Investor Relations: International Context, Russian Practice

Abstract

The article discusses the evolution and the state of the art of IR (Investor Relations) in Western and Russian companies. IR is considered as a particular area of corporate communicational practice and a field of academic research. Author reviews the history and stages of IR as corporate activity, IR functions and models of company’s interaction with an investment community. The main objective of the article is to compare the features of a professional institutionalization and the current state of IR in Russia and in other countries.

The empirical part of the research is based on the information from the Internet sites of the first hundred of the largest (in terms of sales) Russian companies entering the RAEX-600 rating.

The main findings of the article are: (1) the Russian professional IR-community is in the start yet, though its institutional basis is already created: there are the professional association and the magazine, as well as a number of special courses in some educational programs of Moscow universities; (2) the amount of academic researches (journal papers and dissertations) from 2003 to 2015 is quite moderate; the dynamics of research interest is influenced by the financial crisis of 2008-2009; (3) the practice of providing information to investors on the sites of Russian companies is not unified; noticeable distinctions are revealed in structure and volume of IR-sites’ content; (4) as a whole, the substance of information intended to investors of the largest Russian companies on their websites is generally consistent to Western practice of  IR.