OUR SERVICES

INVESTOR AUDIT

The Audit has been one of Makinson Cowell’s core products since the business was established. It is a substantial piece of work that melds qualitative and quantitative research. The Audit draws on in-depth unattributable interviews with a company’ s major equity and debt holders in key capital markets around the world. It sets out to ascertain institutional understanding of, and attitudes about a particular company and to assess its standing relative to peer companies and to the equity and debt markets as a whole.

The Audit reflects Makinson Cowell’s special expertise in integrating such institutional views with thorough financial and market analyses. It is an extremely powerful diagnostic tool and is used by clients as a basis for decision making at both executive management and board level.

The Audit leaves management better able to see their company as the financial community sees it and thus better able to anticipate the reaction of shareholders, bondholders and stockbrokers to a wide range of corporate decisions and actions. Elements of the Audit are frequently used in presentations to board meetings and senior management conferences. The detailed input from the company’s major shareholders and bondholders is often used by clients in deliberating matters of corporate governance, strategy formulation, acquisitions and disposals, capital spending plans, dividend policy, share buybacks and the issuance of debt and equity. The perspective gained from the Audit is useful input to the corporate communications and IR teams in positioning results announcements and corporate events in the media and investor communications.

The Combined Code, as revised in July 2003, requires that “The chairman should ensure that the views of shareholders are communicated to the board as a whole.” The role of the Makinson Cowell Audit in fulfilling this requirement is increasingly recognised by chairmen and non-executive directors.

Makinson Cowell has produced Audits for major European and North American companies and also for many smaller companies. In the last few years we have produced over 30 Audits per year. Many clients ask us to repeat the Audit every 12 to 18 months thereby enabling them to track the development of investor views.