Although companies and investors have met to discuss sustainability issues for many years, this practice has grown substantially in recent years and has become much more formalised to the significant benefit of both parties.
Background
Twenty years ago, the process of company-investor communications was dominated by CSR reports and rating agency questionnaires. These did not really meet the needs of an increasingly sophisticated investor base and they soon frustrated the more progressive companies who saw questionnaires as an unsatisfactory one-way communications process.
In Europe
To address these inadequacies, UK SIF worked with a number of brokers to organise sector conferences in which companies presented directly to investors and took questions from them.
Over a relatively short period of time, these set-piece conferences morphed into more tailored events in which individual companies mixed combinations of formal presentations, small group meetings, videoconferences, webcasts, 1-on-1 investor meetings etc. in a way that best suited their investor communications objectives. The SRI roadshow was born!
Such events are typically facilitated by ‘sell-side’ brokers who guide companies, enthuse investors and generally oil the logistical wheels. These meetings have proved mutually-beneficial – so beneficial that they have become, for many large European companies, an established part of the sustainability reporting processes.
In the USA
At the same time, US SIF’s SIRAN network developed a programme to do the same for US companies and investors.
