On Monday 22 February 2010 we release our African Online Investor Relations Newsletter. This has been a long time coming. We hope you like it.
Investor relations is a highly specialised field requiring experience in a number of fields: marketing, finance, communications, law etc.. The practice of investor relations in Africa is relatively new and limited to the big market capitalisation companies that have the resources to employ experienced people. We believe that there is middle ground between high-end investor relations activities and doing nothing. The internet is the forum for this compromise and this is what we, African Is Cool are about.
Much is made of good corporate governance principles in Africa. Seminar after seminar is held to discuss these fuzzy-wuzzy-feel-good-principles. Lots of talking is done. Very little happens thereafter because I believe Directors don’t know what to do, practically speaking.The main objective of our newsletter is to increase awareness of investor relations practices in Africa and to suggest practical means of improving the very undeveloped state of online communications.
I believe that governance codes need practical checklists for Directors. Each and every principle of good governance needs a “in order to achieve thus, “do this”, “do that” etc. Our experience in online investor relations has been “bottom up”. These “do this” “do thats” started off just as tasks to make information available online and to respond to feedback from our clients’ investment communities. Over time our processes have grown into sustainable communications strategies for our clients. Our IR initiatives have expanded beyond investor relations, into stakeholder relations and the bigger feel good things about corporate governance.
We are now able to reconcile every aspect of what we do online, to good governance codes and principles. We hope to provide some very specific checklists on how to implement good governance principles in future. Our newsletter is a start.
Our newsletter targets regulators, listed companies and investors and has mostly original content. We rarely use other material unless we feel that its technical and practical e.g. SEC guidelines on communication.
If you are active in African capital markets and have your own article or views to submit, or events that will broaden our cause, I am more than happy to publicise it on my blog so long as it’s pertinent to our goals.
Please submit your comments and suggestions on our newsletter after its released here or sign up here.