ARFI - Financial Communications and Investor Relations Association

“IR practical training session: the secrets of winners 2011.”

This year the contest’s main topic will be “IR in the age of permanent crises.”

“Various crises take place more and more often all over the world. This leads to a growing demand for services provided by qualified specialists who are capable of offering unconventional investor relations services to their clients. But due to the fact that this profession hasn’t become mass yet while the services are much in demand, the market is facing sharp shortage of qualified personnel. Issuers are competing with each other for high-caliber IR specialists while the latter migrate from one company to another thus enriching themselves with experience from various industries, at times very little related with one another. This is why their IR solutions are more and more interesting year after year,” said Stanislav Martyushev, director general of Interfax Business Service.

According to him, the collection of IR cases gathered over the 3 years of the contest’s existence, numbers 48 various IR solutions turned out in companies from many sectors of the economy. Traditionally, the cases which take prize-winning places and noted by the jury for unconventional approach, are published in the Securities Market magazine and also used as training material by the Institute for financial markets development.

“We are happy to support this contest every time because we think that even during the most difficult times for the market (and maybe especially during these times) the people working in the investor relations industry and the projects implemented by them, should find public support and acknowledgement,” said Alexander Kolankov, president of RCB media group. “We make one more step to support the industry by opening the first 120 corporate virtual rooms in the investor.ru network for the participants of the 14^th annual report contest of which the Securities Market magazine is a permanent organizer.”

Olga Rink, ARFI’s executive director and NSD’s Public Affairs director, added: “Investor relations are a field in which both theory and practice are important. We consider knowledge accumulation and sharing of it with the IR community to be important. Business cases of the first contests were published in the first textbook on IR entitled “Organization of investor relations. Russian and foreign practice” published by us in 2010-2011.”

“People often ask me what could the read on practical aspects of IR besides the magazine,” said Dmitry Bobrov, IR magazine Russia & CIS deputy editor-in-chief. “My answer is: have a look at the collection of cases presented for the contest. The most pleasant is that 48 cases gathered over 3 years, show solutions for virtually any situation in any industry, as well as for companies of various sizes. I am sure that this year examples that will be added to the collection, won’t be any less interesting and useful.”

It’s not a secret that there are a lot of companies in the market whose securities are undervalued by investors. It isn’t rare that ineffective communications of issuers with the market are the reason for this. As a consequence, the investors aren’t informed enough about companies’ potential, current situation and development plans, which affects investment preferences,” asserted Oksana Derisheva, RST listing department director. “One of the instruments to increase corporate transparency and improve investment climate is a competent IR policy, which takes into account world’s best practice. This is precisely what the contest, conducted by Interfax Business Service, is aimed at. Its value lies is in the possibility for the IR specialists to share their unique experience, be assessed by a competent jury and have one’s professionalism acknowledged.”

According to the conditions of the 4^th international IR case contest, a case presented to the contest should reflect real events and original experience of problem solution by means of IR in Russian and foreign companies. Cases from the US and European corporate experience are acceptable. A case may describe not only positive but also negative situations but must absolutely contain situation analysis and describe in detail the steps taken for its resolution as well as the influence of undertaken measures on the company stock quotes, investors’ attitude, and the change of the company’s image in the eyes of the investment community.

Cases are accepted until November 20, 2011.

The jury will then determine 3 winners by December 20. Practicing investor relations professionals, winners of 2 competent IR rankings: Thomson Reuters Extel Survey and previous IR case contests held in 2008-2010, are traditionally invited to be part of the jury. Its other members are representatives of the united MICEX and RTS exchange, Financial Communications and Investor Relations Association, British Investor Relations Society, RCB, and the Institute for Financial Markets Development.

Assessment of presented pieces will be based on 4 criteria: novelty, effectiveness, methodological value, and subjective expert assessment.

The award ceremony and the presentation of IR cases will take place in December at a round table, “IR practical training session: the secrets of winners 2011.”

Cases should be sent by email at case@interfax.ru.

Contest results from the previous 3 years:

2010 IR case collection

2009 IR case collection

2008 IR case collection

Interfax Business Service is a subsidiary of Interfax Information Services Group and specializes in providing consulting services to companies in the area of investor relations in Russia and the CIS.

Interfax is uniquely positioned to provide IR services: it has access to resources of the leading Russian information agency, tight connections to Russian institutional and individual investors. The company has experience in working with issuers and investors across the whole spectrum of investor relations tasks (investor and analyst base expansion, analyst coverage improvement, preparation of documents for investor communications, investment positioning, ratings advisory, independent financial analytics, attracting of private share financing to small and medium enterprises).

The company has served more than 80 clients from more than 10 industries in Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan.

Interfax Business Service specialists partake in consulting the Russian Ministry of Finance on foreign debt and Russian sovereign credit rating maintenance issues. The company has wide experience in dealing with all the biggest international ratings agencies: Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch Ratings.

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