Quebec Chapter Update
CIRI Quebec hosted its final event before summer in June in Montreal. The seminar – Confessions of a Sell-Side Veteran – gave our members an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the relationship between all parties on the Street: the ‘buy-side’, the ‘sell-side’ and the issuer. A description of broker services (research, trading, banking and corporate access) and how these services are paid for by investors was followed by discussion of MiFID II and how it may change the Street’s ecosystem in the near future.
MiFID II aims to unbundle broker services. It will probably alter the way investors pay for access to broker research, as well as for attendance at conferences and meetings with issuers. Soft dollar commissions will no longer be the method of compensation for these services. For an IRO, the most relevant impact could involve corporate access. For example, in jurisdictions that have been early adopters of MiFID II, some issuers have eliminated the broker and directly provide corporate access while other issuers continue to use brokers to arrange meetings – with the broker invoicing investors for these meetings.
Marc-Andre Nantais, Vice President at Connor, Clark & Lunn Private Capital Ltd., highlighted how MiFID II will impact the broker/investor relationship and predicted that the role of the IRO will become even more strategic. IROs will have to correctly screen investors who want to meet with management and build contacts within the new standalone corporate access firms.
Quebec Chapter events will resume shortly with another season of exciting speakers, creating opportunities for our members to learn, share and network with their peers.
Ontario Chapter Update
CIRI Ontario kicked off its 2017/2018 program on August 22 with its 4th annual IR Speaker Series. This year, Cherryl Valenzuela, Director of Investor Relations at Twitter Inc., stopped by to share her career trajectory and insight on how to utilize social media as part of an IR platform. Thirty-five CIRI members and non-members were at the luncheon.
Valenzuela gave some good examples of how Twitter uses its platform during earnings season and for follow-up tweets to share the company’s IR message. The IR team also answers live tweets during the Q&A portion of the earnings call. The key message that Valenzuela delivered to IROs is that once the legal team gives approval to use Twitter, make sure to be thoughtful about your target audience. End users – retail, institutional and analysts – all use Twitter in different ways. Understanding this should help shape your strategy on the platform.
The event was very well attended and successful, due to the quality of the IR speaker. We encourage readers to take advantage of the experience and insight shared by listening to the audio playback available at CIRI.org.