Campus

Fewer shareholders in Germany

According to the latest survey by the Deutsches Aktieninstitut (DAI) the number of share and share-fund owners fell by 0.2 million in the first half-year to 8.6 million. This corresponds to a shareholder quota of 13.3% of the German population, the lowest level since 1999. Since 2001 the number of shareholders has shrunk by around a third. However, the number of direct shareholders rose by 269,000, whereas the number of share-fund holders fell by 484,000.

PDF is the standard for business reports

92.9% of companies, finds geschäftsberichte-portal in its July survey, produce their business report as a PDF document and publish it on their homepage. 28.6% of them send out this document by email. In most cases the file size is between two and five megabytes. 69.2% stated that analysis and file size were criteria of equal value: 61.5% secure their reports, 15.4% of them by password, 30.8% against changes, and a further 15.4% against the copying of texts. Freedom from barriers was a concern for only 30.77%.

IR turns to social networks

Canada’s Q4 Web Systems expanded its study of so-called social networks this year. It says the trend in investor-relations services is towards active utilization of portals like Twitter or Facebook. While in 2009 35% of the 350 firms surveyed stated they used short-message service Twitter for IR purposes, in 2010 the figure was already 65%. Facebook was used by 37%, YouTube by 29%, corporate blogs and SlideShare by 10% each, and Linkedln by 93% of firms surveyed.

BASF, Deutsche Post and Linde in front

The chemicals giant BASF SE, Deutsche Post and industrial-gases producer Linde this year presented the best on-line business reports in the DAX and the MDAX, according to business consultancy Kirchhoff Consult. Between May and June 2010 it assessed the categories of concept, design, service and technique. Whereas BASF, Deutsche Post and Linde were convincing particularly for their concept, Deutsche Bank and chemicals group Lanxess scored best for design. Insurance company Allianz scored in terms of service. Demag Cranes, Deutsche Post and Linde were able to sparkle for technique employed. Altogether, of the 30 Dax groups 29 published an interactive on-line business report that uses HTML, hybrid versions and PDF Plus to go beyond a simple PDF variant. 23 DAX companies and 37 of the 50 MDAX groups were convincing here with all-out HTML reports. A new feature is the use of social bookmarks. Here the user has the possibility of feeding the on-line report to their social bookmark service such as Facebook or Twitter with a few clicks and thus sharing it with their social network. Eight of 30 DAX groups equipped their on-line reports with social bookmarks in 2009.

Banks’ poor image

The financial-market crisis has severely damaged the image of banks. According to a representative survey commissioned in April by the Bund deutscher Banken (BdB), four of ten respondents stated that their trust in banks had suffered strongly from the crisis. In March 2009 the figure was a full 54%. While there has been considerable progress with efforts to regain the trust of bank customers, the credit institutions still need some time to rehabilitate themselves completely, says the BdB. However, eight out of ten bank customers stated they were satisfied on the whole with the investment advice from their own bank.