Michelle Chan, sustainable finance and ESG reporter at The International Financing Review (IFR), discussed her career transition from Nikkei Asia to The Wall Street Journal and now to IFR. She highlighted IFR's paywall-protected business model and shared her thoughts on the future of ESG including the potential impact of the incoming Trump administration.  

Hi everyone, welcome to Cogcast, Cognito's podcast, where we speak with journalists and PR pros on the latest happenings in the media world. I'm your host, Vanja Lakic.

Today my guest is Michelle Chan, who is a Sustainable Finance and ESG reporter at the International Financing Review. Michelle was previously a finance reporter at the Wall Street Journal in Nikkei Asia. We'll hear from Michelle about her work at IFR, what story she's currently focusing on, how she's engaging with PR folks, and much more.

Michelle, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Can you tell us about your background as a reporter and editor the last few years, especially transitioning from Nikkei Asia and the Wall Street Journal to now the International Financing Review? These are all publications with distinct audiences and styles. Can you talk about that transition?

Yeah, sure. So I started off my journalism career in Hong Kong, where I grew up, and in the beginning I was the Hong Kong correspondent for Nikkei Asia, and it was the time when Nikkei acquired Financial Times. So back in 2015, they had this big international push to push people to write more regional stories about Asia for international audiences.

Nikkei, as in the Nikkei Stock Index, they have the largest financial newspaper in Japan, but a lot of those stories were very locally focused. So they had this push to, you know, transform those stories and make it more friendly and more interesting to international audiences, and I was, you know, part of that effort. I was hired as one of the first employees at that team.

So it was a very interesting experience as a reporter. It felt like I was working in a startup. There was a lot of flexibility for me to, you know, pitch stories, and it was also a period where there was a lot of activity in the Asia capital markets.

I started off covering a lot of big IPOs from China, and then there was the Hong Kong protests. So, you know, a lot of big stories that are steep learning curves for junior reporters like me. It was, you know, a crazy ride for a few years, and then I took a break from work and went to grad school in the US. That's how I pivoted to, you know, covering the US market. After graduation, I started at the Wall Street Journal, where I covered the intersection between the US and the Chinese capital markets and financial markets.

And I've always had this interest to cover the intersection of politics and financial decisions. So ESG is one of those feeds that fascinates me as well, and I'm very grateful that I get to cover it full-time at the IFR right now.

Yeah, thank you so much for that. Can you tell us more about the International Financing Review, where you are now, its business model, and how that's different from other financial publications, especially given that it's so heavily paywalled?

Yeah, you're definitely right about the paywall it is very heavily guarded. I know it frustrates a lot of PR professionals who want to get access to our stories, but it's also a blessing that we have this paywall and we have this, you know, very niche and high-quality subscription base that allows us to have the resources to invest in the newsroom.

We have a lot of journalists with big expertise and capital market expertise across different financial hubs around the world. So we're able to do stories that are, you know, across geographies, across time zones. We cover a deal from different time zones and different, you know, local sources. So I think having the paywall is a blessing.

We always say we take information from bankers and sell it back to them. This is our business model. And it's true because we have this very close, you know, source and readership circle, and it allows us to have this, you know, luxury to invest in a newsroom and not worrying about getting clicks and getting baits. Because it's a struggle that a lot of newsrooms these days are struggling with, but having this, you know, expertise in deals and capital market information and the paywall is, you know, safeguarding us from all those troubles, if you would call it.

Yeah, thank you for that. And just on the topic of being heavily paywalled, we're seeing interesting shifts in how financial news is consumed from the rise of individual reporters being on Substack to the growth of video content on YouTube. As someone writing behind a paywall for a traditional publication, how do you think about differentiating your coverage so that you still add value to your audience?

Yeah, that's a very good question. I don't think we compete directly with, you know, financial influencers and people like that. I envy them sometimes because they have the flexibility and, you know, they can really flex their creative muscles to talk about catchy subjects.

But we do pride ourselves in, you know, having really accurate and timely information. And our subscribers, our readers, they actually make important business decisions based on our reporting. So it's very important for us to maintain that, you know, trustworthiness.

And we pride ourselves in, you know, having very accurate information, you know, that is very well sourced. And we don't, go with flaky, catchy stories that are only, like, click baits. We do, you know, pride ourselves in really accurate information. And that is why our subscribers are willing to pay a high subscription fee to continue to read our stories.

And, yeah, I think, you know, it's good to have different perspectives when covering a story. But the IFR’s take is always, I would say, the gold standard in the very niche and very nerdy world of capital markets.

Great. Shifting gears for a second, how did you come to cover sustainable finance in ESG? Was that something that was a personal interest or did you fall into that?

Yeah, very interesting. Because that's what I discovered when I was covering my last beat, which is emerging markets and China finance. And at the time when I was covering China, a lot of the conversations between investors were, how Chinese stocks should be evaluated from an ESG perspective. You know, China is growing as the second largest economy in the world and it's hard to exclude Chinese investments from a portfolio.

But also a lot of Chinese companies have human rights concerns. There is an argument somehow that, you know, no ESG portfolio should have any Chinese companies because they essentially answer to the Chinese Communist Party. And, you know, there is an argument that, you know, maybe for corporate government purposes, they aren't very reliable, and they aren't very, you know, well-governed in that perspective.

So at that time, I was fascinated by that debate and discussion. And it just led me naturally to the world of sustainable finance. And it's very interesting to see a world out there where investors are not just thinking about, like, a pure return, but also think about, you know, long term strategies and how ESG factors play into investment decisions.

I want to hone in a little bit on the term ‘ESG’. We're seeing that kind of fall out of favor with many companies and investors thinking that the term is going to be retired in the next few years. As a reporter covering ESG, what do you think that means for your beat?

Yeah, that's a very good question. And, yeah, you're right. ESG is not very fashionable these days. When we talk to people in the market, they usually refer it as ‘sustainable finance’ or ‘transition finance’ or anything along the line of energy transition without, you know, alluding to the term ESG.

My job title has ESG in it, so I sometimes think maybe I should change it at some point. But who knows? Like, the market comes and goes, and I don't know what will happen in a few years.

So from the narrative perspective, ESG has fallen out of favor somehow. But I think if you follow the money, if you track the capital, there are still a lot of activities in the ESG space, if you would still call it ‘ESG’. There are a lot of, like, climate funds for climate solutions being raised in the past few years. There are a lot of capital sitting on the market to invest in those technologies that will help us to decarbonize.

And we have recently written a story about how fund flows into ESG, particularly in fixed-income market, is actually growing, not just in the US, but also globally. So I think there is this disconnect between, the narrative and what's actually happening in the market, because there are still a lot of activities, which is, you know, people might not be label(ing) it as ‘ESG’, but we still have a lot of stories to cover and we still have a lot of things to write about, you know, from the ESG perspective.

Great. Can you talk about some of those stories for a PR audience who might be very curious what you're covering, where you're going next, what they should be pitching to you?

Yeah, sure. So an obvious one would be how the incoming Trump administration will affect the ESG space from a regulatory perspective. We spent a lot of time last year trying to track down the SEC climate disclosure rule, and it looks like there will be an overhaul, if not, like, a complete rescind in the law. So this is one of the big topics that we're trying to follow up next year.

We also focus a lot on, you know, broader US climate regulations. So not just federal regulations, but states like California, they have also come up with their own version of climate rules.

And I think there will be this ongoing fragmentation in the regulatory market going forward just because different states are doing different things. And it would be interesting to cover how corporate America react to that. Like, do they have a separate reporting regime in different parts of the US?

And, you know, it adds an even more complicated picture if you look at Europe and, you know, globally. Yeah. So regulations and geopolitics is very important for us to cover next year.

And also when we talk about capital market transactions, this is the bread and butter of what IFR does. And it is really interesting that when we talk to bankers, there is this sentiment that a lot of US issuers will start looking into the European market when raising capital. And it looks like there is more demand and potentially a price premium when it comes to raising sustainable labeled debt in Europe versus in the US.

So it will be interesting to see how the global capital market is just being increasingly intertwined and interconnected for companies to deal with this kind of political debacles.

That's really helpful. Thanks so much for that. And I'm curious also to learn a little bit more about how you work with PR professionals. So how many pitches do you get per day? Which ones do you say yes to? What stands out to you in your inbox?

Well, too many. I try to go over my inbox first things in the morning. There will be hundreds of pitches in my inbox. And to be honest, I spend, you know, maybe a few seconds looking at each of them. I prioritize emails from PRs that I personally know and that I have worked with and that have very specific pitches.

I think a lot of pitches that journalists usually get are very general. So sometimes it felt like, you know, it was a mass email being sent to dozens of journalists instead of a tailored email that is, you know, made for you. And sometimes it's frustrating because it might be, you know, a good pitch. It might be, you know, a good story underneath. But given the time constraint that we have, we can't read into all the pitches.

So I think it's helpful to have a very specific pitch, and that if time allows, it would be great to just have a background conversation and have a coffee chat with journalists. Because in that case, there will be, like, a mutual trust and understanding into each other's work.

And it will be easier when I have a story idea, I can just reach out to the PRs that I know work with companies that I will be interested to work with or to speak with. And then it's more effective than writing, like, a 500-word pitch and that it might never, you know, get the attention of the journalist, given how many pitches we get.

And, yeah, it's a shame as I am pretty good at replying to emails and, you know, responding to these pitches. But still, I think it's impossible for me to just get through every single pitch in the inbox. And, yeah, if you want to hit me up for a coffee chat, please do, because this is immensely helpful to our work.

Great. I'm sure lots of people will be wanting to hit you up for coffee. Be careful what you ask for.

I wanted to know a little bit more about a day in your life. So, like, how do you decide on what story you cover? How do you pitch to your editors in the morning? Do you work remotely or in the office?

Yeah. We work hybrid, three times in the office, for now, and I work across geography as well. My editor is based in the UK, so there is the time zone element to it.

We usually have a weekly meeting that we discuss our editorial priorities. But I'm very fortunate to be given a lot of flexibility and authority over my own ideas, about my own work. So I usually have ideas that are prepared for the week before coming to the editorial meeting. And we will prioritize them according, like, to the agenda and what's going to be more timely if there's a news hook to it.

And, yeah, I think it's a very flexible and a very creative environment where we are able to pitch our own stories, get a lead and chase a lead and be able to create a good story, a feature, around it.

And we also have a weekly magazine that's published in London. So I think that also gives us a lot of opportunities to write long-form features on top of covering deals and covering transactions. I think it's a good place for us to just, you know, get our thoughts together and try to write colorful and long-form pitches.

Do you prefer feature stories over short ones?

I mean, it's more fun to work with. But I also believe that in order to write a good feature story, you need the ingredients, and the ingredients, the nitty gritty details about a deal, about a transaction, other nerdy things, like term sheets and documents that no one wants to read is actually very good ingredients to a story.

So, yeah, I think it would be fun to just write features. But also, if you don't have a daily coverage of deals, it's hard to begin from scratch to write a feature.

Well, Michelle, this has been so helpful. Thank you so much.

I can't let you off the hook without tying the holidays into this episode somehow. So my last question to you is, what is your favorite holiday movie?

This is probably the most difficult question to answer. I have a very controversial take on this just because I love very cheesy Christmas holiday movies. My favorite one is, “Love Actually”.

Oh, I love that movie.

Yes. And, you know, it's just good to watch a movie without thinking the reality. It's just like, you know, enjoy the fight and, you know, look at how beautiful the actors are. And I think it's a good thing to just celebrate love and the complications of love during Christmas. And I'll be going back to Hong Kong for Christmas, and I'll have 17 hours on the flight to burn.

Wow.

So I can go through a lot of Christmas movies on the flight.

Well, that's a great time to catch up on holiday movies when you're on a flight.

Yeah, totally.

Thank you so much, Michelle. It's been an honor to have you.

Thank you so much.