Join the Staff—Market Data Manager

Location: Montreal, Frankfurt (with flexibility to work from home regularly)
Duration: Permanent
Salary: Competitive, plus benefits

About the role

Team: Market Engagement
Reports to: Special Projects Manager

On 3 November 2021, the IFRS Foundation Trustees announced the creation of a new standard-setting board—the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB)—to help meet the demand from international investors for high quality, transparent, reliable, and comparable reporting by companies on climate and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters. The ISSB builds on the success of the IASB as well as the work of the Climate Disclosure Standards Board and the Value Reporting Foundation (formerly IIRC and SASB), which both consolidated with the IFRS Foundation in 2022.

As Market Data Manager, you will support the market engagement, standard-setting and regulatory affairs teams. Your role will be to research, analyze and report on market data to meet specific objectives of these teams. At times this will involve collecting, analysing, and communicating data on your own, while other times will involve relying on others, such as contractors, to collect the data while you perform the analysis and communicate the results. You will also proactively and creatively generate your own ideas for applying market data to help meet the goals of the IFRS Foundation. The IFRS Foundation is both building off a strong base of existing support and simultaneously treading new ground, with thousands of corporate and investor supporters around the world. You are energized by the potential to have a formative and lasting impact in the early days of the standardization of sustainability-related financial disclosures at the IFRS Foundation as it looks to publish its first two IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards in 2023 while continuing to support and expand use of the SASB Standards and Integrated Reporting Framework.

This job description outlines the specific role responsibilities and the skills and attributes we are looking for.

Key Responsibilities

Create, maintain and analyze internal databases

• Corporate reporter databases – Collaborate with external contractors to track global use of ISSB resources, including reports aligned to the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, the SASB Standards and the Integrated Reporting Framework. Analyze current and historical data and produce intelligence reports, disseminate information internally to assist market engagement, regulatory engagement, and standard-setting efforts. Lead the development of processes to evaluate disclosure quality.
• Sustainable Industry Classification System (SICS) – Maintain and manage the IFRS Foundation’s industry taxonomy, while finding ways to enhance the data quality, information used to manage the database. Currently, this involves managing the process to classify companies and keeping SICS up to date, responding to requests for reclassification made by our stakeholders, resolving discrepancies; filling in database gaps and collaborating with the Technology team to improve SICS via machine learning (ML) technology. In future, this can also involve supporting the analysis of potential changes to the structure of SICS.
• Market engagement focused lists – Develop methodology to create a focused list of companies to aid the market engagement team with targeted outreach efforts.
• Market data intelligence – Support the market engagement and standards-setting team with ad-hoc market data requests—e.g., collecting information on assets under management (AUM) for lists of asset managers; collect market capitalization information for lists of publicly-listed companies; assess usefulness and effectiveness of specific sustainability metrics; analyzing proxy voting guidelines, etc.

Work with third-party data and research providers

• Third-party research analysis – Work with third-party organizations to interpret their research to inform standard-setting activities. Proactively monitor quantitative research (academic and industry) on sustainability and finance to inform market engagement, regulatory affairs, and standard-setting; develop recommendations for ISSB.
• Database mapping – Assist in mapping and updating the data provided by third-party data platforms to ISSB resources, including the SASB Standards.

Be a valued and proactive team member and manage external resources

• Look for creative ways to use market data and other research to help meet the ISSB’s objectives.
• Manage a small number of external contractors doing data gathering and analysis.
• Respond quickly and efficiently in a service-oriented manner to requests from across the organization.

Skills, experience & qualifications sought

• Commitment to the mission of the IFRS Foundation.
• Track record of creating, managing, and analyzing complex datasets to produce valuable and actionable information.
• Solid expertise with market data platforms such as Bloomberg Professional Service (preferred), AlphaSense, CapitalIQ, etc.
• Good judgment and strategic thinking; the ability to analyze the landscape, articulate and gain consensus about priorities, and direct resources accordingly.
• Strong data communication skills, with the ability to clearly and succinctly identify relevant takeaways and educate internal audiences with varied technical expertise.
• Experience using a CRM (preferably Salesforce) to track contacts and relationship status.
• Capital markets and/or corporate finance knowledge and experience is a plus.
• High energy, positive, “can-do” attitude, flexibility, teamwork, and a high degree of initiative.
• Entrepreneurial drive and know-how.
• Execution-oriented, able to get things done quickly and with excellent quality.
• Tremendous organizational skills and attention to detail.
• 4-8 years’ relevant experience

To apply

Please send a detailed CV/résumé and cover letter to recruitment@ifrs.org. Please include the job title/position you are interested in and the location of the job in the subject line of your email.

Closing date: Ongoing

Interviews are held via video conference as part of our standard international recruitment process. Due to the number of responses that we receive, we are unable to respond individually to each application. If you do not hear from us within four weeks of the closing date you may assume that your application has been unsuccessful.