Corporate fixed-income investors often find themselves overshadowed by their stock-trading counterparts — especially during a crisis.
The global outbreak of Covid-19 last year had equity investors pressing investor-relation teams for finance and strategy updates as they tried to determine how their shares might perform during the pandemic. But they weren’t the only investors worried by the economic shut down.
As corporate bond defaults surged in hard-hit sectors like oil and gas, retail, and restaurants, fixed-income investors were also looking to IR teams to explain how their companies would weather the crisis and pay off loans.
“Equity investors want to know how much the company is going to grow by,” explained Craig Marks, senior director of investor relations at AstraZeneca. “Debt investors want to know if you’re going to pay them back.”
For the second year, fixed-income investors ranked their favorite debt issuers in Institutional Investor’s 2020 ranking of Global Fixed-Income Investor Relations...
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To determine the members of Institutional Investor’s 2020 Global Fixed-Income Investor Relations rankings, we surveyed bond and credit specialists at leading asset management firms around the world, including those who cast votes in this year’s Global Fixed-Income Research Team survey.
We asked these individuals to rate companies in their coverage universes across five fixed-income investor relations attributes for their investment-grade or high-yield offerings. The attributes were: transparency of balance sheet; proactive communication of shifts in strategy; clear calculations of debt covenants and other provisions; responsiveness to questions on ratings; proactive engagement with bondholders. Firms were rated on a scale from 1-5, and all votes were weighted by rating. These results were then aggregated to create the Best Investor Relations ranking.
Voters were also asked to rate companies on their prudent, value-creating use of debt. These responses were used to create separate investment-grade and high-yield rankings on the best use of debt.
Investment-grade results are presented overall, and by companies headquartered in USA/Canada, Europe, Latin America or Asia. High-yield results are presented overall and by companies headquartered in the USA/Canada.
We keep confidential the identities of the survey respondents and their firms to ensure their continuing cooperation. Voters must meet eligibility requirements, and winners must achieve a minimum vote count. All ballots are subject to review by our Research Operations Group. Survey results reflect the opinions from more than 1,110 investment professionals at over 600 financial services firms.