Luke Findlay Client Manager, Investor Relations Services, EQ/RDIR Introduction and what your role is at EQ?
Hi, I’m Luke Findlay, a Client Manager on the Investor Relations Services team at EQ/RDIR. We’re a part of EQ Advisory and our job is to help our clients identify and engage with their shareholders.
Just recently, I’ve moved over to working onto our new product, EQ Connect, which looks at connecting companies with their investors on an interactive platform.
What office are the team located at?
I’m based in the London office. Something special about this office is one of our clients works in the same building, and another works out of the building next door – so support and coffees are easy to manage for both of them! I also love London, I’m very fortunate to be well travelled, but London remains my favourite city in the world.
Explain a bit about your role.
During a work placement at an issuer from University, I was first exposed to a glimpse of Investor Relations. I saw the Investor Relations manager pull up a graph of all the different types of shareholders of the company and where they were from. I thought “wouldn’t it be cool to know what any of this meant?”.
I came fresh out of university into RD:IR, who had just been purchased by EQ at the time. EQ used our old office when I first joined, but, since we’ve moved offices, I’ve felt even more a part of EQ. I initially started working on our data, with the view I’d move up to the people-facing role I manage now. The rest as they say is history!
What do you like about EQ?
We work with some major household names in the UK market, and elsewhere. EQ might not be on the front page of the Financial Times every day, but we have a hand in so much of what goes on in the world of business. It’s incredibly rewarding to feel you’re doing relevant, great work.
Our teams biggest EQ achievement.
Speaking at the EQ Conference in 2024 was my biggest achievement to date. I was just a spectator at the Science Museum for 2023’s conference, where I was just nervous enough asking a couple of questions from the audience. I’m very proud of getting up on stage and talking to our clients about retail shareholder engagement, which is a particular fancy of mine.
I’m incredibly thankful to EQ for letting people earlier in their career get up and speak on their behalf like that. I hope to be able to take that experience onward with me in the rest of my work life.
What are you looking forward to in the future at EQ?
The IR Services Team is working on a whole host of exciting advancements for our clients this year. As mentioned, we’re busy working on our new interactive platform EQ Connect, which will help our clients engage with their investors. There’s so much to look forward to with EQ Connect, but ultimately, I’m a massive AI-head so that’s probably my favourite part of it. I’m thrilled we’re bringing some up-to-date tech to the investor engagement game and I’m excited to see where we can take it.
What hobbies do you and your team enjoy?
I used to be a semi-pro gamer! There wasn’t much else to do during my third year of university with Covid-19 on the scene. I was already spending most of my time sat at my desk, so thought I’d not only play for the University of Plymouth, but also for a dedicated organisation, for a particular online game. I ended up playing in front of tens of thousands of people watching the matches I played being streamed online.
I was horrified that I couldn’t make the EQ Advisory video games social last year. I’m not sure many of my colleagues would’ve enjoyed my company much after the night, had I turned up and taken it as seriously as I might’ve.
A big thank you to Luke for sharing his thoughts with us.