d by dy

The benefit of separating research and investment banking is clear:  it avoids the conflict of interest problem.  But as this article in the New York Times suggest, unintended consequences really should raise questions:

It may be true that analysts now put a lot more sell ratings on stocks than they used to, clearly a result of Mr. Spitzer’s settlement. But sell ratings are only a small part of the story. Analysts were never supposed to be just stock pickers. Ask any big institutional investor about what makes good research analysts and the answer is rarely the buy, sell or hold ratings. It is the information they can provide, the details they model and understanding the nuance of the executives. Those aspects of research don’t always end up in reports, but that’s what separates the good analysts from the not-so-good.

The second problem — which is an even bigger one — is that it is hard to find good research on small companies. All the focus has moved to large companies where the big money is sloshing around. And that makes being a small public company a very difficult task, since nobody’s paying any attention to them.

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