Introduction
What does it take for a North American company to stand out with European investors?
Today’s guest, Damian Perry, knows the answer better than almost anyone. As co-founder of Phoenix IR, Damian has spent more than three decades guiding companies—from household names to ambitious newcomers—through the realities of building investor relationships across Europe.
They’re not looking for a familiar logo or a quick pitch. They want a story that makes sense on the world stage. A strategy that holds up when compared to competitors in Germany, Japan, or anywhere else. And they expect you to know your risks, your place in the market, and your long-term vision.
Damian pulls back the curtain on where the real opportunities lie, what mistakes trip up even the most seasoned teams, and how a focused, hands-on approach can make all the difference when you’re aiming to build trust and credibility across borders.
Let’s get into it.
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Introduction to Phoenix IR
[00:00:00] Mark: Damian, I thought it'd be good to start with an introduction. Can you briefly share what Phoenix IR does and what the benefits are of working with an independent firm like yours, versus going through traditional channels like a broker?
[00:00:13] Damian Perry: Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks. It's great to have the opportunity to be here today. Thanks for inviting me.
[00:00:19] Damian Perry: We were created back in 2005, so we've got 20 years of history in this company. The people that created Phoenix IR were a group of professionals who were working for another firm together. We were actually part of Thomson Financial back then. But we'd been bought by them in the late 1990s. And even prior to that, so in the early 1990s, some of us had worked together at another company that was called James Kuhnen Company. We've got a long history of working in this sector and in the IR space in Europe.
Core Services and Clientele
[00:00:51] Damian Perry: The key point is that throughout all of this time, throughout all of these years, our core business has always been advising North American [00:01:00] companies on their corporate access strategies in Europe. Today, we work for companies that are across all market caps. Typically S&P 100 or S&P 500 type companies. Our largest clients are trillion dollar companies. You can probably guess who one or two of those are. Typically, clients are in the 20 to hundreds of billions type market cap space, and we also work across all market sectors. We're fairly agnostic when it comes to the companies that we work for.
[00:01:31] Damian Perry: We work for high tech, we work for biotech, we work for industrial, we work for low tech, we will really work for anybody who we think is appropriate for our services. We also work for a couple of European companies, advising on their corporate access but principally outside of their domestic market. So, we might work for a French company outside of France, or a Belgian company outside of Belgium. But that's really quite a small part of our overall [00:02:00] business.
Advantages of Independent Firms
[00:02:00] Damian Perry: What is it that we do and why might somebody want to use us? In many ways, we are similar to the equity capital markets team that you might work with at your preferred investment bank or brokerage. The real difference is that our client is the company. The company that hires us to advise them on their corporate access strategy. Whereas your investment bank or broker, their client is the buy-side institution or the buy-side institutions that they are bringing the companies to.
[00:02:31] Damian Perry: So, fundamentally, we have a different approach to how we look at corporate access. We are working for the company to meet them with the right investors. The bank or the broker is working for the investor and is providing them with ideas. We'll work with companies to build target lists. We'll work with companies to build strategies. We can include or exclude institutions from [00:03:00] targeting lists that we produce. Because we don't have financial links to the buy side, we don't have favors to give. So, I'm not ringing up somebody and saying, "Hey, do you want to meet this company because I can put you on the IPO list for the next IPO that we're doing." Or, I don't have a need for these people to buy my research if they want to get a meeting. We don't have any kind of a conflict or any kind of an issue when it comes to building relationships with the buy side because we can be completely objective in who we allocate meetings to. We can do that without fear or favor. When we allocate meetings, we can do it really on the basis of what is the best meeting for our client.
[00:03:41] Damian Perry: MiFID II obviously is a big deal in Europe. It's nearly 10 years now that the MiFID II regulations have been in place. They have a big impact on the ability of the sell side to offer meetings to the whole of the market. In really simple terms, [00:04:00] if I'm an investment bank or broker and I don't have a formal commercial relationship with the buy-side institution, I can't offer them meetings. That's, in a simple form, what MiFID II does. We are not impacted by MiFID II because we're not a financial institution. We're not regulated under MiFID II, so we don't have that issue. We can approach any institution in Europe on behalf of any company and do that introduction without having to worry about whether we have a client relationship with an institution or whatever.
[00:04:36] Damian Perry: It's true that when you use us, you have to pay for us, as opposed to doing work with an investment bank where you're getting it "for free." And that can be a problem for many IROs. They're used to getting corporate access from the investment banks for free. I'll often talk to an IRO and say you're spending tens of thousands on a global targeting study. You are spending maybe 20, 30,000 on PR and media [00:05:00] training for your executives so that they say the right things. Maybe you've spent $50,000 on a perception study to identify what the issues are and what you should be talking about. But then finally, when you get to the point where you actually want to meet with investors, you hand over your entire program to a bank or a broker who's conflicted, who you don't know what their relationship is with various buy-side parties. And unless you are a very large, very powerful company, you have very little in your power to manage those relationships and force your bank or broker to give you meetings with certain people.
[00:05:39] Damian Perry: When you use us, because you are paying us, we will effectively get you the meetings that you want. But also, if you tell us I absolutely do not want to meet this particular individual, we might advise you otherwise, but if you tell us you definitely don't, we definitely won't. Similarly, if there is an institution that you absolutely must meet, [00:06:00] we will do everything in our power to find that institution, to find the right contact, and speak with that individual.
[00:06:06] Damian Perry: We're not constrained by the fact that they don't trade with us or they're not our client. That's really why you want to use an independent. Basically, it's our independence and it's the fact that we are working for you, the company.
[00:06:18] Mark: I think that alignment is also so important, as you said. They're the ones paying, you obviously want to continue a relationship with those companies, and so you are incentivized to set up the highest quality meetings that you possibly can.
[00:06:30] Mark: At Irwin, we know many companies who have used Phoenix IR services for marketing in Europe and in some of those regions that IROs just don't know as well.
[00:06:38] Mark: To that point, you work with a lot of North American companies who are looking to expand their investor base and looking to come to Europe. What kind of companies are best positioned to successfully market themselves in Europe? And what factors might make that more challenging? You mentioned that you work with all market caps in all sectors, but are there certain companies that you would say maybe you're not ready or, maybe it's not a good [00:07:00] fit?
Challenges and Strategies for North American Companies in Europe
[00:07:00] Damian Perry: The key thing is, just like domestically in the US, or in Canada, you need to have a good investment case. That's the starting point. We kind of joke internally sometimes that maybe we have one or two clients that call us because they think Europe's going to be an easy nut to crack. They're maybe not getting the traction that they want in the US, they think, oh, let's go and talk to a few European investors. We can disabuse them of those ideas fairly quickly. If anything, European investors are better educated, more knowledgeable, maybe have an even better understanding of your sector than some of your US firm managers and analysts that follow you.
[00:07:37] Damian Perry: Many European investors are global investors. They're looking at you as a company, versus a German competitor or a Japanese peer. They have to really fully understand your story in a global context, in an international context. And that means that they're looking at not just you, but other companies all [00:08:00] over the world. It's important that you have that investment case. It's critical that you have that investment case to begin with. Otherwise, if you are turning up with a story that's not convincing, a story that's complicated, it's difficult for you to get traction with European investors.
[00:08:19] Damian Perry: Clearly, having a global brand is useful. If you're a company that trade internationally, you're more likely to be known. Maybe you're a company that has a local presence. So, you maybe have bought a European business, or historically you've had a European business. You might have visibility in a particular market and a European ownership base that needs to be spoken to.
[00:08:46] Damian Perry: The companies that are probably the most difficult for us to work with are companies that are small and mid cap. In Europe, small cap North America is probably [00:09:00] less than five to eight billion. If you are smaller than five billion, you are tiny. And the reason for that is that many European investors are looking across the globe at companies. They're not just looking at the US market, they're looking at Asia, Europe, and so the potential audience, the potential target list is huge.
[00:09:20] Damian Perry: Smaller companies are difficult. The number of investors that really invest in companies that are under 10 billion market cap is very small. You could count them on two hands almost. The other thing is that if your business is purely domestic. If it's a purely North American business and no one has ever heard of you, it's just more difficult to understand. They've never heard of you, they don't know who you are, it just becomes more complicated. To go back to the main point, the investment case is the starting point no matter what the situation is. And then beyond that, it's important to have some kind of [00:10:00] international recognition.
[00:10:01] Mark: Basically, if you're under five to eight billion, if you are domestic in terms of your customer base, if you're not really doing anything from a business perspective in Europe, it's going to be an uphill battle.
[00:10:15] Mark: When talking about the companies that you do market and looking at where you've seen success, I think it's very difficult, that's why Phoenix IR exists, for North American IROs who are looking at Europe and saying, "Where should we go?" There's so many cities, there's so many different places that you could go to. I'm curious, which European cities tend to be the most productive for your North American clients? And are there any regions or locations that you would say are maybe not the best in terms of ROI and quality of meetings?
[00:10:47] Damian Perry: That's a good question, and a lot of people ask that. London is by far the biggest single market for any company that wants to market their stock outside of New York and Boston, or maybe Toronto.
[00:10:59] Damian Perry: If you [00:11:00] are looking to do any kind of an international program, London is your starting point. It's by far the largest center in terms of pure assets under management. What's more important is in terms of active assets under management. It is even more important. Proportionately, it's even more important.
[00:11:14] Damian Perry: Actual numbers are hard to quantify just because of the way that assets are classified, but the UK and Ireland is probably about half of all active assets that are managed in North American equities in Europe. It's absolutely critical if you do anything in Europe at all, London is the place to start.
[00:11:36] Damian Perry: There are other advantages about being in London. It's English-speaking, and in some ways, it's very similar to what you might be used to meeting with investors in terms of the cultural fit from New York or Boston or Toronto. These are large pools of institutional money managed by small teams of fund managers and analysts. It's very similar to if you would go to [00:12:00] see a BlackRock in New Jersey or a Fidelity in Boston. It's a very similar look and feel. So, London's key.
[00:12:06] Damian Perry: After the UK, Switzerland and Germany come next, that's about a quarter of all of the remaining assets. The German market is similar to the UK. Again, large pools of institutional money managed by small groups of people. The big difference between Germany and the UK is that Germany is highly concentrated. There are effectively four or five institutions that dominate the market in Germany. You're talking about DWS, DECA, Allianz, Union Investment, and essentially, those five institutions probably about 80% of all of the assets under management in Germany in terms of active assets under management.
[00:12:42] Damian Perry: If you're going to go to Frankfurt, are you meeting three out of those five? Or are you meeting two out of those five? Because if you're not, you probably want to question whether you're going there at all. It's highly concentrated and very focused.
[00:12:55] Damian Perry: Now, the Swiss market is a little bit different. [00:13:00] It's split between the more traditional large asset managers and insurance companies. Particularly in Zurich, you've got the big insurance companies, the big asset managers, but you also have the biggest single concentration of private client wealth in the entire world.
[00:13:16] Damian Perry: This money is difficult to access because of the very nature of the private banking setup. But it is important that you understand that there are massive pools of money out there that can potentially be owners of your stock. It's just a very different approach. When you are approaching the insurance companies and the asset managers, it's similar to an institutional approach that you would take when you're meeting companies in London or Frankfurt. When you're looking to the private banks, you're looking more at the relationship managers. You're looking more at speaking to multiple people at a private bank or some of the analysts who are putting together buy lists or recommendation lists. It depends institution by [00:14:00] institution.
[00:14:00] Damian Perry: You mustn't forget that these huge pools of money exist. One of the issues is that this stuff doesn't really appear anywhere in the numbers. So, it's difficult to know whether you are being successful or not. We have worked with a number of our clients that we have been assured that very significant ownership is being held. Now, whether that shows up as a Bank of America account in New York or a Brown Brothers account, we don't really know. But there is potentially very significant ownership there.
[00:14:33] Damian Perry: After Switzerland, you've got Paris, you've got the Dutch market. After that, it's largely distributed through the rest of Europe.
[00:14:41] Damian Perry: To come back to your point about whether there might be places that you would ignore, I'm not sure that there's necessarily anywhere that we would say, "Oh, don't bother going there." There's always going to be special situations. Pretty much any large city in Europe has at least one asset manager of significance in it.
[00:14:58] Damian Perry: We've had clients in the past that have [00:15:00] had their single largest shareholder in Copenhagen. Or, a very significant top 10 shareholder based out of Dublin. We are working for a company now where one of the top European shareholders is based in Milan. Each one of these cities needs to be looked at basically as an ad hoc situation.
[00:15:19] Damian Perry: People have traditionally not really traveled much in Europe. We've been doing this stuff throughout Europe for 30 years, and it's not often that people travel. If I'm a fund manager based in Brussels and I've got a travel budget, I want to use it to travel to a conference in New York, or go to the West Coast for a tech conference. But as travel becomes easier, costs are coming down everywhere, we are seeing more and more people traveling now. We had a situation recently where we had a Copenhagen-based investor that came down to London to meet with a client. We've had Brussels-based investors going to Paris for meetings. To come back to the main point, London is the focus. Then, there are a whole range of reasons about where you would target the rest of the [00:16:00] money and how you would use the rest of your time.
[00:16:03] Mark: Damien, it sounds like it comes down to really, at the end of the day, what are you trying to achieve. I think we know with many of these IROs and management teams who are traveling, they're probably doing maybe one, maybe two road shows a year in Europe. It probably comes down to where are you going to get the best return. And to your point, the trip to Milan would be nice, but it's probably not the best place to use your time if you have three days a year that you're going to use in Europe. I really appreciate you walking through that list and prioritizing it for listeners.
Impact of MiFID II and Common Mistakes
[00:16:30] Mark: You mentioned earlier MiFID II, we talked a little bit about that and how MiFID II does continue to shape the landscape.
[00:16:35] Mark: When we started Irwin, MiFID II was a very hot topic back in 2017, 2018. Less so now in North America, it's not much of a conversation these days. But I'm curious, how has it impacted and how does it continue to impact how companies connect with European investors? What should IROs be thinking about as a result of that? You alluded to some of it in your introduction, but would love to dive a little bit [00:17:00] deeper.
[00:17:01] Damian Perry: When MiFID II was first being talked about 10 years ago now, we saw it as a real opportunity for people like us. We have taken advantage of it as much as we can and we continue to benefit from it because of the fact that it is an issue for the sell side in Europe.
[00:17:19] Damian Perry: Banks sell corporate access to the buy side. They're getting paid for access, and the regulators have essentially said you need to structure that access, those payments, you need to make the payments transparent.
[00:17:33] Damian Perry: Part of it is because governments have pushed people out of state pension schemes and into the buy side, essentially pushing individuals into private pension schemes. They're saying to the buy side, you need to better break out what investors are actually paying for in their fees and their expenses in their investment products that they're buying.
[00:17:55] Damian Perry: The sell side have had to create structures and create systems to [00:18:00] monetize their corporate access, and they're finding it very difficult. The buy side are saying we don't really want to pay for this corporate access in the same way that we used to pay for it before because we are being regulated out of this. And the sell side still want to get paid.
[00:18:16] Damian Perry: It's becoming more and more difficult for the sell side to monetize it like they used to historically. What it essentially means is that unless a bank or broker has a commercial relationship with a buy-side institution, an existing commercial relationship, they can't really offer corporate access to that institution.
[00:18:38] Damian Perry: Realistically, what that means is that if I'm bank A and I'm working for a company and I want an institution to meet that company, they have to be a client of mine already in order for me to give them that meeting. If they're not a client, I have to go through the process of onboarding them as a client and doing all of the legal stuff to make them become a [00:19:00] client of that particular bank or broker.
[00:19:02] Damian Perry: What we're seeing is the buy side are reducing the list of brokers that they use. Whereas before, they might have been using any number of brokers because they could have just directed a trade any direction they want to pay for a piece of corporate access. Now, they might say I'm only using five different brokers from now on. The other thing is that we're seeing institutions now putting actual price lists out and saying we are prepared to pay X for a meeting with a CEO. We're prepared to pay Y for a group meeting at a conference. This is significantly lower amounts than what they used to pay 10 years ago in terms of a percentage of a commission on a trade that might have been tens of thousands of dollars in the past.
[00:19:46] Damian Perry: The sell side are finding it more difficult to monetize, and this is particularly the case outside of the big markets like London. I'll use Edinburgh as an example. Edinburgh has some fantastic institutions. But [00:20:00] they just don't pay for corporate access or they pay small amounts for corporate access. Tiny amounts.
[00:20:05] Damian Perry: It's not worth it for the sell side to organize corporate access up in Edinburgh because they can't cover their costs. They can't cover the cost of flying their salesperson up to Edinburgh to accompany a client into a meeting.
[00:20:20] Damian Perry: We recently had a situation where a company specifically wanted to go to Edinburgh. They approached one of the global scale investment banks and said, can you set up a day of meetings for us in Edinburgh? That bank came back to them and said, oh, you know what, we haven't found any interest. There's no one that wants to meet in Edinburgh. We can do meetings for you in London.
[00:20:43] Damian Perry: And the company came to us and said, you know what, we really want to spend the day in Edinburgh. Can you set something up? Within half a day, we had set up a complete schedule. Including them meeting three of the top five [00:21:00] institutions in Edinburgh.
[00:21:01] Damian Perry: Now, we can't say that's because that particular investment bank wasn't being paid enough, or we can't say that it was because maybe they don't have client relationships in Edinburgh. But we do know that it wasn't true that there was no interest in Edinburgh because we set up some fantastic meetings.
[00:21:16] Damian Perry: The other area that's relevant for MiFID II is, again, this whole idea about who you get to meet with. The big institutions, the faster money institutions, the hedge fund money institutions just like you have in New York. There are institutions like that in London as well. Liquidity is obviously an important element in any company share price, but as an independent, we're able to filter those out. We'll do everything that we can really to get you to meet the right investors.
[00:21:44] Mark: Those are some great insights on MiFID II, Damien, and the impacts. People always like to hear about common mistakes, and so I'm curious, what are some of the frequent missteps or mistakes that companies make when trying to engage investors in a new region and more [00:22:00] specifically in Europe?
[00:22:03] Damian Perry: I think the biggest issue for North American companies is how you use data. It's fair to say that a US company or a North American company has really good access to data.
[00:22:14] Damian Perry: The quality of the data in Europe is different. There are so many different reporting requirements in Europe. By country, by region, by type of assets under management, and getting good quality data about ownership is exceptionally difficult.
[00:22:30] Damian Perry: The data that comes out of Europe, it's often late, it's often incomplete. Switzerland is almost always under-reported. Some markets like Luxembourg or Dublin are often over-reported in that funds might be legally domiciled in those centers, but they're actually money managed by fund managers in London or Frankfurt or Paris. So, for a US company that's used to relatively accurate data, it's a real challenge.
[00:22:58] Damian Perry: Investor targeting [00:23:00] relies on the quality of the data, and where the data's not good, your targeting's not good. We have a completely different approach to targeting. Instead of using the quantitative data, we use a much more qualitative approach. And rather than relying on algorithms which are analyzing data, we're using a qualitative approach that basically reaches out directly to fund managers. We literally get on the phone, speak to fund managers, and ask them, is company Y a company that you want to meet with? Is Company Z a company that you want to engage with?
[00:23:34] Damian Perry: A lot of the quantitative-based targeting, particularly in Europe, can identify targets at an institutional level, but then they'll just dump a bunch of contacts in there as global fund managers. Whereas we will tend to identify interest at a specific individual level. So, it's the fund manager on the income team. Or it's the Canadian fund manager. Or it's the guy who follows global industrials. We [00:24:00] encourage all of our clients to participate in this kind of targeting as part of the outreach program because they can use it throughout the year.
[00:24:07] Damian Perry: We had a client recently that conducted a targeting study with us. We identified just over 80 fund managers and analysts in Europe that had an interest to engage with them. They decided not to do the roadshow with us, but they did decide to do a capital markets day later on in the year. When they did the capital markets day, they used the list of 82 fund managers that we generated, and they got 41 Europeans who attended virtually their capital markets day, which was unprecedented for them. The important thing is not to rely too much on the data.
[00:24:42] Mark: It sounds like you have to take a much more focused, hands-on approach. That's great insight.
[00:24:47] Damian Perry: The key thing is that basically Europeans are long-term investors. They can take time to get to know a company, but once they do know a company and once they choose to invest, they're going to be there for the longer term. [00:25:00] We've had clients that have built up significant European shareholder bases, but this has taken years. It's not taken months or quarters. When you have an IR team or a client that's looking for an immediate return, you are almost certainly going to be disappointed. But over the long term, with a consistent approach, you can really build a European shareholder base that is valuable to you as a company.
[00:25:24] Mark: Damian, thank you so much for the time and all the insight. It's much appreciated.
[00:25:28] Damian Perry: Okay, thank you, Mark. It's been interesting to talk to you this afternoon.
