Qatar- QSE and Iridium launch IR Excellence plan

DOHA: To encourage listed companies to adhere to the international best practices in disclosure, transparency and investor relations (IR), Qatar Stock exchange (QSE), in cooperation with Iridium, will launch the IR Excellence Program for the second year.

The QSE will launch a new online tool to help listed companies to understand the assessment mechanism used in IR Excellence Award in order to help them understand how to further improve their IR Excellence score. The IR Excellence Program will also feature a new 'most improved company” investor relations award for the first time this year, the exchange announced yesterday.

Under the rating and assessment system used in the IR Excellence Program, all Qatari listed companies are automatically entered into the assessment programme. A public voting system and a detailed website ranking of all companies will be conducted in the third quarter 2016. All members of the investment community will be eligible to vote for the best companies. 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 which are active in the Qatari market.

The online IR Tool enables companies to see how their website ranking last year was broken down into technology, content and service, and what they can do in order to improve their score. All companies received access to this tool, creating an equal opportunity for everyone to achieve a higher result. This will allow the listed companies to highlight areas for improvement and what they can do to increase their IR Excellence score when their website is ranked again later this year.

The programme was designed to recognise listed companies and individuals who display best practice in investor relations. The winners of last year were QNB ( best Qatari company overall for excellence in Investor Relations), QNB (Best large company) Doha Bank(Best mid cap company) Mazaya Real Estate (Best small cap company)

Razmi Mari of QNB was the best Chief Financial Officer and Andreas Goldau of Ooredoo was Best Investor Relations Officer. The websites of Ooredoo, Al Khaliji Commercial Bank and Vodafone Qatar have beend adjudged as Best investor Relations websites.

Rashid bin Ali Al Mansoori (pictured), CEO of Qatar Stock Exchange, has expressed satisfaction of the advanced IR level achieved by Qatari listed companies and said: 'Our IR Excellence Program is returning better and stronger this year, with a new category and a new software tool. These new features will help encourage Qatar";s listed companies to further improve their investor relations programmes, supporting our mandate to continually strengthen Qatar";s position among global emerging markets.”

Oliver Schutzmann, CEO of Iridium, said: 'This year";s innovations are all about assisting companies to improve their investor relations, and rewarding them for doing so. High quality investor relations are at the heart of market accessibility and support the ongoing development of successful capital markets, and Qatar Stock Exchange";s initiatives are leading the region in working towards this ambition.”

Abdul Aziz Al Emadi, Director of Listing Department in QSE, said: 'The new features of the program will encourage companies to improve on last year";s scores by improving the technology, content and service provided by their IR websites.”

The Peninsula