Investor relations a crucial concept for Gulf shareholders

When you next have a spare 10 minutes at your laptop, go to emaar.com, click on the section that deals with share price information, and reset the start date to the beginning of 2005.

There you will see in full detail the story of the rise and fall of the Middle East’s leading property company. In a silhouette uncannily like that of the Burj Dubai, the shares peak at an incredible Dh38.61 in June of 2005, before falling to Dh17 later that summer, and then bumping downwards for the rest of the time towards the all-time low of Dh1.87 hit earlier this year. Yesterday, they closed just around Dh4.

Slide your curser along the Emaar graph and you get a daily record of the share price and volume of shares traded on any given day. As you might expect, the big price moves, whether up or down, were accompanied by large trading volumes. Manoeuvre further around the website and you can see the events – results, deals, corporate announcements – that caused these price movements.