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The Global Research Analyst Settlement

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1. INTRODUCTION & RESEARCH QUESTION The Global Research Analyst Settlement is an agreement between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and ten of the leading investment banks, it was announced April 28, 2003. The agreement came to fruition after vast investigations into possible conflicts of interests amongst security analysts working at investment banks. This agreement lead Barber, Lehavy and Trueman to write the paper; Comparing the stock recommendation performance of investment banks and independent research firms. The agreement spurred two important questions amongst the authors: (1) are the recommendations from independent research firms (IR) superior to recommendations from investment banks (IB); (2) was the implicit …show more content…

Clarke et al. (2004) researched this issue as well and concluded the long-term average abnormal returns for upgrades issued by IR, IB and brokerages are insignificantly different from each other; downgrades as well. Cliff (2004) found buy recommendations from IR significantly outperformed those of IB, and sell recommendations underperformed. Lin et al. (2005) examined time patterns rather than performance. Concluding, IB analysts are significantly slower to revise their buy and hold recommendations. However, the evidence is not as strong for downgrades from strong buy. While these papers helped shed light on an important topic there were holes within their analysis. Clarke et al. (2004) analyze abnormal returns for bull and bear market periods for stocks with IB business near the time of recommendation issuance. Additionally, a 250-day holding period was used for all recommended stock, with no regard for a change in recommendation or if it was dropped altogether. Moreover, Cliff (2004) offers no contrasts of abnormal returns between the bull and bear market stages or for firms with or without recent securities offerings. Also, there is no examination of non-leading IB analyst recommendations. Therefore, Barber et al. (2007) contribute to previous literature in a number of ways. Firstly, providing empirical backing for the Global Research Analyst Settlement; IB and IR

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