Due in large part to demands from institutional investors for more face time with company management teams, more than 40 percent of the corporate chief financial officers participating in a new Greenwich Associates study expect to increase the amount of time spent on investor relations in the coming year.
In April and May of 2006, Greenwich interviewed 91 CFOs at large US corporations. The results of the survey suggest that the typical CFO spends between two and five days per month on IR, a full 60 percent of the respondents placed themselves in that range.
“Greenwich Associates research among US institutional equity investors suggests that a growing number of institutions are bypassing Wall Street analysts and going directly to the source when evaluating potential investments and monitoring the performance of portfolio companies,” says Bill Bruno, a consultant at Greenwich Associates. “As part of this process, institutions are seeking out more frequent one-on-one meetings with top corporate officials, especially the CFO, as an intrinsic and integral part of investor relations. It is in response to these demands that CFOs are upping the proportion of their time spent on investor relations.”