IR Impact

Junina Furigay explains that the tool is likely the first among S&P 500 companies, setting a new precedent for making information available to shareholders How much time do IR teams spend answering very similar questions from investors? Probably more than they’d like to publicly disclose. But for the team at US payments company Block, freeing up that time was the focus of developing a first-of-its-kind AI tool.

The rise of index investing has created a strange problem for investor relations. Some of the largest shareholders on a company’s register may be investors that IR cannot persuade to buy another share. You can improve disclosure, sharpen the equity story, hold a brilliant capital markets day and convince the market that the company is materially undervalued. An active fund manager can respond by increasing their position. An index tracker generally cannot.

Materials technology and recycling firm Umicore has named Maxime Lopes as its new director of investor relations. Announcing his move on LinkedIn, Lopes posted a picture of a mystery, shiny nugget of…something. ‘What’s this shiny thing?’ he asked his network on the site. ‘It’s one of several critical raw materials refined as part of Umicore’s closed-loop activities and something you might be hearing more about soon. Brownie points to anyone who guesses.

Non-financial metrics now account for around 25 percent of short-term incentive pay at a typical Russell 3000 company, with financial measures making up the remaining 75 percent, according to new research. A report titled What Companies Reward: The Changing Mix of Metrics in Executive Incentive Pay, written by The Conference Board alongside ESGAUGE, FW Cook and Ropes & Gray, also found that in the S&P 500, the split is closer to 70 percent financial and 30 percent non-financial.

In the 2026 proxy season, proposals produced more than 50 negotiated agreements and notable votes, demonstrating the value this long-standing system still holds. But federal regulators want to dismantle it. The SEC is planning to repeal, or significantly water down, Rule 14a-8, which governs shareholder proposals in corporate proxy statements. Investors and companies stand to lose, and the US economy will be worse off globally if the proposal process cannot withstand this unprecedented threat.

Increasingly, investors are using generative AI to conduct preliminary due diligence, compare companies, summarize earnings calls and understand unfamiliar industries. While large language models (LLMs) do not replace fundamental research, they are rapidly becoming the first stop for many investment questions. Reflecting this shift, 30 percent of US retail investors now use AI tools to help make investment decisions, up 75 percent from a year earlier.

Sean Glennan shares his approach to the IR work, just months after the firm added a new head of investor relations Mark Eidelman, who joined energy infrastructure firm Hut 8’s IR team from NextEra Energy in June 2026, isn’t the first person to hold the head of IR position at the company. But, as CFO Sean Glennan explains, there was something of a gap between Sue Ennis’ leaving in March 2026 and Eidelman’s appointment.

Power solutions firm Cummins has amped up its IR team with the appointment of James Hopkins, formerly of its engine business finance and strategy team, into the role of vice president – financial planning, capital management and investor relations. Hopkins has been with Cummins since 2009, when he joined the company’s finance development program after graduating from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

What does it take to turn a proxy statement from a regulatory requirement into a document that investors want to read? For Prologis, the answer has been to listen closely to shareholders, then use that feedback to reshape the document around the issues they care about. During the 2024–2025 proxy cycle, investors asked the company for a more streamlined compensation discussion and analysis (CD&A).

How are IR teams coping with a changeable investor engagement landscape? It starts with listening, agreed all three panelists at a recent IR Impact Briefing on the topic of winning investor confidence.