GILES RAFFERTY, Corporate Communications and Media
US founding father, Benjamin Franklin, said “nothing is certain except death and taxes”. Had he been in a more expansive mood he may have included ‘change’ as another certainty.
2022 has been a year of change. We welcomed Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee and mourned her passing. We celebrated the lifting of COVID restrictions but braced for a new wave of infections. We witnessed peace and prosperity in the Ukraine become death and destruction at the hands of Russia.
Closer to home, the persistent La Nina weather pattern in the Gulf of Mexico is seen as driving exceptional and unseasonable rainfall and flooding. We watched the man of many portfolios, Scott Morrison, go and Anthony Albanese arrive. And, all the while, interest rates and inflation were on the rise as economies around the world contracted, giving rise to a cost-of-living crisis and a great deal of economic uncertainty.
History being made
Against this background, the extraordinary efforts at the FIFA World Cup of the Australian national soccer team, the Socceroo’s, lifted the spirits of the nation by progressing to the round of 16 stage for only the second time in history and the first on the back of two pool game wins.
ESG remains in the spotlight
The rising importance of ESG to companies and shareholders places two ESG articles in the top five most clicked pieces in the FIRST Advisers blog series for 2022. Our Building your ESG credibility article, penned by Rowan Clarke in our IR team, is the most clicked on content. The article is an introduction to ESG reporting that includes key insights and recommendations from leading ESG ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s.
Rowan’s article on HESTA’s, one of Australia’s largest investors and industry superannuation funds, expectation for ESG reporting during the AGM season holds the number four spot in our most clicked on content. HESTA was calling for verifiable action by corporate Australia on issues such as climate strategies, the gender pay-gap and social inequality.
Guidance and the changing media landscape
Sandwiched between the two ESG articles and sitting in the number two spot for most clicked on pieces of newsletter content, was an analysis of FY23 guidance by Saloni Suri who leads our Shareholder Analytics team. FIRST Advisers has been tracking trends in financial guidance on an annual basis since August 2022. Our July 2022 update, however, was our first since February 2021 and showed the continuing relevance that is attached to corporate guidance by our audience.
In third spot, in our most clicked newsletter content countdown, was an article on the changing media landscape. This article combines quantitative research from the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford with qualitative insights from Giles Rafferty in our media team to identify some key components of effective media engagement strategies.
Managing the ‘Two-strike rule’
We emerge from AGM season to see the Is the two-strike rule back in vogue? article rounds out our top 5 most clicked on pieces of Newsletter content in 2022. Once again, it was Rowan in the IR team who was the author and he explores the trends around the use of voting against a company’s remuneration report to challenge directors over compliance and environmental issues, questionable transactions, and public scrutiny on governance issues.
As an integrated IR agency, FIRST Advisers combines expert advice, across multiple disciplines, with a broad set of investor engagement tools, including our proprietary IR technology platform AccessIR, to act as trusted advisor to our clients. As we look forward to 2023, we thank our clients for their trust and are excited to help them navigate the changes to come and to continue to share our insights with you.