The question ‘Bulletin boards – friend or foe?’ generated lively discussion at the recent CISI Corporate Finance Forum meeting. It followed two helpful presentations: one by Nick Bealer, Chartered FCSI, of Cornhill Capital; the other by Tim Metcalfe, founder and MD of IFC Advisory. Nick described the problems that can be caused by contributors on bulletin boards, who often indulge in behaviour that would have a regulated practitioner banned by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).Tim then gave a summary of the PR approaches which companies need to adopt. The volume of posts is now such that companies cannot hope to respond to everything, making most PR strategies reactive, not proactive. The key point was to not engage with bulletin board posters and to accept that sometimes one just has to ignore a post(Bulletin boards will remove abusive posts, if asked). Nick and Tim also pointed out that bulletin boards can have a benefit by identifying investor concerns and helping frame the investor relations dialogue. Improving information flow between market participants helps removes anomalies and increase market efficiency (assuming the information is fair and accurate); but do these benefits outweigh the negatives?
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