Lifting Up the IR Industry – A Conversation with David Whyte, Co-founder and CEO of Irwin

In the wake of EU MiFID II in 2015, David Whyte, decided to help issuers tame the growing challenges between issuers and the Street. As a member of Credit Suisse’s equity sales team in Toronto he worked closely with global institutional investors and issuers to help grow their mutual relationships. Frustrated by the way the process was run and managed, “namely, the conflict of interests in bank-lead marketing NDRs,” Whyte, co-founder and CEO of Irwin says. “I’d have to put companies in front of fast-money hedge funds, which certainly play a role as an investor and shareholder but it shouldn’t be the main focus when looking for long term, partnership-oriented shareholders. It didn’t feel balanced to me or my clients.”

Whyte credits regulatory changes, shifts in buy-side resource allocation, and sell-side pressures as the driving force behind the launch of Irwin with co-founder and COO, Mark Fasken, saying the “onus shifted to the issuer to be much more proactive in IR, to really own the entire function start to finish.” Because of this, he continues, “issuers and the buy-side were starting to go around the sell-side.” Part of this, he explains, was driven by the buy-side consolidating their broker coverage, shrinking the pool of investors available to investment banks to market companies to.

 “It was very clear to me there was a huge need for a solution that could more effectively help IROs establish, manage and build relationships,” Whyte continues, “the solutions on the market were archaic.” The vision for Irwin, which holds true today, was “to create a new infrastructure for building more efficient relationships in the capital markets”. He endeavored to make the process compliant, transparent and most of all, easy for issuers and the buy-side to meet. At first, he did this manually, and after proving it worked—"to everyone’s surprise,” he laughs—he had enough evidence to build the Irwin platform in 2017.

Now, he’s built it and they came (Irwin has thousands of users) Whyte, and his team have been busy building and introducing new features to allow issuers to target, monitor and communicate more efficiently with the buy-side, with the eventual goal of balancing what he calls “the marketplace” by bringing the buy-side to the table. Whyte says, his team on their 6th anniversary, are “leaning in to creating differentiated features that no one else on the market has.” Enhancements include, for example, Irwin IQ, which provides IR teams actionable insights from their investor relations website for intelligent monitoring and targeting of peers, investors, and activists.

IR adds Whyte, is at an inflection point similar he says to HR a decade or two ago. “Tied to this,” he says, “are so many different things. The scope has grown drastically. IR has transitioned from what was primarily a communications, PR and administrative role to a sales, strategy, and analytics role,” he points out. “There are a lot of moving parts. That’s what’s makes IR such an interesting world.”

As part of their larger mission to break down barriers between corporates and the Street, Irwin launched a podcast in January, Winning IR hosted by his partner, Faskin which can be found on their website and on all major streaming platforms. The goal is to foster a community of IR practitioners who share insights and strategies as this fast-paced role continues to change and grow.