Corporate-Institutional Investor Poll
BACKGROUND:
As the first and only poll focused on Southeast Asia, the corporate-institutional investor poll is the leading perceptions-based poll in performance in financial management, adherence to corporate governance, integrated reporting/ corporate social responsibility and investor relations.
Our dual role with this poll is to simply supervise the polling process and collate the results. Every name cited within the poll comes from the respondents. We do not prompt or provide names of CFOs or company names. Everything is driven by our investor readership/polling universe. The outcome is completely determined by external votes received from local, regional and global buy and sell side investors and analysts. Our editorial does not have a say or influence in the outcome.
POLLING:
Each year in January we send out 2500+ questionnaires to our investor readership (online). Typically, we receive between 500-650 responses back each year (by mid-April). The participants typically include fund managers with investment interests in Southeast Asia, large institutional investors, insurance companies, pension funds, funds of hedge funds, private banks, equity and fixed income brokers as well as buy and sell-side analysts. Voting by public-listed corporates or individuals with vague, unverifiable contact details were excluded from the final vote count.
DEFINITION:
We do not have a definition or criteria for either of the following categories, nor is there an attempt on our part to limit or define them: Historically however, Most Improved Investor Relations goes to companies that have successfully revived their IR related activities and regained the attention of investors. Best Senior Management Investor Relations Support are companies with senior management proactively involved with IR while Most Consistent Dividend Policy, Strongest Adherence to Corporate Governance, Best Strategic CSR , Best Annual Report, and Most Organised Investor Relations represent exactly what their titles imply.
- A key distinguishing feature of this investor poll unlike any other poll is that we not only name investor favourites but adventurously put our potential income on the line by publishing names of companies that are not so well appreciated, by this same group of investors by asking them about companies perceived to have Unclear Senior Management/Company Strategy & Investor Relations. A minimum total of 20 votes (local and/or regional) are required in order for us to proceed with the publication of these names.
INVESTOR SENTIMENT:
The investor poll is in its 15th year and each year, 30-35 companies from across the region end up on this list and are widely seen as the crème de la crème in Asia. We often notice 90%+ of the companies on the list typically are among large cap companies with the best (or at least positive) share price performance over the last 9-12 month period in their respective markets. Of course, there are exceptions but it is very rare to find a company with a negative share price performance over the last 9-12 months making an appearance on this list, making this evolving poll truly demonstrative of investor sentiment.
METHODOLOGY:
Investors are asked to name up to 3 companies (with no prompting of names by us) they felt had the Most Organised Investor Relations, Best Senior Management Investor Relations Support, Strongest Adherence to Corporate Governance, Most Consistent Dividend Policy and Best Strategic CSR. Investors are also asked to name a single company that has the Best CFO, Best Annual Report and Most Improved Investor Relations as well as Best CFO in Southeast Asia and Strongest Commitment to Sustainable Energy in Southeast Asia (again with zero prompting of names by us).
All respondents are also asked to name companies they felt had “Poor Management Access & Investor Relations as well as Unpredictable IR Strategy” with us elaborating this means investors had trouble accessing senior level management at a given company and/or companies that did not deliver on strategy and/or companies that were not clear with the dissemination of IR related information to investors or failed to deliver shareholder value over the last twelve-month or extended over the last five-year period.
In the interest of editorial neutrality, all respondents are assured of confidentiality. Only responses by verifiable buyside and sell-side investors are accepted including investors and analysts at insurance companies, institutional funds, pension funds, funds of hedge funds, private banks, equity and fixed income brokers. Corporates are not allowed to vote and neither are their representatives or agencies.
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