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AECOM of Los Angeles, CA, won a Stevie Award for Investor Relations Program of the Year in The 2008 International Business Awards. Here we look at how they handled one of the largest engineering industry IPOs of all time.
AECOM is likely the largest company that you may never have heard of. With more than 43,000 employees and offices around the world, it is involved in everything from transportation and building engineering to the environment and international development assistance. Don’t look now, but it’s probably currently involved in a project near you.
In the spring of 2007, AECOM planned to issue an Initial Public Offering on the New York Stock Exchange. It would be one of the 10 largest NYSE listings in 2007, and one of the largest engineering industry IPOs of all time—but AECOM’s main challenge was to make sure that the world understood the growth potential of this global company.
Communications Strategy
AECOM’s Corporate Communications team, headed by Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Officer Paul Gennaro, put together an integrated communications strategy for the IPO launch consisting of employee communications, investment community outreach, and public relations.
The main thrust of the strategy was to communicate AECOM’s story to the investment community, explaining its business and demonstrating its achievements, strengths, and market opportunities. AECOM needed to increase positive coverage in the business media, positioning AECOM as an industry leader with strong growth prospects, in order to achieve strong valuation for AECOM shares and to open trading at or above the initial IPO price.
An important aspect of the IPO was to engage employees and create a desire in those employees to hold shares, and to unify the global employee base behind the corporate brand.
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