NEW YORK, Feb.  15, 2018  (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Institutional Investor announced Germany's top IROs and IR Programs at the Investor Relations Conference - IR 2018 in Frankfurt, Germany on 30 January 2018.

For the first time, the German leaders in Institutional Investor's 2018 All-Europe Executive Team survey took center stage at the Investor Relations Conference - IR 2018 - the conference of the IR community organized by the IR Club and cometis AG.

"We are delighted with the consistent positive feedback of the participants from the IR 2018," says Patrick Kiss, Founder of the IR Club. "With our dynamic conference concept, we have once again succeeded in presenting the future topics relevant to the IR community in a fresh way."

Every year, Institutional Investor invites leading analysts and portfolio managers to rank the top four companies that demonstrate excellence.  As a new program item of the conference, Institutional Investor awarded the top three winners for overall Best IR Programme and Best IRO, and introduced Midcap and Small Cap winners, recognizing companies who scored highest within the $2B-$10 billion market cap for Midcap and less than $2B for Small Cap.

Congratulations to the following award recipients on this outstanding achievement:

Overall - Best IR Program
Country	Company	Sector	Rank
Germany	Allianz	Insurance	1
Germany	BASF	Chemicals	2
Germany	Continental	Autos & Auto Parts	3

Overall - Best IR Program Midcap & Small Cap
Country	Company	Sector	Rank
Germany	Fraport	Transport	1
Germany	LANXESS	Chemicals	2
Germany	Hugo Boss	Luxury Goods	3

Overall - Best IR Professional
Country	Name	Company	Sector	Rank
Germany	Rolf Woller	Continental	Autos & Auto Parts	1
Germany	Oliver Schmidt	Allianz	Insurance	2
Germany	Hannes Wittig	Deutsche Telekom	Telecommunications Services	3

Overall - Best IR Professional Midcap & Small Cap
Country	Name	Company	Sector	Rank
Germany	Dirk Voigtländer	ProSiebenSat.1 Media	Media	1
Germany	Jörg Hoffmann	Wacker Chemie	Chemicals	2
Germany	Florian Fuchs	Fraport	Transport	3
Germany	Oliver Stratmann	LANXESS	Chemicals	3

The full list of published winners from 2018's All-Europe Executive Team survey will be available in March 2018. To view last year's results, please visit www.institutionalinvestor.com.

For more information, please contact Amani Korayeim at amani.korayeim@institutionalinvestor.com  or +44 (0) 20 7779 8535.

About Institutional Investor
For more than 50 years Institutional Investor has consistently distinguished itself among the world's foremost media companies with groundbreaking journalism and incisive writing that provides essential intelligence for a global audience. In addition, Institutional Investor offers a host of proprietary research and rankings that serve as respected industry benchmarks. For more information visit institutionalinvestor.com.

About IR Club
IR Club is a well-established investor relations community that allows IR professionals to network with peers from all over the world. To learn more about the IR Club, please visit www.irclub.de.

About cometis AG:
cometis AG in one of the leading consulting firms for strategic and operational financial communication in Germany and Europe. For more information visit: https://www.cometis.de/en/