Investor Relations Strategy

Catalog description

Investor relations executives bridge the gap between public companies and investors. They report to the CEO or CFO and have a dual role: providing investors with actionable corporate information, and informing managers about investors’ sentiments and planned actions. Investor relations officers, operating in most public companies around the world, and in consulting firms, are highly qualified financial executives, often ascending to the CFO job. This course pursues a new and innovative approach to investor relations: It is fully research-based, offering modern tools and venues to disseminate and evaluate corporate information. Concepts and hands-on practices are blended to provide the best outcome for investors and managers. You will learn in this course how to conduct effectively the crucial quarterly conference calls with investors, what information—beyond the legally required—to disclose to capital markets in order to maximize share prices, what corporate social responsibility activities (CSR) should companies engage in to benefit both society and shareholders, how to deal with activist investors and intruding hedge funds, and much more. All of the above are aimed at securing shareholders’ support of managers’ growth strategies. You will also learn investor relations practices from the top experts in the field. This course is targeted at students interested in investor relations, corporate finance, financial accounting decisions, financial consulting, and by identifying the attributes of well-run and successful companies, the course also serves as an investment guide for investors. The readings for this course are Baruch Lev’s book Winning Investors Over (2012), Harvard Business Review Press, and various articles and cases to be provided to students.