1. Develop the “best” IR program for your company in 2011.  The best IR program for your company will achieve consistent fair value for all of its publicly traded securities. Someone else’s plan won’t make that happen, no matter how well it works for them. Only you, working with your co-workers, outside counsel and exploring new ideas, can create your “best” plan that is tailored for your company and its specific situation.
2. Build trust with those around you.  IR can be a pretty lonely and isolated post, neither a fully integrated financial position, nor a fully integrated communications position.  You need close, trusting relationships with people in both areas to be successful. Now is the best time to strengthen those ties. 
3. Collect and share meaningful anecdotes.  Accomplishments described strictly in quantitative terms are great. But even better are stories that suggest how the company’s superior culture or talented, creative employees made it happen. Stories like these tell investors that your good performance is sustainable.
4. Forge relationships with employees far from headquarters. It’s easy to convince yourself you’re well informed when you’re getting many of the reports and figures that the C-suite sees. But that doesn’t really mean you know what’s coming next, good and bad. Employees far from HQ love it when someone near the top shows a sincere and continuing interest in what they do.
5.  Balance your brain. Whether you are an analytical left-brainer or a free-thinking right-brainer, spend more time observing co-workers who are your opposites. Offer to team up with them on a project and divvy up the tasks in a way that emphasizes each person’s strengths.
6. Start measuring something new. Your organization is likely obsessed with measuring performance against sets of standard, agreed-upon metrics. But you probably have ideas about other things that could be tracked, but aren’t. Assign yourself to start tracking one or two, with no preconceived idea of what the results will be, or how you will use the data.
7. Ask a few contacts, “How can we improve?” The start of a new year is the perfect time to reassess, and those you work with most regularly in the investment community will appreciate a no-agenda call just to show you’re interested in how well you’re serving them. Keep it light and informal – no survey questions – and be prepared to respond if they ask the same thing of you.
8. Learn something new. Maybe there’s a new tool in the corporate accounting system that would make it easier for you to do peer analysis. Or international investors who might appreciate receiving your e-mails in their own language. Perhaps your roadshows would be more effective if you knew how to use targeting software. Set a goal to master one new skill this year. 
9. Hold yourself to Warren’s standard. Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t have an IR department. It has Warren Buffett. Berkshire doesn’t have a Disclosure Policy. Warren has this: “As managers, Charlie and I want to give to our owners the financial information and commentary we would wish to receive if our positions were reversed.”
10. Take care of yourself.  For all calendar-year companies, January through April is a bleak march through financial reporting, annual reports and shareholder meetings that typically overwhelms the best-intentioned New Year’s resolutions. Make 2011 different, with regular sleep and exercise habits that won’t let you become a midwinter zombie.
11. Don’t shy away from retaining outside help, including CTC.  Expert advisers with extensive experience and additional resources can make your efforts more effective and efficient, paying off for your company and its shareholders.   

 That’s an encouraging sign, of course. Even more encouraging is parallel research that shows CEOs similarly attuned to the benefits of being transparent.

The distinction between disclosure and transparency is a matter of which side of the disclosure window you’re on.  Disclosure is what companies choose to put on display for investors to see. Transparency is not just whether investors can see what’s there, but also what they think about it.

Displaying a lot of information, of course, doesn’t make you transparent. Transparency – like beauty – is in the eye of the beholder, so asserting your own transparency is a bit unseemly. You are transparent only when investors say you are.

Transparency, however, is too limiting a standard in today’s content-heavy market, where what you disclose is only a small fraction of what shapes investor perceptions. It simply means that it’s relatively easy for investors to get the information that management wants them to have. But more and more, investors are looking for companies with the courage to invite them in the door for a closer look.

 These accountable companies have a culture difference that investors recognize immediately. Transparent companies are politely responsive to investors and aim to disclose about as much as their peers do. Accountable companies exude confidence, set measurable operating and financial performance goals, and invite tough questions from all quarters.

Accountable companies see XBRL not as a burdensome requirement, but as a competitive advantage, knowing it will help shine a light on their financial strengths and expose their competitors’ weaknesses. They regard strong internal control assessments, and an absence of SEC comments, as evidence that the company’s results are presented fairly. And they go out of their way to enumerate their business risks and what they’re doing to mitigate them, instead of dismissing them in boilerplate Safe Harbor statements.

Accountable companies keep the door open even when their performance slips. Their shareholders tend to be more patient and forgiving. And best of all, their IROs are a lot happier.

The question in both health care and in investing is, “What course of action best balances the interests of each individual, and the majority? And, who gets to decide that?
Naturally, each group has a point of view:

• Patients (investors) think they should decide. After all, they can take their dollars (or benefits) and spend them where they want. Or keep them and do nothing at all.
• Doctors (CEOs) think they should decide. They make decisions on each case based on the facts at hand, as well as the big picture, which is what their expertise and experience tell them is the right course of action, given all the risks and benefits.
• Insurers (Directors) think they should decide. They set the boundaries on what the doctors and CEOs can do, balanced against what investors/patients need and can afford. They decide, in general terms, whether to make the money available.
• Governments think they should decide. They set and enforce the rules of the game, which are complex and change constantly. But market participants ignore them only at their peril.

So, who’s right?

If you have the vantage point of an IRO, you can’t help but conclude that the answer is none of them. And, that each must acknowledge the rights and privileges of the other three for the system to work effectively.

What should IROs do when these corporate interests clash? IROs should speak up:

• When CEOs ignore or avoid input from investors and directors on the grounds that they don’t know all the facts, and because lawyers and lobbyists exist to deal with the government.
• When Boards set policies or compensate CEOs in ways that investors are likely to disapprove, and may cause them to invest elsewhere.
• When governments make rules, or enforce existing ones, in ways that are not in the long-term best interest of the investing public.
• And when investors aren’t being told, don’t understand, or simply disagree with what the CEO or Board is doing, and why it’s in their interest.

By keeping those principles in mind, we might all be a little wealthier, and maybe even a little healthier, in the New Year.

To my surprise, Bere′ said he was very concerned that employees with inside information about the offers might trade the stock, or tip off others who might deal on it, not knowing that both are illegal.

Out of that conversation evolved a communications program that first told employees securities laws pertain to all of them. We reviewed in simple terms, using a very broad brush, how and why each employee must follow these laws.  Our premise for the communications program was simple: “Provide a level playing field on material information coming from the Company in order to provide all investors a fair opportunity to realize a gain in their investment in the stock.” 

Our concern then was the attention the company was getting from the media and investors.  Phone calls were being placed into secretaries, middle managers and even the mail room to see who was in meetings or out of the office. The callers were trying to eke out the slightest trading edge through information some unsuspecting employee might provide.

Today, the threat of material information leaking out to investors through e-mails, message boards and social networking is far beyond anything we could have comprehended back then. For this reason, we make sure our clients have strong disclosure policies, and explain to their employees how securities laws can affect them directly.

 The case challenges one of the Act’s central features—the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s (PCAOB) legal right to be the watchdog over public-company auditors. 

The Nevada accounting firm of Beckstead and Watts, LLP, and a small-government advocacy group, the Free Enterprise Fund, will argue that because PCAOB exercises significant regulatory authority, it should be directly controlled by the President. The Act gave the SEC, whose commissioners are appointed by the President, the power to appoint PCAOB members. 

PCAOB replaced a system of self-regulation by the accounting profession with a so-called private organization.  But one has to question the private classification of a Board that dictates accounting standards for public companies, has the power to take enforcement actions against them, and imposes fines and collects fees to cover its budget, which includes salaries ranging from $672,676 for its chairman to $546,891 for its members. 

Those arguing that the PCAOB should stay as-is say that a 1935 court ruling held  independent agencies are constitutional even if the president has only limited power to fire their leaders.  The SEC power to appoint the PCAOB’s board members and remove members for “cause” constitutes a limited power of the president, they say, because the president appoints SEC commissioners.  But that’s a stretch in our mind.   The president can remove an SEC member, but only for “cause,” and has no direct power whatsoever over PCAOB. 

No matter how it rules (a federal appeals court in Washington already ruled 2-1 that the PCAOB was constitutional), a Supreme Court decision is a good thing for public companies and investors alike. It might prompt changes in some of the troubling parts of the Act that have been controversial since its passage in 2002, including provisions that exempt smaller companies from some requirements, even though they are more apt to bend the rules.