The article below from the Wall Street Journal identifies very significant changes in the IPO league tables in 2010. Specifically strong gains from mid size investment banks. We have seen strong interest by investment banks in using the corporate access data set (buy side meetings with corporates) as part of the ongoing dialogue with a corporate issuer. The Wall Street Transcript software is able to generate detailed reports for these discussions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954804575381221139138074.html

There is considerable value in Corporate Access reporting for the investment banking side of the business. MeetMax CAM generates the most detailed reports available for each Corporate of which buy side firms the Corporate has met with, when, and where. This can be of great value to a banker in his dialogue with the issuer as part of the day-to-day relationship management. In banking, relationship management is critical as the deals are infrequent but very profitable – and it is vital that the bank demonstrate support of the Corporate between deals.

We are seeing increasingly that Investment Bankers include Corporate Access reports in their presentation materials for Corporate meetings.    MeetMax CAM makes that quick, easy and accurate.

After a brief hiatus for vacation, we continue the series on insider secrets to great event websites –

4. FACILITATE NETWORKING
Much of the value attendees get at a conference comes from the conversations they have
outside of the meeting rooms. If you want a truly successful event, you need to facilitate
opportunities for your attendees to network/talk with one another. A great way to do this
is to offer the ability to set appointments with exhibitors, sponsors or speakers in advance.
Post a directory on the event website and offer the opportunity to request meetings as a
function of registering for the conference.

Want to read the whole white paper? Click here to download.

You asked for more automation in scheduling 1-on-1 meetings and with our latest release, you get it!

Now with one click you can schedule all of an attendee’s meeting requests.  It doesn’t get much easier than that.

MeetMax builds the schedule based on a few variables:  availability, preferences, request rankings.  And if you need to reschedule a meeting, MeetMax makes it easy to keep track of how an individual attendee’s schedule changes over time.

Are you new to coordinating 1-on-1 meetings?  Our MeetMax customer support specialists can offer suggestions on how to go about managing the 1-on-1 process, and can train you on how to use the MeetMax 1-on-1 scheduling tool.

Click here to read more about MeetMax’s latest release.

We are pleased to announce that MeetMax now includes event website templates designed by San Francisco-based designer, John Shern, Duotone Online (www.duotoneonline.com).  These new templates present a polished, professional image for your events.  Unlike competitive products that allow you to build only a limited event website, with MeetMax you can have up to 10 pages on your site, and with our easy content management tools you don’t need additional resources to keep your site up to date.  Click on the images below to take a peak the new layouts.

Next month we will be releasing the next upgrade of MeetMax CAM - with some unique features that other Roadshows scheduling systems don’t have.  Here’s a quick peek:

• An Event Calendar that can be published to the whole firm.  Let colleagues see the Calendar itself without them having to login to anything - or require an expensive username.
• Request Process for Roadshow Meetings  - again without requiring expensive usernames for salespeople and sales assistants.
• Batch reporting on Accounts – that will process activity reports on a schedule and email them to the correct salespeople or account contacts for a hundred or more accounts.  Automatically.

Greenwich Associates recently released some summary data from its 2010 survey.  For 2010 in the US – Greenwich estimates $6.4 billion in commission payments for research and corporate access and other services provided by sell side firms.  Of this – Greenwich estimates 33% is for Corporate Access, 27% for Research and the rest for Sales and Account Management. For Hedge Funds the share for corporate access is higher still at 40%.

So just over $2.1 billion for Corporate Access.  Greenwich goes even further and  divides this between Conferences ($0.9 billion) and Roadshows ($1.2 billion).  The Wall Street Transcript estimates that there are approximately 200,000 one on one meetings per calendar year at investor conferences. The Greenwich data would therefore suggest that an average value per conference meeting is about $4,500.   This is consistent with our working estimates, so its great to get some supporting data on it.   So, to be clear, on average, a 1×1 meeting is worth $4,500.

We are seeing more clients than ever looking for ways to reduce the paper used at their conferences.

How many times have you gone to a conference or a day-long seminar and carefully collected copies of all of the presentations and handouts, put them in your briefcase or tote bag, brought them home to the office and then?  They sit in a stack on your desk until you decide you need room for some new stack of information.  In paper form, the information embodied in this stack of materials is difficult to access and so its use is limited as a library of useful information.

And yet, as conference organizers we know that speakers want to bring handouts and attendees do want to bring materials home with them.  How can you reduce the amount of paper and still provide the benefit of a take-away materials?

The answer for an increasing number of MeetMax clients is the MeetMax document kiosk.  At the MeetMax document kiosk, the conference attendee selects the speakers/sessions for which he or she wants materials, and downloads the materials on to a flash drive.  The materials are indexed by session and because they are electronic, they are easily searched and easily shared with colleagues.   And, the conference organizer can pre-load sponsor materials onto the library so that all downloads include the sponsor’s information — which is a great way to extend the value of a sponsorship.

MeetMax’s speaker registration process allows presenters to upload materials — documents, powerpoints, videos.  MeetMax client support builds your document library and compiles the Document Kiosk software for you into an easy to install package.

If you happen to attend one of RBC’s conferences this month, or Needham’s or Lazard Capital Markets’, you will have a chance to see for yourself how the meeting planning teams for these conferences are using technology to make their meetings more green.  How are you greening up your conferences?

MeetMax CAM has been delivering meeting data to FactSet for over a two months now - currently to a list of 25 large buyside firms- but we are about to expand this to a greater number.  We have more than 20 banks permissioning their buyside clients to receive their meeting records in order to get better visibility and higher attribution for their corporate and analyst meetings .   This was the first of several partnerships for direct feeds.  We are also live with themarkets.com.

MeetMax’s partnership with Factset enables specific details of corporate access meetings to appear on Buyside Factset terminals.  With no distracting work for the sales people or the sales assistants - it’s automatic, accurate and weekly.

MeetMax CAM was developed to help the sellside maintain the integrity of its corporate access data. The specifics of such services provided by a sell side firm to an asset manager are critical.  Many sell side applications are simply not designed to maintain the integrity and accuracy of the data (location, date, time, participants, meeting size) of the data for reporting purposes.  This is despite the fact that corporate access meetings are incredibly valuable. In fact, once you add in meetings with analysts, they are amongst the most valuable piece of sell side firm’s service offering.

The other valuable component - written research - is already widely distributed via buyside terminals like FactSet.

To illustrate the power CAM’s distribution arrangement with FactSet:   If a Portfolio Manager met with a management at Bank A’s conference in March 2010 this will appear on the Portfolio Manager’s FactSet terminal shortly after the event.

The PM looking at the stock may then do one of several things

• Call Bank A’s analyst to get a current read on the stock
• Call Bank A  to find out when management is in NYC any time soon
• Call Bank A to place an order to buy the stock

Applications where this will appear in FactSet include a stock price chart and the company events page (this shows events for that stock in the last 6 months such as analyst days).

FactSet is a great partner for us as it is used by the buy side as a workbench. A PM is likely to get into his office and spend the next 12 hours in FactSet.  And constant exposure to corporate access meetings provided will only increase awareness for the banks providing them, improve their vote scores, and increase their revenues.

Corporate Access reports are becoming a staple of Investment Banking presentations to Corporates.  The problem for Bankers in many sell side firms  - is that generating these reports is much harder than it should be.

The Wall Street Transcript’s corporate access software has been designed to maintain the details and accuracy of the data set generated by a sell side Corporate Access business. MeetMax CAM generates clear and accurate reports of what management meeting took place, where, when and the buy side attendees.  These reports are then used for direct discussions with buy side firms about services and compensation.

What is less often discussed, is the considerable value of Corporate Access reporting for the investment banking side of the business. MeetMax CAM generates the most detailed reports available for each Corporate of which buy side firms the Corporate has met with, when, and where. This can be of great value to a banker in his dialogue with the issuer as part of the day-to-day relationship management. In banking, relationship management is critical as the deals are infrequent but very profitable - and it is vital that the bank demonstrate support of the Corporate between deals.

While the role of the Corporate Broker is well established in the UK, it does not have an exact counterpart in

• Advising Corporates on fund raising (e.g. new issues of shares).
• Helping generate interest among investors for the company’s securities.
• Making a market in the stock.

The global settlement of 2003 between the SEC, NASD and NYSE placed strong constraints on using research to provide Service #2 above.  Corporate Access is not subject to these constraints - and is a vital part of Service #2, that is needed to get to Service #1.

We are seeing increasingly that Investment Bankers include Corporate Access reports in their presentation materials for Corporate meetings. MeetMax CAM makes that quick, easy and accurate.

I think 2010 will be the year when buyside firms really get organized about tracking their Corporate Access services from the sellside.   There are a few trends making this likely.

• Critical mass.  After a few years of Wellington and SAC being the only guys driving this bus - there are now a sizeable number of buyside firms tracking what meetings they take so their traders can better figure out who to pay.  This further drives other firms to join the trend.
• They are getting help with new and cheaper tools.  Voting tools used to be exotic - but they are getting simpler and cheaper - and powerful meeting tracker services act as vote support systems or ersatz vote systems.   These are now being marketed by many firms which is just raising the awareness on the buyside.
• Corporate Access (and direct contact with analysts) gets ever more valuable - and guesswork is no longer a basis for buyside firms to allocate payment.

CAM is doing its part too.  We are the best way for brokers to report their meetings - by a long way.  In fact the only way to get into some of these buyside systems. Just doing our bit to help our sellside clients get paid.