Five listed companies have won the second investor relations (IR) award, instituted by the Qatar Stock Exchange (QSE), which is now toying with the idea of a mandatory IR disclosure.
Ooredoo won the award for best Qatari company overall and also for best investor relations website.
QNB won under the category of large cap company and its chief financial officer Ramzi Mari and investor relation manager Mohamed al-Namla also won the awards.
The awards for the best mid and small cap companies were bagged by Commercial Bank and Salam International respectively. The other entities that won for best investor relations website also included Al Khaliji and Mannai Corporation.
The awards were presented by the QSE chief executive Rashid bin Ali al-Mansoori, in the presence of its listing director Abdul Aziz al-Emadi.
Developed and executed by Iridium, the IR Programme surveyed the expert opinion of the domestic and international investment community. It also featured a detailed ranking of corporate investor relations websites.
“The IR Excellence Programme reflects the QSE’s desire to achieve best international practice among our listed companies for a transparent investment environment. We want to see our listed companies committed to improving the flow of information in the market, because they are the corporate ambassadors for Qatar,” al-Mansoori said.
Oliver Schutzmann, chief executive of Iridium, said the QSE’s IR Excellence Programme is a testament to the exchange’s commitment towards achieving quality investor relations to improve market accessibility and support the development of successful capital markets. “We witnessed a good number of companies that upgraded their IR as a direct result of the excellence programme. We look forward to seeing a stronger engagement from the remaining companies, in order to further improve the IR standards across all Qatar listed companies,” al-Emadi said.
“The management and board of listed companies require an effective financial communications strategy for a challenging environment where our competitor markets are making advances,” he said.
Although some regional markets have recently introduced a mandatory IR requirements system in their regulations; Qatar has not yet gone down that route, but “we are in consultation with market participants to evaluate whether some form of mandatory IR disclosure would be beneficial for the market overall”, he added.