Oliver Niedermaier on the changing world of communication
Oliver Niedermaier CEO, DF King Worldwide
When communication is your business, you have to stay on the ball. As the world constantly evolves, so do the ways in which we interact. DF King Worldwide has proven to be very capable of recognizing when and how to recreate itself.
In November 2009, the company formerly known as Sage Holdings rebranded as DF King Worldwide. In the same month, the company was selected by the World Economic Forum to join its Community of Global Growth Companies, a group of more than 200 rapidly growing multinational companies that are reshaping the global economic landscape.
To find out more about the challenges facing companies in the communication field, Swiss Style met with Oliver Niedermaier, CEO of DF King Worldwide.
A new age of transparency
As an international company specialized in stakeholder management and communicating on behalf of corporate and financial institutions, King Worldwide is in a unique position to offer insights on the challenges as well as the opportunities facing large corporations and a variety of different financial actors. “Our clients range from large corporations to private equity firms and hedge funds, but 85% of our clients are large companies,” Dr Niedermaier explains.
When it comes to communicating with stakeholders, companies are all facing a couple of trends that have remained unchanged. “What has not changed is that they have to communicate properly,” he explains.
However, in the light of the internationalization of equity as well as debt markets, companies are also confronted with additional challenges and opportunities that are the consequence of what has happened over the last 18 months. As Niedermaier puts it, “We are entering a new age of transparency. We have seen this emerge in past crises but never to this extent. On the one hand, transparency is being forced upon companies by governments and regulators; on the other hand, the notion of transparency is also changing because of how information is disseminated.” The Internet has completely revamped how companies manage their reputation. “Our clients are gaining awareness about the need to deal with their reputation proactively,” he states.
As we enter a new era of regulation, pressure for transparency will also come from investors. “Investors are going to subject companies to greater scrutiny than ever before. A strong investment narrative, as well as a thorough understanding of the investment universe – current holders, potential holders, overseas demand – will be a critical component to creating, and sustaining, capital markets value,” he argues.
Integrated approaches
Given the changing environment, how is King Worldwide moving forward and evolving to meet their clients’ needs? “We are basically moving more and more towards fully integrated offerings,” Dr Niedermaier states. “We started realizing that our clients need a globally integrated approach to see across the different communication disciplines, as well as to reach different stakeholder groups.”
By combining such disciplines as investor relations, financial media relations, investor analytics and proxy solicitation, Niedermaier explains, “We are offering our clients an integrated approach to communication.”
As financial markets become more global, companies have to be aware of difficulties they face from across the globe. “The trend might be towards integration; nonetheless, we can observe big differences between markets,” he continues. “Over the next couple of years we will see Asia and the Middle East adopt a more American and European style of communication within the market.”
Currently, the company headed by Dr Niedermaier has a very strong transatlantic presence. “The US and Europe make up 95% of our revenues, with about 60% hailing from the US and 35% from Europe.” The remaining 5% are spread amongst emerging markets. “We are going to continue to build our presence in emerging markets, especially in the Middle East and Greater China,” he states. “Asia holds much potential. As the global market integration and consolidation goes forward, we expect to see the percentage of revenues hailing from Asia to grow to 25–30% over the next couple of years.”
Expanding the reach geographically
Backed by private investors, Sage Holdings was initially put in place as a vehicle to focus on assembling the right array of tools to truly offer their customers premium services that meet the communication needs of the 21st century. According to Dr Niedermaier, “Having acquired prime assets, we began unifying our offering to better meet our client needs.”
Rebranded as DF King Worldwide, the company is now in the next phase and has started building on this platform as well as expanding their reach geographically. “In addition, we are trying to fill further service gaps to address the needs of our clients,” says Dr Niedermaier. “Given this phase of consolidation and integration, we decided to also consolidate our external appearance and link all our group brands together under King Worldwide.”
Article by Adam Lockstein
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