Communication success factors in investor relations

In times of the financial crisis, the duty for investor relations to deal with the financial community on a regular basis keeps indispensable or gets even more important. Personal contact with management and investor relations professionals remains vital to investors and analysts. Hence, it is essential to know how to monitor and improve the contacts and relationships with this target group of investor relations. In addition, companies must make sure they serve the needs of the audience. Robert Labas' diploma thesis - published as volume 14 of the 'DIRK-Forschungsreihe' - gives an overview on all investor relations instruments related to personal communication such as one-on-one meetings, road shows, or conferences on quarterly results. Based on secondary research the information needs and financial reporting are evaluated. The author used those results in order to assess the actual financial communication of companies and to build a further framework for measuring the success and effectiveness of personal investor relations instruments, especially presentations. With the issues analyzed in this thesis, a benchmark was set up by evaluating the annual result analyst conferences of the DAX-30 companies.