . so you need help when you find yourself in this kind of situation. The last article on the lessons of the Hewlett-Packard merger with Compaq is probably of the most general interest for those who followed the fight.

The last section has articles about non-U.S. issuers accessing the U.S. capital markets, investor relations in microcap companies, working with ratings agencies and a description by one investment manager of what he wants to learn (Christopher N. Orndorff of Payden & Rygel Investment Co. did that article).

Everything that is contained in the book could have been learned by becoming a member of the National Investor Relations Institute and taking the fine classes it offers.

I graded the book down because it had no information provided by top investor relations executives and because it had almost no information on what institutional investors want. The top people who serve as investor relations officers know more about how to do this job well than "experts" who haven't held those positions. Also, you cannot really identify best practices unless you measure the results and connect the results back to some practices that some do that others do not. There was no attempt to do this kind of research behind the "conclusions" offered by the "experts" here.

Having done work on identifying investor relations best practices by benchmarking investor relations executives and interviewing tens of thousands of institutional investors over many years, I found the conclusions in the book to be embarrassingly below the standard of today's "best practices." The practices are certainly adequate ones . . . think of them as being the minimum for good IR practice.

Instead of reading this book, I suggest you locate an investor relations executive who has been highly successful over a number of years and take that person out to dinner to learn more about what she or he does. You would learn more that way.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended!, May 19, 2004

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Investor Relations: Expert Perspectives on the State of the Art (Hardcover)

After the wave of corporate scandals and new regulations, a book like this needed to be written, particularly a book that covers the field of investor relations and includes advice from the leading professionals. This comes as close as anything you have been offered so far. Alas, its style and timeliness fall short (it offers clichés couched in academic prose and presents year 2000 regulations as new), but it offer abundant information. This is a helpful and useful run-down, particularly Chapter 10, which covers proxy wars. Non-U.S. companies will also find Chapter 13 very relevant. If you need an IR overview, we believe you can satisfactorily start here.