Public Listed Companies and Fund Managers - Academic ...

Norraidah Abu Hasan et al.
considered as important from company perspective. This is because the annual general meeting is a
statutory requirement and must be held within six months of each financial year end. The meeting is
an important forum that discusses wider issues of concern to the shareholders. Furthermore,
companies also emphasized the annual report as an important medium of communications. However,
investor relations is not merely one way communication or passive process that only focuses on
corporate reporting alone.
Although reporting historical company performance is a vital part of the program, yet arranging direct
contact with investors and organizing events which allow them to express their opinions and keep
investors properly informed about performance and strategy of company, is the most important aspect
of executing the investor relations programs (Bursa Malaysia, 2007).
The result shows that fund managers expect site visit as important for the medium of communication,
while companies considered it as of minor importance. Furthermore, fund managers rated newspaper
online investor relations section as minor important for means of communication, while companies not
provided this channel as means of communication with investors. A possible explanation could be that
companies mainly preferred to use annual reports and meetings as primary tools to communicate with
the shareholders; whereas, the fund managers look to other means of communication that can
provide timely information for investment decisions.
Overall, the study has investigated the perceptions of the fund managers and public listed companies
regarding the investor relations programs. The objective of the research is to contribute to our
understanding of fund managers’ expectation on companies’ investor relations programs. Results of
the study demonstrated that fund managers perceived public information as not relevant to
investment decisions. Perhaps, the fund managers regard the information about company future
prospects as more important to their investment decisions. Since this study only focused on fund
managers’ perceptions representing only one type of investors for companies, there are also other
various types of investment communities such as individuals and institutional investors and analysts
that could be included. Future studies on other groups of investors will determine whether they have
the same perceptions on investor relations programs.
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