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Good evening.
I would like to add my own welcome to tonight’s event, in which we attend the 2nd Annual Investor Relations Excellence Program Awards’ Ceremony. Thank you for your attendance and participation.
As Rashid said our listed companies are the corporate ambassadors that represent Qatar’s economic, business and financial progress around the world shaping our country’s image as a financial centre.
Against this background communication matters: the management and board of listed companies require an effective financial communications strategy for a challenging environment where our competitor markets are making advances. Why:
- Public spotlight - corporate performance and behaviour is in the spotlight and is regularly highlighted in the local and international media, featured on dedicated round-the clock news channels and increasingly in social networks;
- Globalization - particularly through connected capital markets, the IR function has to meet global best practices. Active investors have an increasing demand for additional information and passive investors/indexing has raised the profile for markets such as Qatar.
- Adapting to change - capital markets have undergone major changes in the past decade. In terms of regulations and corporate governance, good financial communication must provide a greater volume of intelligence and it must adapt to these changes; and
- Real-time environment - the stock market remains a fast-moving environment with a greater demand for faster IR response to investors’ requests.
As you know, Qatar Stock Exchange has been actively promoting the topic of IR for a number of years but with the challenges above and our desire to not only to embrace Emerging Markets status but aspire to Developed Market status there has never been as much attention paid to the prospects of our listed companies. The recognition system is part of that ongoing effort.
You will be aware that some regional markets have recently introduced a mandatory IR requirements system in their regulations; Qatar has not yet gone down that route but we are in consultation with market participants to evaluate whether some form of mandatory IR disclosure would be beneficial for the market overall.
In the meantime we believe the aspirational element in the Awards will push listed companies to improve.
In fact it is noticeable from our evaluation that a number of companies have made the effort to upgrade their websites in direct relation to the best practice outlined in our criteria.
As with the websites it has also been pleasing to see a number of companies make specific efforts to improve in the area of IR overall; in our Survey this year we asked investors to highlight which companies had made a meaningful contribution to the IR effort in 2016.
Thank you all.
In conclusion we remain confident that this important initiative will lead to one of the most coveted recognitions for companies and executives in Qatar.
Please enjoy your evening.
