QSE Launches Investor Relations Excellence Program

Doha, August 28 (QNA) - Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE) is launching the Investor Relations (IR) Excellence Program for a third year in a row as an opportunity for publicly listed companies to excel as the program will once again recognize their achievements and proactive efforts to foster professional investor relations standards, QSE said Monday in a press release. The program, which is organized in collaboration with Iridium Investor Relations, reaffirms QSE's ongoing commitment to publicly listed companies to enhance their investor relations practices. "The IR Excellence Program reflects our sincere desire and best intentions to achieve international best practices," QSE Chief Executive Officer Rashid bin Ali Al Mansoori said. "We aim to see QSE's listed companies committed to improving the flow of information for a more transparent and better-informed market environment. The IR Excellence program recognition is one of the most significant programs in the region rewarding listed corporates for their investor relations efforts," he added. In turn, QSE Listing Department Director Abdul Aziz Al Emadi said the investor relations websites of Qatari listed companies saw a 20-percent year-on-year performance improvement. "We look forward to building on this success and seeing an even stronger engagement from companies, in order to further improve the IR standards for the benefit of all market participants." For the third year running, all Qatari companies will automatically be entered into the IR Excellence Program. The program methodology will remain unchanged and the listed companies will have until mid-November to review and implement upgrades to their investor relations efforts. A public voting system and a detailed website ranking of all companies will be conducted from mid-November to end-December 2017. All members of the investment community will be eligible to vote for the best investor relations efforts. Iridium, on behalf of QSE, will manage the distribution of emails and questionnaires to a database of over 2,000 regional and international investor and broker contacts who are active in the Qatari market. The firm will also rank the companies' websites. The IR Excellence Program has been benchmarked globally against best practices to ensure a fair, credible and transparent methodology. The methodology and all ranking criteria are made public in advance to the public. This enables companies to review categories and selection criteria, and gives them advance notice to adjust their Investor Relations efforts, especially with regards to their investor relations websites. (QNA)