Independents' Day? Analyst Behavior Surrounding the Global Settlement
Annals of Finance, 7(4) 529-547, 2011
Posted: 25 Aug 2009 Last revised: 26 Oct 2015
There are 2 versions of this paper
Independents' Day? Analyst Behavior Surrounding the Global Settlement
Date Written: August 24, 2011
Abstract
In this paper, we examine the impact of NASD Rule 2711, NYSE Rule 472, and the Global Research Settlement on the recommendation performance of independent, affiliated, and unaffiliated analysts. We find that analysts from all three types of institutions issued fewer strong buys following these regulations designed to separate investment banking and equity research. Affiliated analysts were less likely to issue innovative recommendations. While downgrades became more prevalent following the regulations, they were significantly less informative. Independent research firms set up after the Global Research Settlement are of inferior quality; they issue more optimistic and less innovative recommendations that generate lower announcement period returns than independent firms existing prior to the Settlement. Our overall findings question whether investors will be better served via the shift in equity research to analysts at independent research firms.
Keywords: Analyst Recommendations, Investment banks, Independent research institutions, Conflicts of interest, Global Settlement
JEL Classification: G24, G28
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation