"I worked in equity research & would never move to investor relations"
As an equity researcher looking for a job in the current market, it has not escaped my attention that many of the researchers (and salespeople) leaving Credit Suisse are turning up in investor relations roles.
This is not something I would recommend.
Moving from equity research to investor relations is having a moment. Under the European MiFID II regulations, funds have to pay for equity research from banks. They do not, however, have to pay for documents produced by in-house IR teams.
Companies, therefore, have been bulking up their IR teams and equity researchers have been moving across. Not just at a senior level; juniors have been going to.
Many are only too willing to do so. Equity research jobs in banks are not what they used to be. The quality of sell-side research has gone downhill. We used to write proper investigative stuff, but now it's all one-pagers of information regurgitated from elsewhere. No one corroborates what companies say with other industry sources. No one writes anything original.
Although equity research is in decline, investor relations is still worse. If you work in investor relations, you need to believe. You need to listen to the company management and tell the story, even if it's a bad one.
For this reason, investor relations professionals are either credulous types or people who have utterly sold out. Equity researchers are better than that.
Add in the fact that investor relations pays worse than equity research, and you have a recipe for dissatisfaction. Move across at your peril.
Clement Oliver is a pseudonym
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