This essential guide to financial communication provides a concise critical overview of this increasingly important field. It challenges existing assumptions about the role and significance of financial public relations (PR) and investor relations, and the dominant paradigm of shareholder value. This book explores how the dominant paradigm in financial PR is based on the methodologically and historically incorrect assumption of symmetrical communication.

Highlighting the importance of financial communications in the corporate hierarchy where it is often a direct function of the Finance Director, this book critically assesses its ideological role in normalising the idea and role of ‘the market’ and promotes the neoliberal view that the sole function of the public company is to increase shareholder value. It opens up new theoretical perspectives by considering retail investor behaviour from the perspective of fandom theory through the behaviour of investors during financial booms, busts and bubbles.

This volume will be of interest to researchers in the fields of PR, financial communication, accounting and financial management as well as practitioners working in financial PR and investor relations.