Marketing agency EMR reports good news for investor relations staff

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 | Updated: Sat, 13 Dec 2008 12:07 pm | By Julian May

Marketing specialist agency EMR has reported another healthy year within its corporate investor relations and financial communications both in the UK and abroad.

EMR’s Investor Relations (IR) Salary Survey and Job Market Report 2008 reported 73% of investor relations officers (IRO) felt secure in their job, 16% indifferent and only 11% felt insecure. The survey also revealed that the people satisfied with their bonuses had doubled to 20% since 2007 but overall more were dissatisfied at 24%, up from 18%.

Commenting on the report Camilla Day-Wilson, senior consultant, says: “It is possible that within financial communications and corporate IR we have found a pocket of relative immunity to the current market conditions.”

However, she did question that, with 74% of survey respondents from listed companies and only 10% coming from banks or brokers, are there grounds to suggest we are being too optimistic?

“The economic climate has produced extraordinary demands on the IRO to communicate and deliver even more,” she says in the survey.

“With the bear market witnessed in 2008 twinned with perpetual issues relating to disclosure, corporate governance, CSR and best practice; the weighting of responsibilities and public visibility  of the IRO has drastically increased. Consideration of IR as a long-term career has also grown incrementally with highly skilled individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds seriously contemplating the transition,” she adds.