Inspiring Stories Polytems Hir

ELITE interview to Bianca Fersini Mastelloni, Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer of POLYTEMS HIR SRL. The firm provides consultancy, Investor Relations and corporate communications services for mid & small cap companies and institutional players such as banks, brokers, asset managers, mutual funds and local PA entities.

What does “entrepreneurship” mean for you?
Entrepreneurship is a transversal skill, an activity which implies the exploitation of opportunities correlated with a mix of willingness to bet on a product or service idea and to risk capital; it implies initiative, creativity, a strong faith in yourself and the conviction that you can generate profits by developing something new.
An entrepreneur is a person who knows how to think outside the box, knows how to capture the idea of the moment and is capable of organising an economic enterprise and is also willing to face the correlated risks, putting the idea into practice and thus translating ideas into actions. An entrepreneur is a person who knows how to involve and persuade others to follow him in his enterprise and to take risks along with him, who has considerable charisma along with great human energy. This aptitude translates into searching for original and creative solutions, challenges and interactions with other market enterprises, the development and improvement of products or services, the application and use of new technologies, but also the capacity to be able to remain in the market over time.
 
What has been your most significant experience or lesson during your career?
The most significant lesson I have learned during my professional career is not to take anything for granted. Nothing is owed to you and everything should be built with vision, competence, commitment and dedication. We need to be well prepared - we cannot improvise - and be transparent and consistent to build credibility.  It is important to make space for our colleagues and recognise their strengths.
Another lesson that I have learned, in my view equally important and also linked to the spirit of being an entrepreneur, is that you should always follow your own ideas and never give up, even in the most complicated and difficult moments of your private and professional life.
 
How does your company stand out in the competitive panorama?
What characterises us and makes us stand out is surely our international nature and vision, and a deep Investor Relations culture. We were founded and developed within an international context: our parent company was French with offices in Paris and Lyon and we have developed our technical skills within an international environment, not only due to my studies in the United States where I was educated, but especially by serving clients in the field from various European and non-European countries. Indeed, Polytems benefits from the experience acquired by working for Italian, French, English, American and Canadian companies listed on the Milan, London, Paris, New York, Toronto and Malta Stock Exchanges and for Swiss banks and Libyan funds. I have always participated in continuing professional education every year in the United States.  I am a member of NIRI, in which I have held a variety of positions on the Board of Directors of the International Chapter for a number of years. This training then becomes a shared asset for the benefit of all within our Company.
POLYTEMS HIR was founded in 1999 as a Corporate Communications firm with a focus on Investor Relations and economic and financial communications, dedicated to mid and small cap companies and institutional players in the world of Finance. It has a high profile team with different backgrounds to provide high quality consulting services. Some of our shareholders are university corporate finance professors, and I am personally invited every year by a number of top Italian universities to teach courses or seminars on Investor Relations. 
We have served our recurring clients for more than 20 years and our culture and our international spirit drive us to look “around the corner” outside the borders of our country to seek out new investors and thus expand their investor base.  For Polytems, Investor Relations is focused on communicating the current and potential market value of a company, with the ultimate aim of reducing the gap that forms between the intrinsic value of a company, the communicated value and the value expressed by the market (which is reflected more or less accurately in a company’s share price) using a wide range of tools, including innovative technologies, to reach the objective and activating a 360-degree process that cannot but include the international financial markets. This is why we have worked in partnership with Dresner Corporate Services, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Irvine, since 2007. And it is from this perspective that in 2015 we opened a representative office in London, the largest European financial market. Also from this point of view, we have created an intense Corporate Access programme which calls for the organisation of roadshows (London, Frankfurt, New York, etc.) for individual companies targeted at specific investor classes, accompanied by a “smooth-elegant” organisation for our clients, reverse roadshows, and the organisation of Investor Conferences in Frankfurt, Vienna and other destinations still being planned.
Our culture requires us to study the financial markets to identify where investments are directed, thus enhancing our Corporate Access programmes as much as possible; this leads us to place significant attention on the investor target to identify the investor’s class and profile, investment styles and investment potential, without which we risk not creating value and making Companies waste their time.  We disseminate amongst our clients the culture of best practices and transparency, encouraging them to consider Investor Relations in an innovative manner, anticipating the requirements of the financial markets, especially the more sophisticated markets. We strive to ensure that our clients are always innovative and ahead of the curve.
 
 What is your personal and professional motto?
My personal motto is “Be plural like the Universe”, which invites continuous seeking, never stopping, dialogue with yourself, with your creativity and the capacity to express yourself about different things at the same time, highlighting the various aspects of your own personality. It is an aphorism that in my view is also very “entrepreneurial”, which encourages us to always call things into question and to have vision.
My professional motto is “Reflect, Renew, Reinvent”, which encourages us to constantly dialogue with innovation, with the market, with how much we can do that is new and that goes above and beyond for our clients and how we can further improve our professional activity.
                                      
What type of entrepreneur do you represent within the ELITE network?
We are Communications and Investor Relations Advisors and we have been an Elite Partner for a few years now. I have actively participated in Elite events and, in recent years, as an instructor of Elite workshops at the Italian Stock Exchange. We believe that Elite events are of great professional interest, very well organised and internationally oriented.