Intesa Sanpaolo, Iberdrola, and Ryanair Among Big Winners on Institutional Investor's 2018 All-Europe Executive Team Rankings

NEW YORK, March 21, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Airbus (France), Lonza Group (Switzerland), Nestlé (Switzerland), Allianz (Germany), Subsea 7 (United Kingdom), ASML Holding (Netherlands), Ryanair Holdings (Ireland) - swept their respective sectors, ranking first across the CEO, CFO, and investor relations categories.

More than 2,400 buy-side analysts, asset managers, and sell-side researchers at over 800 firms named the best chief executives, top CFOs, investor relations professionals, and investor relations companies across 31 business sectors.

Buy-side analysts, money managers and sell-side researchers at securities firms and financial institutions that cover the region identified up to four companies that excel in up to seven investor relations attributes including:

• Senior executives are accessible
• IR team is well informed and empowered to speak authoritatively on the company's behalf
• Timely and appropriate level of financial disclosure
• Responds quickly and thoroughly to requests
• Most constructive conference calls
• Highest quality of meetings through road shows/reversed road shows/conferences; and highest quality of corporate documents and investor kit materials.

"MiFID II continues to drive change and create noise across the investment process for buy side, sell side and corporates, nowhere more so than in Europe. But this aside, this just continues to highlight the need to make sure companies are engaging smarter and more strategically with investors to ensure that their story is understood properly," says Will Rowlands-Rees, Managing Director of Research at Institutional Investor, "To that end we're thrilled with the continued depth of response from the European investment community on investor engagement, and are delighted to be working with many of Europe's leading companies to help be smarter and more discerning around their investor relations efforts. We'd like to congratulate all the recognized companies for their ongoing focus on excellence, and look forward to helping them construct and measure investor engagement programs in the year ahead."

Top Performing Companies and their Sectors Include:

Airbus (France)	Aerospace & Defense
Allianz (Germany)	Insurance
ASML Holding (Netherlands)	Technology/Hardware
Iberdrola (Spain)	Utilities
Intesa Sanpaolo (Italy)	Banks
Lonza Group (Switzerland)	Biotechnology
Nestlé (Switzerland)	Food Producers
Ryanair Holdings (Ireland)	Transport
Subsea 7 (United Kingdom)	Oil Services

Top Performing CEOs and their Sectors Include:

Matthias Zachert	LANXESS (Germany)	Chemicals
Sergio Marchionne	Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (United Kingdom)	Autos & Auto Parts
Patrick Pouyanné	Total (France)	Oil & Gas Exploration & Production
Jean Pierre Mustier	UniCredit (Italy)	Banks
Thomas Enders	Airbus (France)	Aerospace & Defense
Richard Ridinger	Lonza Group (Switzerland)	Biotechnology
Martin Sorrell	WPP (United Kingdom)	Media

Top Performing CFOs and their Sectors Include:

Christopher Lynch	Rio Tinto (United Kingdom)	Metals & Mining
Felipe Dutra	Anheuser-Busch InBev (Belgium)	Beverages
Ricardo Rosa	Subsea 7 (United Kingdom)	Oil Services
Dieter Wemmer	Allianz (Germany)	Insurance
Brian May	Bunzl (United Kingdom)	Business & Employment Services
Peter Hackel	Straumann Holding (Switzerland)	Medical Technologies & Services
Wolfgang Nickl	ASML Holding (Netherlands)	Technology/Hardware

For the full list of published winners, please visit www.institutionalinvestor.com.

Last year, Institutional Investor launched its inaugural small and midcap rankings, recognizing those companies with less than $10bn in market capitalization to great success.  This year, a resounding set of feedback from 1,800 investment professionals demonstrated that investors continue to look for value beyond the largest companies, and that those companies are demonstrating strong capabilities in investor engagement to those investors. 

A total of 1,509 European companies were nominated in this year's All-Europe Executive Team rankings. Of those companies, 103 scored high enough to earn the distinction of Most Honored Company in the full sector rankings and 95 were honored in the midcap and small cap sector rankings.

For more information, please contact Amani Korayeim at amani.korayeim@institutionalinvestor.com  or + 44 207 779 8535.

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About Institutional Investor
For 51 years Institutional Investor has consistently distinguished itself among the world's foremost media companies with groundbreaking journalism and incisive writing that provides essential intelligence for a global audience. In addition, Institutional Investor offers a host of proprietary research and rankings that serve as respected industry benchmarks. For more information visit institutionalinvestor.com.