.jpg)
Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) re-affirms today its ongoing commitment to publicly listed companies to enhance their investor relations practices. In collaboration with Iridium Investor Relations, QSE rolls out the IR Excellence Program for a third year since its successful launch in 2015. QSE highlights this as an opportunity for publicly listed companies to excel, as the IR Excellence Program will once again recognize their achievements and proactive efforts to foster professional investor relations standards.
Mr. Rashid Bin Ali Al-Mansoori, Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Stock Exchange said: “The IR Excellence Program reflects our sincere desire and best intentions to achieve international best practices. We aim to see QSE’s listed companies committed to improving the flow of information for a more transparent and better-informed market environment. The IR Excellence program recognition is one of the most significant programs in the region rewarding listed corporates for their investor relations efforts."
The QSE IR Excellence Program last year crowned Ooredoo as Qatar's best company overall for excellence in Investor Relations. There was also formal recognition for small-, mid- and large cap companies, the best Chief Financial Officer and best Investor Relations Officer as well as the top three corporate investor relations websites in the country.
For the third year running, all Qatari companies will automatically be entered into the IR Excellence program. The fair and transparent program methodology will remain unchanged. Qatar listed companies will have until mid-November 2017 to review and implement upgrades to their investor relations efforts.
A public voting system and a detailed website ranking of all companies will be conducted from mid-November to end-December 2017. All members of the investment community will be eligible to vote for the best investor relations efforts. Iridium, on behalf of Qatar Stock Exchange, will manage the distribution of emails and questionnaires to a database of over 2,000 regional and international investor and broker contacts who are active in the Qatari market. The firm will also rank the company’s websites.
Mr. Abdul Aziz Al Emadi, Director of Listing Department at QSE, added: “Earlier this year, we announced a 20% year-on-year performance improvement of Qatari listed companies’ IR websites. We look forward to building on this success and seeing an even stronger engagement from companies, in order to further improve the IR standards for the benefit of all market participants.”
The IR Excellence Program has been benchmarked globally against best practices to ensure a fair, credible and transparent methodology. The methodology and all ranking criteria are made public in advance to the public. This enables companies to review categories and selection criteria, and gives them advance notice to adjust their Investor Relations efforts, especially with regards to their investor relations websites.
