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73–368 PS 2001

ANALYZING THE ANALYSTS

HEARINGS

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON

CAPITAL MARKETS, INSURANCE, AND

GOVERNMENT SPONSORED ENTERPRISES

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

FINANCIAL SERVICES

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

JUNE 14; JULY 31, 2001

Printed for the use of the Committee on Financial Services

Serial No. 107–25

(

(II)

HOUSE COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES

MICHAEL G. OXLEY, Ohio, Chairman

JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa

MARGE ROUKEMA, New Jersey, Vice Chair

DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama

MICHAEL N. CASTLE, Delaware

PETER T. KING, New York

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma

ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio

BOB BARR, Georgia

SUE W. KELLY, New York

RON PAUL, Texas

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio

CHRISTOPHER COX, California

DAVE WELDON, Florida

JIM RYUN, Kansas

BOB RILEY, Alabama

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina

DOUG OSE, California

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

MARK GREEN, Wisconsin

PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona

VITO FOSELLA, New York

GARY G. MILLER, California

ERIC CANTOR, Virginia

FELIX J. GRUCCI, JR., New York

MELISSA A. HART, Pennsylvania

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia

MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

JOHN J. LAFALCE, New York

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

MAXINE WATERS, California

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York

KEN BENTSEN, Texas

JAMES H. MALONEY, Connecticut

DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon

JULIA CARSON, Indiana

BRAD SHERMAN, California

MAX SANDLIN, Texas

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

BARBARA LEE, California

FRANK MASCARA, Pennsylvania

JAY INSLEE, Washington

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

DENNIS MOORE, Kansas

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas

STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES, Ohio

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

RUBE ́ N HINOJOSA, Texas

KEN LUCAS, Kentucky

RONNIE SHOWS, Mississippi

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York

WILLIAM LACY CLAY, Missiouri

STEVE ISRAEL, New York

MIKE ROSS, Arizona

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

Terry Haines, Chief Counsel and Staff Director

(III)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CAPITAL MARKETS, INSURANCE, AND

GOVERNMENT SPONSORED ENTERPRISES

RICHARD H. BAKER, Louisiana, Chairman

ROBERT W. NEY, Ohio, Vice Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

CHRISTOPHER COX, California

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio

RON PAUL, Texas

SPENCER BACHUS, Alabama

MICHAEL N. CASTLE, Delaware

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma

BOB BARR, Georgia

WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona

DAVE WELDON, Florida

JIM RYUN, Kansas

BOB RILEY, Alabama

VITO FOSSELLA, New York

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GARY G. MILLER, California

DOUG OSE, California

PATRICK J. TOOMEY, Pennsylvania

MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey

MELISSA A. HART, Pennsylvania

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York

NYDIA M. VELA ́ ZQUEZ, New York

KEN BENTSEN, Texas

MAX SANDLIN, Texas

JAMES H. MALONEY, Connecticut

DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon

FRANK MASCARA, Pennsylvania

STEPHANIE TUBBS JONES, Ohio

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts

BRAD SHERMAN, California

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

JAY INSLEE, Washington

DENNIS MOORE, Kansas

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

RUBE ́ N HINOJOSA, Texas

KEN LUCAS, Kentucky

RONNIE SHOWS, Mississippi

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York

STEVE ISRAEL, New York

MIKE ROSS, Arizona

(V)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on:

June 14, 2001 .................................................................................................... 1

July 31, 2001 ..................................................................................................... 63

Appendix:

June 14, 2001 .................................................................................................... 115

July 31, 2001 ..................................................................................................... 208

WITNESSES

THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 2001

Bowman, Thomas A., CFA President and CEO, The Association for

Investment Management and Research ............................................................. 51

Cleland, Scott C., Chairman and CEO, The Precursor Group ............................. 49

Cole, Benjamin M., financial journalist and author, ‘‘The Pied Pipers of Wall

Street: How Analysts Sell You Down the River’’ ............................................... 47

Glassman, James K., Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, Host,

www.TechCentral.com ......................................................................................... 15

Hymowitz, Gregg S., founding partner, EnTrust Capital .................................... 12

Lackritz, Marc E., President, Securities Industry Association ............................ 18

Silvers, Damon A., Associate General Counsel, AFL-CIO ................................... 53

Tice, David W., Portfolio Manager, Prudent Bear Fund, publisher of the

institutional research service ‘‘Behind the Numbers’’ ....................................... 10

APPENDIX

Prepared statements:

Baker, Hon. Richard H. ................................................................................... 116

Oxley, Hon. Michael G. .................................................................................... 126

Jones, Hon. Stephanie T. ................................................................................. 118

Kanjorski, Hon. Paul ........................................................................................ 120

LaFalce, Hon. John J. ...................................................................................... 122

Ney, Hon. Bob ................................................................................................... 124

Bowman, Thomas A. ........................................................................................ 195

Cleland, Scott C. ............................................................................................... 184

Cole, Benjamin M. ............................................................................................ 181

Glassman, James K. ......................................................................................... 166

Hymowitz, Gregg S. .......................................................................................... 160

Lackritz, Marc E. .............................................................................................. 172

Silvers, Damon A. ............................................................................................. 199

Tice, David W. ................................................................................................... 128

(VI)

WITNESSES

TUESDAY, JULY 31, 2001

Page

Byron, Christopher, syndicated radio commentator, columnist, MSNBC.com ... 90

Glantz, Ronald, former Managing Director, Tiger Management, former Director of Research and Chief Investment Officer, Paine Webber .......................... 87

Hill, Charles, Director of Research, Thomson Financial-First Call ..................... 95

Kianpoor, Kei, CEO, Investars.com ........................................................................ 100

Lashinsky, Adam, Silicon Valley columnist, The Street.com ............................... 102

Unger, Hon. Laura S., Acting Chairman, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission .................................................................................................................. 70

Winkler, Matt, Editor-in-Chief, Bloomberg News ................................................. 98

APPENDIX

Prepared statements:

Baker, Hon. Richard H. ................................................................................... 209

Oxley, Hon. Michael G. .................................................................................... 225

Castle, Hon. Michael N. ................................................................................... 211

Hinojosa, Hon. Rube ́n ....................................................................................... 214

Israel, Hon. Steve ............................................................................................. 215

Kanjorski, Hon. Paul ........................................................................................ 217

LaFalce, Hon. John J. ...................................................................................... 219

Byron, Christopher ........................................................................................... 245

Glantz, Ronald .................................................................................................. 241

Hill, Charles L. ................................................................................................. 248

Kianpoor, Kei .................................................................................................... 261

Lashinsky, Adam .............................................................................................. 266

Unger, Hon. Laura S. ....................................................................................... 227

Winkler, Matt ................................................................................................... 253

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL PROVIDED FOR THE RECORD

LaFalce, Hon. John J.:

Letters to Securities and Exchange Commission’s Acting Chairman,

Laura S. Unger, July 5, 2001, July 30, 2001 .............................................. 221

(1)

ANALYZING THE ANALYSTS

THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 2001

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CAPITAL MARKETS, INSURANCE,

AND GOVERNMENT SPONSORED ENTERPRISES,

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room

2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Richard H. Baker,

[chairman of the subcommittee], presiding.

Present: Chairman Baker; Representatives Oxley, Ney, Shays,

Paul, Castle, Royce, Barr, Weldon, Biggert, Miller, Ose, Hart, Kanjorski, Bentsen, J. Maloney of Connecticut, Hooley, Mascara, Jones,

LaFalce, Capuano, Sherman, Inslee, Moore, Hinojosa, Lucas,

Shows, Israel and Ross.

Chairman BAKER. I would like to call this hearing of the Capital

Markets Subcommittee to order. We’re starting promptly on time

this morning. We like to have the ability to start trading as soon

as the opening bell rings around here.

First, by prior agreement with Mr. LaFalce and Mr. Kanjorski,

opening statements today will be limited to Chairman Oxley, myself, Ranking Member LaFalce, and Mr. Kanjorski, who is on his

way, to expedite the proceedings of the hearing this morning.

All other Members’ statements will be incorporated into the

record.

I am appreciative for the courtesies extended by Mr. Kanjorski

and Mr. LaFalce in facilitating this meeting this morning.

As we all know, this is an issue of some importance and volatility. There was a question on a recent magazine cover that struck

me as particularly appropriate: ‘‘Can We Ever Trust Wall Street

Again?’’

The simple answer to that question is, we must. That is, we must

find a way. It’s simply not a choice. America’s prosperity, as always, is intrinsically bound to the influx of capital investment that

fuels business expansion, job growth and technology.

To the extent that American consumers have been temporarily

shaken by the recent market downturn, our first goal today here

is to begin a process of rebuilding that confidence, not only to reaffirm American consumers’ faith in the fairness of the market, but

actually to have their trust.

Clearly, I am a pro-market conservative legislator and I am

going to be one of the last on the subcommittee, I think, to suggest

Federal intervention to solve every problem.

2

However, the foundation of the free market system is based on

the free flow of information which is straightforward and unbiased.

I believe this subcommittee has a very high responsibility to safeguard this principle.

I am deeply troubled by the evidence of the apparent erosion by

Wall Street of the bedrock of ethical conduct.

It’s a new and continually changing marketplace. Since 1995, online trading has resulted in enormous growth of investment by

working families, some 800,000 trades a day, I am told, with a typical demographic profile of a $60,000 annual income with net worth

less than 50.

These individual investors rely on and believe what they think

is objective, professional advice from sophisticated analysts.

There’s a message here. These investors are the future of the dynamic growth of the market place. They deserve fair treatment not

only for their best interests, but for the growth of the market.

Folks who work hard to pay the house money, pay their taxes,

and the grocery bill don’t have luxury to be able to speculatively

gamble. Over the last few years, Wall Street’s insiders have whispered knowingly about a grade inflation, as it’s called, resulting in

what I think is a very coded language in analysts’ recommendations.

A goal of this hearing is to begin speaking openly about what has

apparently been unspoken in the past. I’m amazed. I’m the chairman of the Capital Market Subcommittee in the United States

Congress. I learned this yesterday. Strong buy does not mean buy,

but actually out-perform.

It really makes you wonder what out-perform or accumulate

must mean. I am concerned not only about the potential for significant losses by the unwary and misinformed individual investor, but

the possibility of overall market volatility that results when a more

rational view does return.

Today, we are going to inquire into disturbing media and academic reports about pervasive conflicts of interest, which appear to

be compromising the integrity of current market practice.

In fact, I want to enter into the record at this time, a study from

the Harvard and Wharton Business School study entitled ‘‘The Relationship Between Analysts’ Forecasts of Long-Term Earnings

Growth and Stock Price Performance Following Equity Offerings.’’

I want to quote from that report one paragraph: ‘‘Our evidence

suggests that the coexistence of brokerage services and underwriting services in the same institution leads sell-side analysts to

compromise their responsibility to brokerage clients in order to attract underwriting business. Investment banks claim to have Chinese walls to prevent such a conflict. Our evidence raises questions

about the reliability of the Chinese walls. We document that analysts officiated with the lead underwriter of an offering tend to

issue more overly optimistic growth forecasts than unaffiliated analysts. Furthermore, the magnitude of the affiliated analysts’ growth

forecasts is positively related to the fee basis paid to the lead underwriter. Finally, equity offerings covered only by affiliated analysts experience the greatest post-offering under performance, suggesting that these offerings are the most over-priced.’’

3

I have to say this in my own words, as I basically understand

it. Maybe there hasn’t been a complete erosion in the Chinese walls

that traditionally shield analysts from investment banking interests. But I have to say that I believe there are some folks out there

manufacturing a lot of Chinese ladders for people to climb back

and forth over those walls as they deem appropriate.

A market bubble that bursts is the time when people look for

someone to blame. I believe it rather should be an opportunity for

all concerned in the activity to step back, take a deep breath, and

reexamine their own accountability to make sure it doesn’t happen

again, and all parties have some shared responsibility.

Today, we focus on the analysts’ conflicts. At some point, we will

take a look at the investment banks and the institutional investors.

And I must say a word about the financial press. They have

much greater impact than many have given them their allocation

for. It is irresponsible reporting to quote unquestioningly irresponsible analysts’ reports and put them on the cover of magazines and

make them into rock stars.

There is some examination due in this area as well. Consequently, while I appreciate the effort of the Securities Industry

Association with their best practices proposal, put forward only 2

days ago, I am not yet convinced we have a remedy to our problem.

I take the very drafting of them as a positive sign that the industry accepts that problems may exist and I am naturally going to

take a very careful look at any document that, on its face, has a

disclaimer, which I’m paraphrasing here, respectfully, we’re going

to do our best to be honest and straightforward unless of course circumstances dictate we must do something different.

Today is not the end of our discussion, but the beginning. In the

next few months, we will access recommendations, converse with

regulators and, at the end of the process, the subcommittee, I hope,

will come to a bipartisan agreement as to the best practices standard. Make the recommendations to regulators, and only if necessary, in my view, propose legislation, particularly for the sake of

the growing number of $200 investors who are out there this morning on the job, working trying to make the next dollar.

It is far more important to do this very carefully, thoroughly,

rather than do it quickly. Therefore, this hearing this morning

marks the beginning.

It is my intention to have several hearings over the coming

months. At the suggestion of many, we will hear from regulators,

we will hear from academicians, we will hear from all those concerned who have a financial interest in seeing trust become the

bedrock of our financial marketplace again.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Richard Baker can be found on

page 116 in the appendix.]

Mr. Kanjorski.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

We meet today to consider the issue of analyst independence, a

subject of great significance to our nation’s vibrant capital markets.

I congratulate you on your diligence in convening this very important and well-timed hearing.

I would make, at this point, two observations, however, Mr.

Chairman. As I walked down the hall, it is the first time in my

4

memory that the line is down to the corner and around the corner,

and down the other hallway. It reminds me that when I was a little

boy, I read the 50 years of the New Yorker cartoon book, which

asked a very pungent question: Where are the investors’ yachts? I

think today’s crowd brings that cartoon back into play. Maybe that

is why we are meeting here.

The second observation is one of internal process. I do want to

register my great disappointment with the House leadership in

convening a very important bill involving SEC revenues that is on

the floor today at the precise moment we are having this hearing.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, several of us on this side of the aisle

are opposed to the passage of the bill in its present form, and intended to argue that position on the floor today, as well as offer

amendments in accordance therewith. And, as a result of the importance of this hearing, and the conflict with that bill on the floor,

we are really put in an impossible situation either to miss our opportunity here and the intelligence we can gather, or to have a bill

go through without comment. I hope this scheduling was not intentional, and I hope it never happens again.

With that said, it is a well-timed hearing. I am not attempting

to be facetious when I say that. Over the last several years, the

perceived immortality of the U.S. economy and the emergence of

the Internet have contributed to extraordinary interest and growth

in our capital markets.

Investors’ enhanced access to financial reporting and their newfound ability to trade electronically also helped to fuel this dynamic

expansion. Unlike some other sources of investment advice, the

vast majority of the general public has usually considered the research prepared by Wall Street experts as reliable and valuable.

With the burst of the high tech bubble, however, came rising skepticism among investors concerning the objectivity of some analysts’ overly optimistic recommendations. Many in the media have also

asserted that a variety of conflicts of interest may have gradually

depreciated analysts’ independence during the Internet craze and

affected the quality of their opinions.

We have debated the issues surrounding analysts’ independence

for many years. After the deregulation of trading commissions in

1975, Wall Street firms began using investment banking as a

means to compensate their research departments, and within the

last few years the tying of analysts’ compensation to investment

banking activities has become increasingly popular.

As competition among brokerage firms for IPOs, mergers and acquisitions grew, so did the potential for large compensation packages for sell-side analysts. These pay practices, however, may have

also affected analyst independence.

While some brokerage houses suggest that they have erected an

impenetrable Chinese wall, which you mentioned, that divides analyst research from other firm functions like investment banking

and trading, the truth, as we have learned from many recent news

stories, is that they must initiate a proactive effort to rebuild their

imaginary walls.

The release of some startling statistics has also called into question the actual independence of analysts. A report by First Call, for

example, found that less than one percent of 28,000 recommendaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:34 Feb 06, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 73368.TXT HBANK1 PsN: HBANK1
5

tions issued by brokerage analysts during late 1999 and most of

2000 called for investors to sell stocks in their portfolio. Within the

same timeframe, the NASDAQ composite average fell dramatically.

In hindsight, these recommendations appear dubious. Furthermore,

First Call has determined that the ratio of buy-to-sell recommendations by brokerage analysts rose from 6-to-1 in the early 1990s, to

100-to-1 in 2000.

Many parties have consequently suggested that analysts may

have become merely cheerleaders for the investment banking division of their brokerage houses. I agree. To me, it appears that we

may have obsequious analysts instead of objective analysts.

Today’s hearing will help us better understand the nature of this

growing problem and discover what actions might restore the

public’s trust and investors’ confidence in analysts. Like you, Mr.

Chairman, I generally favor industry solving its own problems

through the use of self-regulation whenever possible. But in this instance, the press, regulators, law enforcement agencies, and

spurned investors have also begun their own examinations into

these matters. I suspect that these parties may demand even greater reforms than those recently proposed by the Securities Industry

Association, including the need for full and robust disclosure of any

and all conflicts of interest. To address these concerns, the industry

may eventually need to come forward with a way to audit and enforce the best practices it now proposes. If not, others may seek to

impose their own solutions to resolve this problem.

We will hear today from eight distinguished witnesses representing a variety of viewpoints. I am, Mr. Chairman, particularly

pleased that you invited a representative from the AFL-CIO to join

in our discussions. I would have also liked to learn from the concerns of SEC and NASD, among others.

I was, however, heartened to learn yesterday that you plan to

hold additional hearings on this issue in the upcoming months with

the concerned parties.

As we determined last year during our lengthy deliberations over

Government sponsored enterprises, a roundtable discussion is often

the most appropriate forum for us to deliberate over complex

issues. In the future, I urge you to convene a roundtable over the

matters related to analyst independence. A roundtable discussion

would force the participants to challenge each other’s assumptions

and assertions in an open environment. It would also provide us

with greater insights than testimony that has been scrutinized and

sterilized through the clearance process. A roundtable debate

would further allow us to more fully educate our Members about

the substantive issues involved in this debate.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, let me caution all Members of this

subcommittee, and particularly Members on my side. This is an

issue that evidently is somewhat sexy and popular just by evidence

of the amount of television here today. To people in public office

and, quote: ‘‘politicians,’’ it may be a great temptation to be a

demagogue.

I join you in urging our fellow Members and others in our society

to hold back their fire and their conclusions. We have the most successful financial and capital markets in the world.

6

Because we are in some difficulty economically in the markets,

this is not the time to grab a club and take personal advantage by

playing the role of lead demagogue. We cannot afford that, and the

American economy cannot afford that.

So I look forward to hearing the testimony today. I think that

over the next several months, if we use more open fora, we may

be able to find a solution to a problem that is self-regulation by the

Association and the industry itself. I would join you in that effort

and hopefully, that is the best conclusion that we could reach.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Paul Kanjorski can be found on

page 120 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Kanjorski.

Just by way of assurance, the subcommittee’s hearing date was

established some time ago without knowledge of the floor consideration. Your point concerning the fee reduction bill on the floor

today and the subcommittee hearing simultaneously is a matter of

concern, but I assure you it was not an intentioned effort to create

difficulty.

I happen to have some interest in the opposite side on that matter, and would like to be there to watch you on the floor very carefully.

Mr. OXLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me commend you for

holding this hearing.

One of my goals, as the Chairman of this new Committee, is to

help investors by improving the way they get information on which

they base their investment decisions. Due in large part to the advances in technology that have brought to us the Internet, we’ve

become not only a Nation of investors, but a Nation of self-taught

investors.

No longer do investors have to rely on the information they obtain from their broker to make their investment decisions. Today,

there is a veritable smorgasbord of information about the marketplace available to the public through financial websites, print publications, television, and virtually every media outlet.

There is a wealth of data available to investors. I launched this

subcommittee’s inquiries into improving the way stock market

quotes are collected and disseminated into the impact of Regulation

FD with an eye toward assuring that investors have broad access

to the highest quality information about the marketplace.

Today’s hearing continues our work toward that goal. I commend

you, Mr. Chairman, for your work on each of these issues and for

holding this important hearing today. I heartily agree with the Supreme Court’s characterization in the Dirks case of the importance

of analysts to investors to the marketplace.

And I quote: ‘‘The value to the entire market of analysts’ efforts

cannot be gainsaid. Market initiatives are significantly enhanced

by their efforts to carry it out and analyze information. Thus the

analysts’ work rebounds to the benefit of all investors.’’

Yet the important work of analysts is not to the marketplace or

investors any good at all, if it is compromised by conflicts of interest. There has been a great deal of concern raised by the media by

regulators and by market participants about the perception that

7

analysts are not in fact providing the independent, unbiased research that investors and the marketplace rely on.

We are here today to learn whether the Chinese wall that is long

cited as the separation between the research and investment banking arms of securities firms has developed a crack or is completely

crumbling.

I am encouraged that Wall Street has recognized that this is not

a phantom problem, and has proposed industry best practices

guidelines to address these conflicts about which we will hear

today.

But I must emphasize that if that Chinese wall is in need of repair, wallpaper will not suffice.

While I am a strong proponent of free market solutions, I and

the subcommittee plan to examine these industry guidelines very

closely to ensure that they are tough, they are fair, and they are

effective.

I am distressed by the statistics that as the markets were crashing last year, less than two percent of analysts’ recommendations

were on the sell-side.

It is no wonder there is public outcry about analysts’ independence when the statistics are so stark. But it seems to me that the

problem is not simply biased analysts. The firms that employ these

analysts tie their compensation to the analysts’ success in bringing

in investment banking business.

Then the firms are undermining the independence of their own

employees’ recommendations.

Similarly, companies that pressure analysts through either the

carrot on the stick or of increased or decreased investment banking

business in turn for favorable reports exacerbates the problem.

Likewise, institutional investors also exert pressure on analysts

to issue rosy reports about the stocks those institutional investors

hold in their own portfolios.

We intend to examine every angle of this issue in order to best

determine how to resolve it. Our subcommittee’s goal here is to improve industry practices and I call on the industry to eliminate the

conflicts of interest created by compensation structures and insufficient separation of investment banking and research, and I call on

them also to provide meaningful and understandable disclosure to

investors that will enable investors to evaluate, for themselves,

what weight they should give the recommendations of any particular analyst.

Mr. Chairman, this hearing is this subcommittee’s first step in

a long-term effort to ensure that the Nation’s investors have the

best possible information about the stocks in which they invest. Ensuring that investors could rely on the expertise of analysts, without any doubt as to their integrity or independence, could not be

more fundamental to that effort.

I yield back the balance of my time.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Michael G. Oxley can be found

on page 126 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly appreciate your leadership on this issue as well.

Mr. LaFalce.

Mr. LAFALCE. Thank you very much, Chairman Baker.

8

Today, our subcommittee confronts the very important question

of whether investors are receiving unbiased research from Wall

Street securities analysts.

I don’t think they are, and I commend the Chairman for holding

these hearings. I’m very concerned that investors have become victims of recommendations of analysts who have apparent and direct

conflicts of interest relating to their investment advice.

So I think this morning’s hearing is extremely important. It is

anomalous that as our subcommittee considers this extremely important hearing, the bill that was reported out of our subcommittee

is on the floor of the House of Representatives either now or in a

matter of moments, reducing the fees of the SEC by approximately

$14 billion over the next 10 years, without regard to the capacity

of the SEC to effectively enforce the laws and regulations responsible for investor independence and objectivity, responsible for accounting independence and objectivity, responsible for so many of

the other problems which are probably just the tip of the iceberg

of problems existing for investors in this multi-trillion marketplace

that the individual citizen is participating in today in the United

States in a manner unparalleled in American history.

That’s very regrettable, but in any event, I’m glad for the hearing. It’s clear that sell-side analysts work for firms that have business relationships with the companies they follow. Most analysts

are under increased pressure to look for and attract business and

to help the firm keep the business it has.

The analyst is asked to be both banker and stock counselor and

these two goals often live in conflict. The individual investor is

often unaware of the various economic and strategic interests that

the investment bank and the analysts have that can fundamentally

undermine the integrity and quality of analysts’ research.

The disclosure of these conflicts is often general, inconspicuous,

boiler plate, meaningless. In addition, current conflict disclosure

rules do not even reach analysts touting various stocks.

For example, on CNBC or CNN, as former Chairman of the SEC,

Arthur Levitt noted, I wonder how many investors realize the professional and financial pressures many analysts face to dispense

recommendations that are more in a company’s interest rather

than the public’s interest.

I believe it is precisely these pressures that moved many analysts, during the technology boom over the last several years, to

recommend companies and assign valuations beyond any relationship to company fundamentals.

In a recent article, a very well-known technology analyst was

quoted as responding to questions concerning the legitimacy of the

valuation of a particular company, and the analyst said, we have

one general response to the word ‘‘valuation’’ these days. Bull market. We believe we have entered a new valuation zone.

The article to which I refer, and many, many, many others like

it, make the case that these conflicts may have profoundly undermined analysts’ integrity and possibly misled investors. I think possibly should be almost certainly misled investors as analysts held

fast to companies, as the market eroded out from under them.

The Securities Industry has suggested new guidelines to address

some of the conflicts we will discuss in today’s hearing. Their iniVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:34 Feb 06, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 73368.TXT HBANK1 PsN: HBANK1
9

tiative is an important first step. I do not believe, however, that

these voluntary guidelines go far enough to address the problem.

I am pleased therefore that today’s hearing will begin a process

whereby our subcommittee and the regulators can begin to take a

hard look at these troubling questions affecting the American investing public.

I look forward to the hearings where the SEC and the NASD,

amongst others, where academic analysts, where investors, attorneys, and others can testify on the question of analyst objectivity.

In my view, the Securities regulators’ perspective is especially

critical. We cannot fulfill our oversight responsibility if the Government and quasi-government entities, charged by Congress with the

protection of investors, have not been heard.

Not only do the Securities regulators have an important perspective on the magnitude of the problem, they also have a view on how

the industry is complying with current regulations on information

barriers, so-called Chinese walls and the disclosure of conflicts.

In sum, I am increasingly concerned that industry self-regulation

may not be sufficient to guard against the problems and abuses we

are seeing, and that more disclosure of these conflicts, in itself,

may not suffice to protect the individual investor.

So I hope today’s hearing is only the first step in confronting

these very troubling issues of securities analysts conflicts of interest that mean trillions of dollars to people in neighborhoods across

America.

I thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John J. LaFalce can be found

on page 122 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. LaFalce.

By prior agreement, we had hoped to limit opening statements

to the Members previously recognized, and I intend to do so, but

I have been requested by Ms. Jones to be recognized for 30 seconds

to explain her necessity for departing from the hearing this morning.

Ms. Jones.

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, Colleagues, I

appreciate the opportunity to submit my statement for the record.

This morning, the National Institutes of Health will be naming

a building after the Honorable Congressman Louis Stokes, my

predecessor. I must go out there and congratulate them. Thank you

very much. I submit my statement for the record.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Stephanie T. Jones can be

found on page 118 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much, Ms. Jones.

At this time, I would like to proceed with the introduction of our

panelists.

Our first to participate this morning, we welcome, is Mr. David

Tice, Portfolio Manager, the Prudent Bear Fund, and publisher of

the institutional research service known as ‘‘Behind the Numbers.’’ Welcome, Mr. Tice.

For the record, all witness statements will be made part of the

record. Please feel free to summarize. We will have a number of

questions for the panel during the course of the morning, and we

would like to maximize that time as best we can.

10

Please proceed, sir.

STATEMENT OF DAVID W. TICE, PORTFOLIO MANAGER, PRUDENT BEAR FUND, AND PUBLISHER OF THE INSTITUTIONAL

RESEARCH SERVICE ‘‘BEHIND THE NUMBERS’’

Mr. TICE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. David W. Tice

& Associates operates two different businesses. We publish ‘‘Behind

the Numbers,’’ an institutional research service, and serve as investment advisor to two mutual funds.

I started ‘‘Behind the Numbers’’ in 1988 because I realized institutional investors did not receive independent, unbiased research

from their traditional brokerage firms, which almost never issued

sell recommendations.

To our knowledge, there are now fewer than six other significant

firms that concentrate on only sell recommendations.

We like to call ourselves ‘‘The Truth Squad’’ with regard to individual Wall Street recommendations. The truth is, this lack of analyst independence has been great for our business. Currently, more

than 250 institutional investors purchase our service. Our 15 largest clients manage more than $2.3 trillion.

David W. Tice & Associates, Inc., is a modest-sized organization

of 17 professionals, yet every 2 weeks we butt heads with the best

and brightest from Wall Street’s biggest firms with our assessment

of company fundamentals.

Of nearly 900 sell recommendations issued between 1988 and

2001, 67 percent have under performed the market with about half

declining in price in the biggest bull market in this century.

Usually our analysis makes our research clients uncomfortable

as well as potential mutual fund shareholders because it differs

from the Wall Street consensus.

However, our research has earned respect because of its quality

and because people realize that our conclusions are free of the biases that affect traditional Wall Street research.

Our job is not to be pessimistic or optimistic, but to be realistic

and to help protect clients’ capital. In this spirit, and with the benefit of our insight into hundreds of U.S. companies that we analyze,

the U.S. stock market and economy, we concluded that we had a

bubble stock market and a bubble economy.

So we organized the ‘‘Prudent Bear Fund’’ in 1996, the same year

that Alan Greenspan made his famous ‘‘irrational exuberance’’

speech.

We believe the individual investor should be warned and should

have access to a vehicle to hedge himself in a market decline. Some

will question our objectivity since we manage this bear’s fund, and

say that I’m just talking ‘‘my book.’’

But I believe passionately in every word of my testimony, and it’s

all based on fact, rigorous analysis, and solid macro-economic theory.

There is no question, Mr. Chairman, that Wall Street’s research

is riddled with structural conflicts of interest. Compounding this

problem, according to a recent study, those who closely follow Wall

Street’s stock recommendations have suffered abysmal investment

performance as this study showed that from 1997 through May

2001, only 4 out of 19 major Wall Street firms would have genVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:34 Feb 06, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 73368.TXT HBANK1 PsN: HBANK1
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erated positive returns over the 41⁄2 year period in the biggest bull

market in this century.

In our testimony, we’ve provided many examples of conflicts.

Generally, our perception of this situation today coincides with the

Chief Investment Officer of Asset Allocation of a multi-billion dollar

asset manager who said, and I quote: ‘‘Research analysts have become either touts for their firm’s corporate finance departments or

the distribution system for the party line of the companies they follow. The customer who follows the analysts’ advice is paying the

price.’’

Today, the power structure of most Wall Street firms is simply

concentrated too much in investment banking; and even with the

supposed Chinese walls, there are still multiple cases of analysts

reporting to investment bankers.

This is an outrage. This conspicuous lack of objectivity in research is indicative of what we see as a general lack of responsibility on Wall Street today, one that’s having a corrosive effect on

the marketplace.

The main emphasis of our testimony has addressed the consequences that arise when capital markets lack integrity, stemming largely from this lack of objectivity. This problem is much

larger, Mr. Chairman, than whether or not individual investors are

disadvantaged or have suffered losses, or if analysts receive oversized bonuses.

What’s at stake we believe is that a sound and fair marketplace

is at the very foundation of capitalism. It is the functioning of the

market pricing mechanism that determines which businesses and

industries are allocated precious resources, and it is this very allocation process that’s the critical determining factor for the longterm economic well being of our nation.

When the marketplace regresses to little more than a casino, the

pricing mechanism falters and the allocation process becomes dysfunctional. When the marketplace’s reward system so favors the

aggressive financier and the speculator over the prudent businessman and investor, the consequences will be self-reinforcing booms

and busts, a hopeless misallocation of resources, and an unbalanced economy.

We believe that in an environment of more independent analysis,

it would have led to a more efficient capital allocation where we

would have financed fewer internet companies less fiber optic bandwidth, and instead perhaps built more refineries in California

power plants.

When credit is made readily available to the speculating community, failure to rein in the developing speculation risks ponzi-type

investment schemes. Such an environment will also foster a redistribution of wealth from the unsuspecting to those most skilled in

speculation.

Such an environment creates dangerous instability, what we

refer to as financial and economic fragility.

The financial sector is creating enormous amounts of new debt

that’s often being poorly spent. Sophisticated Wall Street, with its

reckless use of leverage, proliferation of derivatives, and sophisticated instruments, is funding loans that should not be made.

12

While such extraordinary availability of credit certainly does foster an economic boom, it must be recognized that history provides

numerous examples of the precariousness of booms built on aggressive credit growth that are unsustainable and dangerous.

Goldman Sachs’ Abby Joseph Cohen has used the phrase ‘‘U.S.

Supertanker Economy,’’ but the problem is Wall Street has created

a ship that has run terribly off course. Wall Street’s lack of independence has fostered this misdirection and camouflaged the fact

that our U.S. economy is in danger because of our capital

misallocation and credit excess.

This may sound ridiculous to most of you with nearly uniform optimism among traditional economists. But if you doubt me, I’ll

quote ex-Fed Chairman Paul Volker, who more than 2 years ago

said, quote: ‘‘The fate of the world economy is now totally dependent upon the U.S. economy, which is dependent upon the stock

market whose growth is dependent on about 50 stocks, half of

which have never reported any earnings.’’ If I could go to our potential solutions. We do not pretend to be

experts in the area of Securities Law and Regulation. We have presented a list of nine solutions in the spirit of general directions to

take, not specific laws to change.

Not included in our list of solutions are proposals that try to tinker with analysts’ compensation schemes or require some type of

peer review. We believe the problems are so significant and so critically important, bold solutions, not incremental change, are required.

Tremendous political courage will be needed to effect change in

this area. Those who have benefited from the current broken system have enormous financial resources.

The raw political power of those who favor the current system

cannot be underestimated.

The voice of those favoring change will be faint, but well worth

listening to. However, we must remember that trust in our institutions is the cornerstone of a vibrant capitalist society, and lies at

the heart of a healthy democracy.

Chairman BAKER. Can you begin to wind it up, sir?

Mr. TICE. Yes. We commend the subcommittee and Chairman for

tackling such a difficult and timely issues. The stakes are enormous.

Thank you for the honor of appearing before this subcommittee.

[The prepared statement of David Tice can be found on page 128

in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Tice. I appreciate your courtesy, sir.

Our next witness to appear is Mr. Gregg Hymowitz, founding

partner, EnTrust Capital.

Welcome, sir.

STATEMENT OF GREGG S. HYMOWITZ, FOUNDING PARTNER,

EnTRUST CAPITAL

Mr. HYMOWITZ. Mr. Chairman Baker, esteemed Members of the

subcommittee, I’m Gregg Hymowitz, a founding partner in EnTrust

Capital. It’s a pleasure to share with you this morning my summarized thoughts and observation.

13

My comments today represent solely my personal views and not

necessarily the views of EnTrust Capital.

Is there a conflict of interest among sell-side analysts and the

companies they cover? In my opinion, the answer is yes.

But the relationship between analyst, issuer, and the investing

public is a complex network of checks and balances.

Typically, the analyst works for an investment bank whose bankers are attempting to move business from the issuer, often in the

form of a capital market transaction. Therefore, most analysts recognize it does not behoove their firm’s self-interest to have a negative view on the issuer.

Additionally, most analysts’s compensation at investment banks

has historically been partially determined by the amount of high

margin capital market transaction revenues for which each analyst

was responsible.

The communication between analyst and issuers is symbiotic.

The issuer needs the analyst’s coverage to get potential investors

interested in buying, and the analyst’s life blood is an open communication channel to the issuer.

One can surmise that communication is easier and more open between parties when they are aligned. The pressures and conflicts

on the sell-side analysts during the recent equity bubble were exaggerated by the compressed period of time the capital markets were

accommodative.

Investment banks, due to the demand from the investing public,

and the supply created by venture capitalists, took hundreds of

companies public that, in historical terms, would never have made

it out the door.

The need for new valuation metrics became apparent. Free cash

flow and earnings metrics were replaced with multiples of sales,

developers, and my favorite, web hits.

Now while many of these metrics have turned out to be just

plain silly and will continue to remain just plain silly, we need to

remember 20 years ago, a now widely recognized metric called

EBITDA was created to analyze certain profitless companies.

Investment banks have been recommending stocks to their clients roughly since the 1792 Buttonwood Agreement. Historically,

however, the Morning Call was the province of the institutional

money manager, who understood where this information was coming from and was able to evaluate its relative importance.

With the rise of the Internet, Wall Street calls are everywhere,

rich with a frenzy day trading analyst calls took on exaggerated

importance. Often the trading public seized upon these calls and

stocks would move significantly. Remember, there was little or no

public uproar over analysts’ rosy coverage in 1999, when many investors were making in the market hand-over-fist.

For years, the institutional money manager understood from

where the sell-side research held, and as it became more dispersed,

the individual investor has now caught on.

In this age of information overload, the individual has the responsibility to perform his or her own due diligence. For decades

now, the institutional investor has been ranking equity analysts,

and today there are dozens and dozens of free websites, which rank

analysts.

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These resources are doing an excellent job of informing those investors who are willing to invest the time on doing due diligence,

and which analysts to follow.

But for the individual who merely sees the stock market as a

craps table, without doing any of his or her own research on either

the issuer or the analyst, does so at one’s own peril.

One idea that may coerce analysts to be more thoughtful in their

recommendation is for investment banks to actually urge analysts

to own the stocks they suggest, with proper internal safeguards to

prevent such things as front running in addition to appropriate disclosure, analysts actually owning the stocks they recommend actually may help ameliorate the biases that exist.

The old Wall Street adage to analysts is, don’t tell me what you

like, tell me what you own. Many individuals want to find a causal

relationship between the market’s crash and the lack of sell recommendations among sell-side analysts.

I believe no causal relationship exists. While there have been

many buy ratings on the steel, food, and retail stocks, with little

if any sell recommendations, they did not experience the meteoric

rise many tech stocks had over the past couple of years, incorrectly

many believe that there are few sell recommendations on Wall

Street.

There are, however, numerous firms, including Mr. Tice’s, that

specialize in providing only sell recommendations. Unfortunately,

much of this research is not widely circulated to the individual investor because, quite frankly, it is very costly. There are also many

countervailing pressures on analysts that work toward providing a

balanced view, first and foremost. On Wall Street, reputation and

record mean everything.

The analysts over time who are the most thoughtful, responsible

and correct earn the respect of the investment community. This institutional pressure for analysts to be correct is the largest force

compelling unbiased work.

Another clear way of holding analysts accountable is for the investment bank to publish each analyst’s performance record. This

will provide more information to the investors and aid those who

are superior stock pickers.

Investment bankers should improve the materiality of disclosure

statements. It is more important from a potential conflict standpoint to know if the bank is currently engaged by the issuer or is

pitching the firm new business, rather than the typical historical

disclosures.

The disclosure statement should consist of whether the analyst

personally owns the security. Equity ownership by analysts is a

positive occurrence, not something to be shunned.

I will sum up. The new information age, combined with Regulation FD, Fair Disclosure, is impacting the role of the analyst, with

companies now severely limited to what they can say to analysts.

Prior to generally released news, the importance and edge that

analysts have over the investing public has significantly diminished. Unfortunately often, and I know this from personal experience, the only way to learn this business is from mistakes. That

costs money.

15

Investors have learned a hard lesson. With huge rewards come

equally huge risks, the bubble has burst. There will be other manias with new and probably evermore fanciful evaluation metrics

in our future.

Investors should not believe everything they read, hear, or see.

In the new Regulation FD Internet age, the playing field has been

leveled, possibly lowered. And therefore the responsibility accordingly must be shared.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I’d be honored to attempt to answer any questions the subcommittee may have.

[The prepared statement of Gregg S. Hymowitz can be found on

page 160 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much.

Just by way of notice to Members, we have a 15-minute vote on

the floor pending, followed by two 5-minutes. It would be my intention to recognize Mr. Glassman for his opening statement, and then

recess the subcommittee at that moment to proceed to the votes.

We’ll be out for about 15 minutes. We will try to get back as quickly as possible.

Mr. LAFALCE. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman.

I understand what you just articulated. I wonder if we might

consider—I suppose this depends upon the schedule of the witnesses of panel one and panel two. The bill that we are considering

deals with the SEC and the fees that are being charged. Section

31, Section 6, Section 13, Section 14, peg to parity capacity of SEC

for enforcement, and so forth.

I’m wondering if we couldn’t recess until completion of debate

and passage of that bill, and then return. I suspect it would be

about 2:00 o’clock. But I don’t know what the schedule of the witnesses is.

Right now, we have two responsibilities; one here and one there.

We can’t bi-locate, so either we have to give short shrift to one of

our responsibilities and they are both great.

Chairman BAKER. I understand the gentleman’s point. Ordinarily, if we had prior notice to try to make arrangements, we

would have just convened at a later hour today, but given the witnesses’ traveling arrangements, I respectfully suggest we proceed

as announced with a brief recess, come back, and we will do all we

can to accommodate appropriate consideration.

I intend to be in the subcommittee most of the day and will miss

most of the debate on the floor myself, which I deeply regret. But

I think in deference to the eight people who’ve made arrangements

to be here, we need to proceed as we scheduled.

At this time, I’d like to recognize Mr. James Glassman, no

stranger to the subcommittee, who is a Resident Fellow at American Enterprise Institute and Host of TechCentralStation.com.

Welcome, Mr. Glassman.

STATEMENT OF JAMES K. GLASSMAN, RESIDENT FELLOW,

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE, AND HOST

WWW.TECHCENTRALSTATION.COM

Mr. GLASSMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the subcommittee.

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My name is James K. Glassman. I’m a resident fellow at the

American Enterprise Institute, author of financial books and an investing columnist for many years. I’ve devoted much of my professional life to educating small investors.

This hearing sheds light on an important subject, but I urge restraint in two ways. First, analysts should not be seen as scapegoats for the recent market decline.

Second, this subcommittee should resist the urge to pass legislation in this area.

Analysts and firms have enormous incentives to do their jobs

well. The marketplace weeds out the bad from the good as long as

the public has the information. That is the function of a hearing

like this, and I commend you for holding it.

Many analysts were caught off guard by the recent decline of the

stock market, which represented the first bear market in a decade.

Some of them were accused of allowing personal financial interests

and a desire to cater to the investment banking side of their firms

to distort their judgments.

Let me make three comments about this criticism.

First, conflicts of interest pervade the securities industry because

they pervade life. You Members, yourselves, cope with conflicts all

the time. You have allegiances to family, to donors, to party, but

you try to surmount them.

Or consider journalists. Surveys show that most journalists lean

to the left of the political spectrum. For example, a study by the

Roper Center of 139 Washington bureau chiefs and correspondents

found that in 1992, 89 percent of them voted for Bill Clinton, 7 percent for George Bush, yet every journalist to whom I’ve ever spoken

claims that his professionalism overrides these conflicting political

leanings.

Does it?

Well, the answer is that we can judge for ourselves by reading

the articles that they write or the TV segments in which they appear.

A similar situation prevails for stock analysts, except that their

judgments are clear and more easily accessed by the public.

The essential problem with a conflict of interest of any sort is

that it leads to poor decisions. In the case of journalists, bias may

suddenly color reporting and be difficult to discern.

In the case of stock analysts, it could mean that a company with

poor fundamentals is given a high recommendation.

In this case, however, the analysts’ judgment is assessed quickly

by the public. An analyst who consistently gives bad advice will be

rejected as not useful, either to investors or ultimately to the firm

that employs her. An analyst cannot hide for very long.

Second, I favor voluntary and extensive disclosure by analysts of

personal holdings and other affiliations that might color decisions.

But don’t exaggerate the benefits of disclosure. What, for example,

should an investor make of the disclosure that an analyst owns

shares of stock that he recommends?

Is it that the stock may not be all that good, but the analyst is

pushing it for personal gain?

Or is it the opposite. That the stock is particularly good because

the analyst owns it?

17

I am not really sure that disclosure is all that helpful. Yet, I do

favor it, and I do it myself.

Third, the essential critique is that analysts biased by conflicts

have made poor recommendations. Now we can test that theory by

looking at the actual performance of analysts.

How well do they do? This question has been examined at length

in a study published in the April 2001 issue of the Journal of Finance, a highly regarded publication for scholars.

In the article, the articles, Brad Barber of the University of California at Davis and three of his colleagues found that analysts’ recommendations were in fact prescient and profitable. This research

reinforces earlier studies that have found that professional securities forecasters have acted rationally, that is, with proper judgment.

The authors of the new study looked at a database of 360,000

pieces of advice from 269 brokerage houses and 4,340 analysts from

1986 to 1996. They found that investors buying portfolios of the

highest rated stocks by these analysts achieved average annual returns of 18.8 percent to compare with a stock market benchmark

return over this period of 14.5 percent.

The lowest rated stocks by analysts achieved a return of only 5.8

percent.

These results are truly exceptional. Rare, for example, is the mutual fund that can beat the Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index by

four points over 10 years. In fact, the benchmark has beaten the

majority of funds over the past two decades.

I should add that Mr. Tice likes to criticize analysts, but his own

fund, the Prudent Bear Fund, has, according to Morningstar, produced a total return of minus 47 percent from its inception in 1996

through April 30th, 2001.

The S&P 500, the benchmark, produced a return of positive 120

percent.

The results of the Barber study suggest that analysts are truly

able to pick winners.

Now last month, the researchers published an unpublished follow-up for 1997 to 2000. In the first three of those years, the results were even better than they had been in the previous 10 years.

But in the final year, 2000, the results were terrible. The most

highly recommended stocks fell sharply while the least favored

stocks did the best.

Those results of course are at variance with the previous 13

years and certainly we should watch analysts closely, but the

longer term results show that, on the whole, analysts do a good job

for their clients.

Finally, I worry that this hearing could send three wrong messages to investors, to small investors. The first is that bad stock

picks are the result of corruption and bias. In the vast majority of

cases, they are not.

Poor picks usually happen because the market in the short term

is impossible to predict. No one is right all the time or even much

better than half the time.

The second wrong message is that short-term stock recommendations are all that important to investors. Again, they are not. The

18

best advice to investors always is to own a diversified portfolio for

the long term.

Concentrating on the day-to-day judgment of analysts is not a

profitable pastime for small investors, whether those analysts are

pulled by conflicts of interest or not.

And the third wrong message is that the paucity of sell recommendations is a scandal. To the contrary, smart investors buy

stocks and they keep them; they don’t sell.

Despite the past year, as I said earlier, the benchmark is up 120

percent in 5 years. Investing is a long-term endeavor; done best, it

is boring. If I could change anything that analysts do, it would be

to encourage them to tell us the best stocks to own unchangingly

for the next 5 to 10 years, not the next 5 to 10 weeks.

However, I congratulate this subcommittee for airing such an important issue.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of James K. Glassman can be found on

page 166 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Glassman.

We stand in recess for approximately 15 minutes.

Thank you.

[Recess.]

Chairman BAKER. I’d like to begin the effort to reconvene our

hearing. The good news is we only had two votes instead of three

and Members are on their way back. I expect them to be coming

in as we proceed.

In order to facilitate the progress in the hearing, I’d like to go

ahead and recognize our next witness. It’s my expectation that we

will have at least another hour before we get interrupted again unless of course things change.

With that caveat, I would like to, at this time, recognize Mr.

Marc Lackritz, President of the Securities Industries Association.

Welcome, Mr. Lackritz.

STATEMENT OF MARC E. LACKRITZ, PRESIDENT, SECURITIES

INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION

Mr. LACKRITZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I’m

really pleased to be here this morning to have this opportunity to

meet with you and the subcommittee.

The subject of today’s hearing concerns how this industry fulfills

its obligations to its customers, to the nearly 80 million Americans

who directly or indirectly own shares of stock.

Our most important goal as an industry is to foster the trust and

confidence of America’s shareholders in what we do and how we do

it.

And we succeed as an industry only when we put investors’ interests first, period.

I will refer you to my written testimony for a detailed description

of who analysts are and how they help investors and our markets.

The value added by securities analysts has been widely appreciated.

For example, both the Supreme Court and SEC have said in the

Dirks case, as Chairman Oxley indicated earlier, that the value to

the entire market of analysts’ efforts cannot be gainsaid.

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Market efficiency and pricing is significantly enhanced by their

initiatives to ferret out and analyze information. Thus, the analysts’ work redounds to the benefit of all investors.

How good a job you can ask do securities analysts do? As a

group, they do a pretty good job. As my colleague, Mr. Glassman,

said earlier, the recent academic paper that he cited reviewed approximately 500,000 analysts’ recommendations from 1986 to 2000,

and concluded that the consensus recommendations that analysts

make on specific stocks prove both prescient and profitable.

The authors found ‘‘sell-side analysts’ stock recommendations to

have significant value.’’ Aside from this comprehensive study, it’s

quite notable that 71 percent of recommendations listed in First

Call are buys or strong buys.

This seems appropriate, considering that the 12 years from 1988

through 1999 saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the

Standard & Poor’s 500 Index both post an average gain of 16 percent a year.

Critics of analysts were much less vocal then. To be sure, in the

past year or so as the market declined and the Internet bubble

burst, it seems that securities analysts have a few bloody noses.

They certainly do and they are not alone. Just about everyone

working, reporting on, and commenting about securities recently

has tripped at least a few times.

The question before this subcommittee is whether these analysts

can be subjected to direct or subtle pressure to skirt objectivity and

shade their conclusions one way or another.

It’s a very legitimate question. The answer is, yes, they can. We

in the industry, as well as those who regulate us, long have been

aware of this. For this reason, there are strong legal mandates in

the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. And similar regulations and

laws are on the books to ensure research integrity and objectivity.

These are tough regulations as are the internal safeguards, yet

is clear that some doubts may now be clouding the perception of

how securities analysts operate. That’s why we’re meeting today,

just to banish these clouds.

The Securities Industries Association has formalized and bolstered the safeguards by endorsing and releasing earlier this week,

these best practices for research. In these, we articulate clearly the

means to protect the independence and objectivity of securities research and the securities analysts.

We reaffirm that the securities analyst serves only one master,

the investor, not the issuer nor the potential issuer.

Let me offer some examples from its main points:

One. The integrity of research should be fostered and respected

throughout a securities firm. Each firm should have a written

statement affirming the commitment to the integrity of research.

Two. The firm research management, analysts and investment

bankers, and other relevant constituencies should together ensure

the integrity of research in both practice and appearance. Research

should not report to investment banking. The recommendation

should be transparent and consistent. A formal rating system

should have clear definitions that are published in every report or

otherwise readily available, and management should support use of

the full rating spectrum.

20

Three. An analyst should not submit research to investment

banking nor to corporate management for approval of his or her

recommendations or opinions, nor should business producers promise or propose specific ratings to current or prospective clients

while pursuing business.

Four. A research analyst’s pay should not be linked to specific investment transactions.

Five. Research should clearly communicate the relevant parameters and practical limits of every investment recommendation. Analysts should be independent observers of the industries they follow. Their opinions should be their own, not determined by those

of other business constituencies.

Six. Disclosure should be legible, straightforward and written in

plain English. Disclaimers should include all material factors that

are likely to effect the independence of specific security recommendations.

Seven. Personal trading and investments should avoid conflicts of

interest and should be disclosed whenever relevant. Personal trading should be consistent with investment recommendations.

There are a number of other important points to best practices,

copies of which have been submitted to the subcommittee.

In addition to these best practices, Mr. Chairman, we will also

continue and renew our efforts to educate investors on the risks

and rewards inherent in the market, as well as basic investment

precepts.

We have a number of publications that we’ve put out over the

last couple of years. They are available on our website, and we’re

renewing our efforts to distribute them through our own members

to investors directly.

Successful investing is a partnership between securities professionals and the investor. Therefore, just as the securities industry

is renewing its commitment to do its part, we ask investors to be

educated, informed, and prudent in their investment decisions.

The long-term interests of investors, the securities analysts and

the securities firms for which they work are best served by analysts using their most skilled powers of research and best judgment.

The market is a very powerful and unforgiving enforcer. Flawed

projections lose customers.

All of us in this industry know only too well the truth of the

adage that it takes months to win a customer, but only seconds to

lose one.

No securities firm wants to give advice that will hurt a client.

Firms that offer bad investment guidance penalize themselves.

We believe the best practices endorsed by so many major firms

and continuing throughout our Association demonstrate a vigorous

renewed commitment to the investor. We hope they will go a long

way toward ensuring that the public maintains and increases its

trust and confidence in our markets and our industry.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Mark E. Lackritz can be found on

page 172 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Lackritz.

21

I’ll start my questions with you and the recitation of the best

practice summary you just concluded. One element of that that I

believe I understand, and want to clarify, that the compensation for

an analyst should not be tied to a specific transaction, so that a

recommendation that leads to a client is an example of something,

a favorable recommendation would not be compensated by bringing

that client into the bank.

However, I believe this to be accurate, and this is the reason for

the question. Either on a quarterly or on an annual basis, the bank

may declare bonuses for all affected parties and therefore reimburse or reward the analyst for the year-long effort, as opposed to

the specific transactional activity.

That is correct, is it not?

Mr. LACKRITZ. Yes. But the specific best practice says that competition is not to be directly tied to any specific banking transaction

or trading revenue or sales practice, but should be based on the

overall performance of the analyst including the quality of the recommendations that the analyst has made.

So the notion is to make it a merit-based compensation system.

Of course, if the firm does better, everybody is going to get some

of the rewards from that.

Chairman BAKER. I understand that. I’m just reading it critically

from a legislative perspective.

I would seem to me that rather than Fed-Exing the reward, we’re

going to send it by bus. That’s my problem. There still is a correlation between the recommendations and bringing business in, as opposed to doing pure analytical work.

I’m merely making that point to say that the best practices are

indeed an appreciated step and I want to acknowledge that.

As I told you and others, when it was presented, one of the elements that I believe is missing that we need to figure out how to

resolve is the way to confirm or audit the compliance. It’s one thing

to have a nice book and put it on a shelf; it’s another thing for it

to actually be utilized.

I think what you have presented there represents the absolute

minimum standard for reasonable professional conduct.

I also understand my criticism about the disclaimer. I’ve been

provided with information in the interim that was intended to preclude potential civil cause of action for someone finding that a particular standard was not complied with and therefore creating unwarranted legal liability.

I respect that, but I have to honestly say I don’t believe that disclaimer would get you where you want to be. I think in fact there

would be very creative efforts to say that that means nothing.

If we are going to go that route, I’m simply offering this today

as a matter for later discussion that really would have to be the

subject of legislation to provide for a safe harbor from civil liability

in the event that’s where we think we need to go in order to get

the quality of conduct that we think is required.

Do you have any comment?

Mr. LACKRITZ. Maybe I could discuss that from two perspectives.

One, your concerned about attracting long-term business to the

firm because of these recommendations, and second with respect to

the footnote.

22

The goal of these best practices is to raise the quality of research

throughout the industry, not to create a sub-structure of lots of different rules and regulations, but clear standards of behavior for

what we can control.

In the long run, firms are going to succeed by the quality of their

advice. They will attract business because of the quality of their

advice.

Chairman BAKER. I think that’s true at a modest growth or certainly in an environment where people are worried about losing

money. But in a bull market we’ve just come through, people are

going to throw money without regard.

They’re going to watch the evening commentators figure out who

the hot guys are. I mean, I’ve watched it. I’ve had yahoo finance

web page and I watch and I say, this is going to be a real comer.

You can see almost instantaneously the level of volatility that

comes as a result of that guy’s hip-shooting, and I can’t say that

that’s appropriate for the investor to do it, but I’m saying that’s

what’s happening.

And people don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to see their

wealth increase. It’s just logic.

So we look to this analyst group to be the guys who really make

sure that we’re not being led in the wrong direction.

Mr. LACKRITZ. I think that’s a very good point, and it’s part of

the reason we’re renewing our efforts toward investor education,

because that’s so very important to advise investors to get a second

opinion, to do the research, to not just immediately buy something.

Chairman BAKER. Let me jump, because I’ve got a couple of other

things I want to try to cover before I run out of my own time.

I just can’t fathom going through the list you read, which is outstanding, that there would be a circumstance in which any of those

minimal requirements would not always be applicable. In other

words, what circumstances would I not do this, applying the Louisiana Real Estate Code to my practice?

In all honesty, we’ve got a way to go here to catch up to that.

Mr. Glassman, let me address your comment about journalism

and matters in political office and their ethical conflicts. If you are

suggesting that the measure of congressional ethics ought to be the

standard, which I think would shock most people in America, let

me quickly add, we have to disclose every nickel of public income,

every nickel of outside income, which is also limited. We have to

disclose what boards we serve on if we choose to serve on boards.

We have to disclose what charitable contributions are made to our

credit by third parties. We have to report what trips we take if

we’re not on our own time, where we go. Then we are precluded

from eating anything unless we’re standing up.

The political contributions, we’re limited in what we do. If you’re

suggesting we should subject the analyst community to the same

standards of disclosure as the Congressman, I’m on.

Mr. GLASSMAN. In fact, as you may know, Congressman, first of

all, I lived in Louisiana for many years myself, and I know what

you’re talking about.

Chairman BAKER. Ethics is always the number one concern in

Louisiana. I’m sure you know that.

23

Mr. GLASSMAN. When I was editor of Roll Call, the newspaper

that so diligently covers Congress, I editorialized many, many

times against these nitpicking kinds of disclosure rules to which

Congress is now subjected.

I think at least there’s a certain consistency in my view. The only

thing I can say is that there are many other conflicts. They have

to do with family, and in some cases they have to do with donors,

that really are not covered by any rules. And the fact is, you surmount them day after day.

For example, it’s no secret, and it’s not necessarily terrible that

Members of Congress who have Members of their own families who

are suffering from a specific disease will advocate more research

money for that disease.

Chairman BAKER. Sure, but that’s only subject to getting 219

votes to make it happen.

Mr. GLASSMAN. Exactly right. These conflicts are surmounted I

think in most cases by you, because you have to publicly vote. And

if you take a vote, and people say, oh, well, he did this because of

this donation or because of this conflict or that conflict, it’s out on

the table.

That’s the analogy that I wanted to draw.

I think with journalists, it’s the same thing, but basically in

spades. The journalists lean to the left based on studies. I think it

would be hard to argue with that. And yet every journalist says

that he or she is a professional who surmounts those conflicts.

Chairman BAKER. But if the journalists was writing about a

stock in which he had a financial interest and put it in the paper,

that would be grounds of dismissal, would it not?

Mr. GLASSMAN. It depends on the publication, frankly. I think

that journalists should disclose their holdings, but I think that’s

really up to them and to the publication. I don’t think the Congress

should pass a law that says that every journalist must disclose

holdings.

When I worked for the The Washington Post, I was not even allowed to own stocks, and I thought that was a good rule.

Chairman BAKER. My point is that you don’t have to have a public disclosure. There is a professional standard which says, you

don’t play in this game, period.

Second, if you do play in the game and you write about what you

own, which is self-serving, you’re gone. I don’t think that needs to

be subject of a rule or regulation. I think that’s professional standards, which is what we are trying to pursue here today.

And I’m way over my time. I assure you I’m going to be back.

One caveat that I think, in fairness, I should make an announcement. After discussion with Mr. LaFalce, Mr. Kanjorski, and Chairman Oxley, what we do intend to do with the Fair Practices Standard, not to make a political determination here today, is to, between now and the next hearing, circulate the Best Practices

Standard for review and comment by regulators, NASD, the SEC,

academic review, to get professional response to us from appropriate interested parties.

Convene a second hearing, at which time we will receive those

comments, and a second panel. I spoke last night with Ron Ehsara

concerning media concerns was on the air, and he wanted to know

24

if anybody in the media had been invited, and I said, yes, we

hadn’t had anybody take us up, and he wants to come down.

So we will have a media panel to get their involvement in this.

We cannot shoot specific minnows in the barrel. There are a number of people who are in the tank who have shared responsibility.

Before we’re done, we’re going to look at everybody, and I just

wanted to make that announcement for the subcommittee as well.

Mr. Bentsen.

Mr. BENTSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being

here. I apologize for missing some of the testimony.

This is an interesting hearing, but I can’t think of a time and I

would ask the panel when there was a time that you had a run

up in the market and then you had a correction, that the fingers

didn’t start being pointed at one another.

Particularly, it’s one thing with retail investors and I think you

have to differentiate between retail and institutional investors. But

I happen to think of institutional investors as so-called ‘‘big boys’’

as being ones who theoretically and under the law are considered

as being sophisticated and know what they are getting into.

And yet I can’t think of an instance where there’s a correction

and sophisticated investors don’t turn around and say, why didn’t

you tell us this? We weren’t aware of this.

And yet, there is, under the law, a least in some practice, there’s

a great deal of disclosure. I guess from my perspective, I’m kind of

shocked to find out that stock analysts or equity analysts might

well be giving subjective advice as opposed to objective advice.

I would bet that the retail public would be equally shocked to

find out that somehow that analysts who work for brokerage

houses may well be interested in helping promote some of the

stocks or bonds that are being sold by those houses.

You know, I understand if there is an issue that relates to manipulation, but on the other hand, I think we might be erring a little bit in trying to think that analysts employed by firms which are

underwriting stocks and bonds are somehow supposed to be auditors and not people who give a subjective viewpoint, and that we

don’t take this with a grain of salt.

But I would ask anybody, is there a period of time that there

hasn’t been a correction where people haven’t come back and said,

things were not done fairly.

Mr. Hymowitz raised the issue of EBITDA went on after the

crash of the job market, and people were saying that there wasn’t

appropriate disclosure, that these deals were oversold, and yet you

had some very sophisticated investors who were involved in buying

those deals.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. Unfortunately, I’ve had the finger pointed at me

by my clients when I lost their money, so your point is well-taken.

Obviously, when the market starts going down, people start loosing

money, you learn very quickly that people take their money very,

very seriously.

This is not a perfect business. In a sense, investing is not a

science. David does an excellent job and we subscribe to his research, but quite frankly all of our records are mixed. It is not a

science.

25

I will say one thing to a previous question, Mr. Chairman, that

you asked. We all have to understand that in the underwriting

process, the analyst is extremely important in that process as it relates to the investment banks decision whether or not to proceed

with taking a particular company public. It is crucial for the investment banker to get the input of the firm’s supposed expert in a

particular industry sector or, to use a term of art now, space.

If you want to see a public uproar, divorce the analyst from that

role, then have the investment bank take the company public.

Then, after the quiet period, have the analyst issue a sell recommendation on that stock, and you will see a public uproar.

It’s impossible. I’ve been in meetings at my previous firm where

the analyst with a private company decided, based upon the qualities of a particular company, that it would be unwise to take that

company public.

The fact of the matter is, during the most recent bubble, the

pressure on banks, the pressure on investment banks to meet the

demand of the investor for paper of Internet companies was extreme. That is why, unfortunately, a lot of companies that should

never have made it out the door, went out the door and in many

respects, as I say in my written testimony, the public equity markets became second-stage venture capital.

And if anyone’s ever looked at the venture capital markets, the

risk involved is enormous. And that, in many respects I believe, is

what happened and what ultimately caused the market correction

that we have, besides a whole host of monetary issues also.

Mr. GLASSMAN. Can I respond to your question, Congressman

Bentsen?

I think we are telling the American public the wrong thing if the

idea they get from this hearing is that the reason that stocks have

gone down, or their own accounts have declined, is because of some

sort of manipulation that’s been going on by analysts.

That’s not it at all. The truth is that markets go up and they go

down. And in the history of the stock market, one out of every 3

or 4 years, the markets go down.

This is an important lesson for people to learn. In fact, this has

not been a particularly rough bear market. The Dow was down,

which I think is a very good reflection of the market as a whole.

The Dow-Jones Industrial Average was down five percent last year;

it’s up a little bit this year.

That doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of pain out there. There is,

and I think a lot of people unfortunately have learned a tough lesson, and there may well have been and I know there were some

people who exaggerated and led them down the wrong path.

That’s why this hearing is good. But investors have got to understand that markets go up and markets go down and the way to

smooth them out is by holding diversified portfolios for the long

term.

Mr. BENTSEN. My time is up. But investors, I think, also need

to understand that analysts who work for investment firms are not

independent auditors and were never intentioned to be independent auditors.

And I think Mr. Hymowitz makes a very important point, that

there is another role that applies that analysts play within the

26

firms for credit concerns, underwriting concerns that affect the

ability of the firm to function in the future and the risks that it

may take.

And I think that all of this needs to be taken into consideration.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Bentsen.

Let me make just one comment.

Mr. Hymowitz, I want to acknowledge your comment. I will get

back to that subject at a later time.

Mr. Paul.

Mr. PAUL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman

I want to direct my comments and questions to Mr. Tice and follow up on his testimony.

This is, to me, a very important subject, but for some reason I

think we are really missing the whole point, because we are dwelling on the analysts and the advisors.

That’s very important, but I think there’s a much bigger problem

than the best analysts may be giving the bad advice. But if you

added up all the advice of the analysts and the advisors last year,

I guess they gave pretty good advice. They told somebody to sell,

so I guess more people were selling than buying. Somebody was

giving the correct advice.

But, I’m surprised that people are surprised at what’s been happening for the past year. Free market economists who understand

the business cycle and understand monetary policy knew this stock

market correction was coming and anticipated: and they anticipate

even more problems down the road.

I see this as more of an attempt to scapegoat, find out who’s been

causing this problem because people lost some money.

If we had not had a stock market crash, we wouldn’t be here. If

the bubble kept growing, you know, we would have been blissfully

nonchalant about what was happening.

But what we don’t ask is, why did we have the bubble? Where

did that come from? Was it the analysts that caused the bubble?

They were a participant, but they don’t cause bubbles; analysts can

say a lot of things, but credit causes a bubble, excessive credit, not

analysts.

Where does credit come from? Do we go to the bank and borrow

money that someone loaned to the bank? No. Nobody saves any

money. Credit comes out of thin air from the Federal Reserve System, and we need to concentrate on that.

When the Fed does this, the Fed artificially lowers interest rates

and this causes people to do dumb things. It causes people who

used to save money not to save. It causes consumers to borrow

more money than they should. They cause investors to invest irrationally. And then all of a sudden, we have this bubble.

And then, on top of this, this has been around for a long time,

this is nothing new, everybody knows about this, but this time

around, of course, it was different. It was unique, because we had

a ‘‘new era’’ economy, just like Japan had in 1980, and just like we

had in the 1920s, a ‘‘new era,’’ a new paradigm. And therefore all

the rules were thrown out.

And who pumped this up? Who really said the new paradigm

was here? The central bank, the same central bank that created all

27

the credit. The Fed creates the credit, it created all the distortion,

and then it says, ‘‘Oh, there’s so much productivity increase that

it’s going to solve all our problems.’’

Therefore, the analysts become the victims. They’re victims of

bad information and not good judgment, but they’re not the cause.

They are the symptom of the problem.

So my question is, is this not what you were alluding to? Should

we not pay more attention to monetary policy? And is it not true

that just regulating analysts is not the answer, because they’re

doing what they see in their own rational self-interest, under the

circumstances. Yes, for 10 years, they made a lot of money, and

they made a lot of money for other people.

It’s just when the bubble burst that it happened. But it seems

to me that regulating analysts is not the answer; it is paying more

attention to how we regulate and rein in the power of the Fed to

create money and credit excessively out of thin air that we should

be dealing with.

Mr. Tice.

Mr. TICE. Thank you, Mr. Paul. I agree with you completely.

However, I also do believe that there is a Wall Street problem. I

believe that Wall Street has been a cheerleader for the bubble.

I share your view that our economy is where it is today due to

excessive credit growth. If you look at the telecom and Internet

mania that occurred, that was really the first stage of excessive

credit growth.

We essentially have financed a number of businesses that should

not have been financed, as I talk about in my written testimony.

We kept the cost of capital too low. I’m a believer of the Austrian

school of economics, as you are, Dr. Paul, and I believe that the interest rate has been kept too low and that we essentially financed

a number of CLEC and Internet companies. We essentially

misallocated capital in the Nation that will have a tragic cost to

the country.

Currently, we are over-financing the financial sector. We are

growing MZM at nearly a 20 percent rate over the last 6 months

in an attempt to keep the bubble going. We believe that this bubble

is not yet over.

There’ve been a number of comments as though the bubble has

burst, the decline is over, we can get back to fun and games again.

We don’t believe that. The NASDAQ is still selling at nine times

sales. The S&P 500 is still selling at 30 times earnings.

Mr. Glassman will of course disagree with me. He has a book out

talking about the Dow 36,000. You know, we think that’s absurd.

Nobody will pay 100 times earnings for a company like Bank of

America, as he’s talked about in his book by assuming that the discount rate is going to be five-and-a-half percent.

We believe that there’s still a great deal of danger in the economy going forward. It is due to excessive credit growth. If you look

at some of the numbers recently, asset-backed securities growth is

growing at 42 percent. Credit card securitization is growing at 70

percent. Home equity loans growing at 63 percent.

So I think it’s important to understand that Wall Street is

complicit in this credit growth and essentially seeking out asset inVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:34 Feb 06, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 73368.TXT HBANK1 PsN: HBANK1
28

flation. And they sought out Internet companies and telecom companies in the first stage.

Now it’s the financial companies, but we have an asset bubble

and unfortunately there’s more pain ahead.

Chairman BAKER. Mr. Paul, your time has expired. We’ll come

back for another round.

Mr. Capuano, why don’t you be next by time of arrival, sir?

Mr. CAPUANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I too want to congratulate you for conducting this hearing. I

think it takes a fair deal of courage to raise these issues in a public

forum.

I’m not a big time investor. I don’t really understand some of the

things, the details of how all this works. But I try to draw analogies.

The analogy I draw is, I don’t think there’s a big conspiracy on

the part of Wall Street to somehow control the world. There is certainly not one that I’m aware of in the Congress to over-regulate

anybody. I don’t do any of those things.

All I’m interested in really is transparency. We talk about it all

the time when it comes to financial issues. We did it last year in

the banking bill. We do it on international issues all the time.

Transparency is honesty and honesty is if you’re making analysis

of anything, tell them who you’re working for, and then a reasonable person can make a decision.

Fair enough. I guess, though, I didn’t get a chance to look it up,

but a few months ago, I read a pretty interesting story about a

young teenage boy who was dealing on the Internet on penny

stocks, basically giving an analysis of the penny stocks to lots of

people. They would drive up the market, and he would all of a sudden buy or sell or do whatever he was doing, and made billions of

dollars as a young teenager.

He got caught. He got a slap on the wrist, but it was a lack of

transparency. It has nothing to do with a teenage kid dealing with

penny stocks who cares; that’s good. But that’s what I think is

missing so far is all this concern about what’s going on. I want honesty, that’s all I want, so that investors can make honest decisions.

I guess I was going through a whole litany of examples, and I

just wonder, what’s the difference between what’s going on and the

old payola scandals of the radio days when people, allegedly independent DJs would be on the payroll of a record company, and all

of a sudden, out of nowhere, this record was going to number one

with a rocket. Why? Who knows why? Gee, it just so happens

they’re on the payroll of the record company.

What’s the difference between this and the S&L scandal? Don’t

worry, this company, this investment is stable, it’s got good credit,

trust me. Oops. I didn’t want to tell you that we have an investment in that. I didn’t want to tell you that my cousin is the owner.

What’s the difference between this and Michael Milken’s situation? Trust me, we don’t have any inside information, no one on

Wall Street does that, that is wrong. What’s the difference?

What’s the difference between this and the cable oligopolies who

tell me, as a consumer, don’t worry, everybody wants the 14 history

channels, and in order to do that, we have to raise everybody’s

29

rates a buck-and-a-half. What’s the difference. And gee, we didn’t

bother to tell you that we own all 14 of the history channels.

What’s the difference between that and what’s going on right

now with our energy oligopolies? I’m not quite sure what they’re

doing just yet, but I know one thing. All of a sudden it is costing

us a lot more money and it seems like it’s all going to one group

of people who keep telling me that there is only one problem; that

they need to be able to drill.

All I see is a complete and utter—not by everybody—but, a significant lack of honesty and transparency. If someone is an analyst

who works for somebody who pays them, and then there is money

to be made, so be it. Just tell me what’s so hard about that? What

is so difficult about that? Why can’t Wall Street just do it, as opposed to simply coming up with, and again I’ve only just gotten

them today, but, you know, the best practices.

They sound awfully nice, but I don’t see teeth in them, and I’m

sure we’ll have further discussions. I do want to talk to the SEC

to see what’s going on with it.

I don’t believe there is any conspiracy, I really don’t, but I do believe one thing; money makes people do crazy things. And I’m no

different; we all do it.

And if there’s money on the table to be made by someone who

holds themselves out, either publicly or by innuendo, as an independent analyst, simply tell us the truth. Are they independent or

are they not. And I would like to know what the difference is in

any of your minds between any of the analogies that I just drew

and what apparently is going on as apparently a relatively accepted practice on Wall Street that it’s OK to try to burn both ends.

Mr. TICE. I’d like to respond, Congressman.

I agree with you completely that the system is broken. I do not

see that much difference between what goes on commonplace on

Wall Street versus what happened with this Internet 15-year-old

boy. There’s been a lot of discussion so far, as if we can fix this

around the edges.

We think we have a broken system, and I would like to read you

a couple of quotes from our written testimony. This is from a

former research director at Lehman Brothers. He said an analyst

is just a broker who writes reports.

Another gentleman, who was an analyst, said he explained his

reasons for recommending a company. I put a buy on it because

they paid for it. We launched coverage on this company because

they bought it fair and square with two offerings.

Another case, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, who followed Cisco

Systems, analyzed his rationale——

Chairman BAKER. Excuse me, Mr. Tice. I would like to have everybody have an opportunity and my time is running out. I apologize for interrupting.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. Congressman, I would add that disclosure is everything. You are absolutely correct. I think the problem, one of the

problems with current disclosure today is often the disclosure statements are longer than the actual research pieces.

You get an early morning note from an investment bank, it’ll be

a paragraph long, and the disclosure statement is three pages long.

Disclosure statements need to be, as I guess the SEC has tried to

30

make prospectuses more in plain English, disclosure statements

need to be more in plain English.

Furthermore, I think that if you really examine this issue, where

the crux lies is that many investment banks, as is the nature of

the business, are constantly trying to get more investment banking

business. So people have grown skeptical of whether or not the analysts are trying to aid the investment bank in getting that business.

So one suggestion I have is possibly, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the commercial practicabilities of the industries, for the

investment banks, for issuer to disclose whether or not they are

currently engaging in any publishing investment banks on them, or

whether or not there is the potential that they are seeking investment banks.

Then you’ll know really whether or not—or at least as to your

point—the public will then be informed that possibly if Investment

Bank X is issuing a positive report on Company Y, well maybe it’s

due to the fact that there is a beauty contest going on for capital

markets transactions.

The disclosure needs to be more relevant, shorter, more succinct,

and in plain English.

Mr. GLASSMAN. Congressman, I’m definitely in favor of transparency. I think the question is the role that this Congress should

play. It seems to me that all industries, all businesses have a tremendous incentive to tell customers what they’re doing, because

customers will shun businesses that are either dishonest with them

or opaque.

I also just want to say that I do take exception to a number of

the things you said about energy oligopoly and some of your comments about Michael Miliken, but in general, I would also say that

the S&L crisis had definitely presented a role for the Federal Government to play because of insurance.

This area I don’t think there’s a role for you to play except to

have hearings like this and air these issues publicly. That’s very

important.

In general, I want to associate myself with your comments about

the importance of transparency.

Mr. LACKRITZ. Congressman, I would also associate myself with

those comments and with your comments about transparency. We

have always favored transparency. That’s at the crux of the securities laws in this country.

Where I take issue is when you compare the situation to a number of other scandals in the past. I think if you take a longer perspective of what the securities industry has done over the last decade, the securities industry raised more capital in 10 years to build

plants, to build schools, to create new jobs, to create new products

and services than in the entire 200 years before that combined.

So we are very proud of what we’ve accomplished and the opportunities that we have created for millions and millions of investors

who, if you look at over time, have done extremely well.

Last year, we had a terrible year. And we could have either said,

well, it was just a bad year and we’re going to get back on track,

or we could say, look, let’s see if we can fix some behavior here and

31

assure that going forward, there will be no questions whatsoever

about the independence and objectivity of analysis.

And that’s what we’ve done with these best practices and transparency really is at the core of these best practices.

Chairman BAKER. Your time has expired, Mr. Capuano.

Mr. Castle, you’d be next.

Mr. CASTLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me thank you for holding these hearings. Let me encourage

you, although I don’t think you need encouragement, to continue

this. This is big time business we’re talking about. It’s covered by

a lot of national magazines, by national television every night, by

a lot of financially focused magazines.

It involves the assets of most of America today, and these questions should be asked and we should get some answers. I’m not

sure that we should legislate in this area, and I’m all for best practices, I think that’s great.

I don’t know how much good disclosures do unless somehow you

all are regulating that. I started to get my privacy notices in the

mail recently. I don’t even understand what the heck they mean

half the time. And I’m not convinced at all that either we, as average investors—and that’s what I consider myself to be—would really, truly understand all disclosures anyhow.

And I would be the first to tell you that stocks are unpredictable

and always will be. And when you get into the timing of the stock

market, it becomes even more unpredictable, and when you get into

the timing of particular sectors, such as the high tech sector, it becomes even less predictable yet.

Having said that, I am absolutely, totally convinced there are

conflicts out there. I think anyone who dismisses that out of hand

is off base and I do agree with something Mr. Tice said, something

along the lines of Wall Street has been the cheerleader for the bubble, and I think that is essentially correct. And I think it really

needs to be looked at. I honestly believe it needs to be looked at,

and hopefully you will all look at yourselves and tell us something

so that we don’t have to do something here.

I’ve been here for most of this hearing and I don’t think I heard

this; maybe I did. But I think Mr. Hymowitz, you said something

to this effect, maybe you or Mr. Glassman can help me with this.

But you stated that many believe there are few sell recommendations on Wall Street. Maybe you question this fact, but how do you

reconcile that statement with a study by First Call indicating that

the ratio of buy-to-sell recommendations by brokerage analysts rose

from 6-to-1 in the early 1990s to 100-to-1 in the year 2000.

I don’t even know what half these expressions mean. Out-perform, strong buy. I’ve never seen a sell recommendation on anything frankly. All I see are these recommendations of a buy nature,

which is part of being the cheerleader for the bubble, as far as I’m

concerned.

I’d be interested in your views on that. I think we have a problem out there and I think we need to admit that and determine

how we’re going to fix it.

But I get the idea that you don’t necessarily agree that there is

a problem; maybe you disagree with those facts or don’t think it’s

32

relevant or something. I would like to hear from the two of you on

that.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. Congressman, to answer your question, I’m not

familiar with the First Call Survey. But we utilize First Call in my

firm, and typically First Call covers mainly the well-known broker/

dealers. That’s only if, I believe, those companies submit their research and their analysts’ estimates to First Call.

When I said there’s plenty of sell recommendations—— Mr. CASTLE. I don’t mean to interrupt you, I’m sorry, but let me

go on. Maybe that’s important. If Merrill Lynch is giving bad recommendations, if Dean Witter’s giving bad recommendations, instead saying out of 100 securities firms, which are also analyzing

stocks, so many of them gave us bad recommendations, I think we

need to look at the number of people they are impacting and the

total number of dollars they’re impacting.

We might dismiss this on the basis of some three-man shop doing

it incorrectly, but the big boys aren’t.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. I understand that.

My point about the fact that there are as many sell recommendations on Wall Street as there are is the way I define Wall Street.

As an institutional money manager, we have the resources due to

the fact that we do commission business all over the street.

To get private research, meaning companies like Mr. Tice’s here

and others who specialize in providing a counterbalance to the sell

side research. There are different types of analysts on Wall Street.

In my written testimony, I define them. One is what we have

mainly been talking about today, the sell side analyst that’s mainly

related to a large investment bank.

But there are numerous other kinds of analysts on what I call

Wall Street, and many of them work at research houses only. And

those analysts also provide buy recommendations and sell recommendations.

Although there has been the creation of a niche business recently

where specifically research analysts look at accounting issues and

sometimes just fundamental business issues, and recognize that

certain companies are possibly candidates for shorting. So many of

the institutional money managers who subscribe to these services,

they tend to be very costly, you know. I think in the range of some

of them cost roughly $100,000 a year.

And we subscribe to these services and we use these services to

counterbalance the sell side research. Just let me add one other

thing, and I said this in my written testimony. The most important

thing, though, is for the investor to do their own research.

How many people do we know that spend more time with the

Consumer Reports magazine trying to determine what DVD player

to buy. Then they do in time on due diligence of what stock they

should buy, and ultimately——

Mr. CASTLE. Let me cut you off, because my time is running out.

I don’t know what you expect some of us, as investors, to do. I

imagine most people you’re dealing with have other jobs, have a

heck of a lot to do and are dependent upon people who are supposed to be professionally trained in that job to do it, which are

these analysts. If they’re not getting good advice, they’re in a degree of difficulty, and I don’t disagree with you.

33

I wish I had the time to do it. I wouldn’t probably be such a loser

on the stock market.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. Could I touch on that one last point?

You have to remember the analysts are not buying the securities.

You’re right. Many of the individuals do not have the time to manage money. That is why I’m in business. Without the fact that you

all don’t have enough time, I’d be out of business. So that’s why

people are very wise to give money to mutual funds, money managers, hedge funds, index funds. That’s why this business exists,

because many people don’t have the time, nor should they spend

the time because you’re right.

There are professional money managers out there who understand what sell-side research is all about.

Mr. CASTLE. Hopefully, individual investors could depend on

those people who have the expertise, without conflict, to have their

good advice.

Mr. Glassman.

Mr. GLASSMAN. I just wanted to comment on selling. There are

7,000 listed stocks in general. Analysts follow stocks that have good

prospects, because it doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to spend

a lot of time on the others, and there are specialty firms that follow

some of these other stocks if they think there might be a chance

to short them.

I just also want to say that the idea that individual investors

should be preoccupying themselves with selling, which is basically

market timing that you talked about earlier I think is a mistake.

Generally, the way to be a good investor is to buy good companies and hold onto them for a long time. The paucity of sell recommendations, as I said earlier, is a reflection, in part, of what

companies’ analysts are following, and also the market itself,

which, despite the year 2000, has gone from, if we just look at the

Dow, from 777 in August 1982 to over 10,000 today.

So if you’re spending a lot of your time selling, you weren’t doing

very well.

Mr. CASTLE. My final statement, Mr. Chairman, if I may. I don’t

disagree with what you’ve just stated and I don’t mind buy-andhold as a theory of investing, which I think makes a lot of sense.

But if you’re getting a preponderance of buy recommendations,

the ratio of 99 to one, and a lot of these are going down as much

as 50-, 60-, 70-, or 80 percent of the course of a year or two, that’s

a problem as well for the poor devil who’s trying to buy and hold

it in that circumstance.

It’s not just looking for sell recommendations, it’s knowing what

not to buy. And I don’t think the average investor knows, looking

at these reports, in many cases what not to buy.

You cited figures earlier. We can’t go into them. I’m just not as

optimistic about all those figures.

Chairman BAKER. Mr. Castle, if you will, it looks like we’ll be

able to do another round and we’ll come back to you.

Mr. Kanjorski.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I think the issue boils down to the fact of whether any of the alleged conflicts of interest are in real existence, and if they are, to

what percentage they are.

34

I am sort of disappointed, looking at the analysts’ problem, at a

time when the stock market has not reacted well. Sometimes we

get bad law out of responding in times like these. And, we ruin reputations and injure a lot of people who have been paid to make estimations that have not got any basis, other than a lot of their own

intuitive senses, once they study a situation.

But I do think, from my own experience, something I would like

to posit to the panel. Would any of you like to play on a professional football team where the referees’ salaries were dependent on

which team won the game? I think we would have a tendency to

wonder whether every call of the referee was sound.

I will give you an example in Pennsylvania. Up until about 30

years ago, when we reformed our Constitution, the lowest judicial

court in Pennsylvania was the Magistrate’s Court. We saved a lot

of money in Pennsylvania because we never paid magistrates. The

way they got paid was by collecting the fees on the convictions.

It was amazing how many convictions there were in Magistrate

Court, somewhere around 90 percent. When we changed the Constitution and directly paid Magistrates a set salary without a fee

attachment, suddenly convictions fell precipitously.

I think in my analysis of this situation, it is somewhat similar

to what happened in the late 1920s and the early 1930s in the boiler room operations.

There were a lot of people who said, ‘‘No, you do not have to pass

the SEC legislation, we can self-regulate ourselves. I particularly

look at the analysts that appear on the network or cable programs

that are prognosticating 24 hours a day of how to get instantaneously wealthy.

Investors are 50 percent of the American population, and I think

probably 95 percent of which do not have an MBA from Harvard

or Wharton. So, in a way, they are responding to this guy in the

Brooks Brothers suit, who looks smart, talks smart and works for

a very prestigious named investment house. And they are relying

that these analysts are honest people.

A I mentioned in my opening remarks, the point I want to make

is that we should find whether or not there is any evidence of actual problems out there.

I would say if we do find literal abuse of position to gain personally, it is going to be in the smallest percentage of instances. I

think in most instances, the failure to predict accurately what to

do is the exuberance of the market. Who wants to call contrary to

the trends of the market? That is probably what most analysts did.

This is not necessarily a bad time to raise this problem. I guess

the question I would like to have answered concerning the best

practices as put out by the industry, which are nice, but are they

not a little late and probably fortuitous in timing, because the

hearing was coming up? That is my impression anyway.

But without any enforcement, do you four witnesses, any one or

all of you, feel that the industry and the private sector itself cannot

only put out standards and have best practices, but also develop an

enforcing mechanism and a mechanism of disqualification, fines,

penalties, and so forth, that will really work and take the unethical

behavior out of the business, or is that beyond the private industry

35

to do? Does this matter instead require SEC regulation or acts of

Congress to accomplish that?

Mr. LACKRITZ. Could I address that first, Congressman? I think

that these best practices that we’ve come up with are going to be

very effective, and are going to work extremely well.

The reason for that is because they’ve been endorsed not only by

the 14 largest firms representing 95 percent of the underwriting

business, but all the CEOs of those firms down through the directors of research.

In addition, you’ve got an incredibly powerful and unforgiving enforcer in the marketplace. These practices are designed to help improve the quality of research.

To the extent that the quality of research doesn’t improve for clients, they go other places. To the extent that competitors see that

their competitors may not be following some of these rules, they’re

going to be quite aggressive.

Already you see a fair amount of competition in the marketplace.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Wait a second. I love the marketplace. I think

it has a lot of regulation to it that is imposed by the natural forces,

but I think to make the argument that the marketplace itself is

going to take care of things is quite optimistic.

Let me give you an example. Just recently in a fraud case involving GSEs, as a matter of fact——

Chairman BAKER. I am shocked.

Mr. KANJORSKI. ——Perhaps thousands of mortgages were improperly sold at an inflated value. And, when you look at it, it is

alleged that the perpetrators of the fraud were really two appraisers who were going in and appraising these homes over their real

value.

And in the preliminary investigation, after identifying something

has been maybe millions of dollars of potential fraud, these two appraisers were fined just $10,000. Woowhee, big deal.

I mean, if you guys are going to self-regulate by fining somebody

or slapping them on the wrist, and shuffling them off to Buffalo,

if you will, we will not receive any real reform. I have just met with

the State regulators and they tell me that there are brokers selling

intrastate that have been fined and convicted in three and four and

five other states and the State regulators have no capacity to find

out who these people are. They are just moving around the country,

one State by one State, knocking it off.

And honestly, with the industry coming forward now and saying,

wow, we have got to find a way to make sure this information gets

out to all the regulators so that these investors are warned that

there are these bad actors out there, it seems questionable.

Look, when you can make millions of dollars by perpetuating

frauds like this one, and you only lose your license, or you get a

penalty of $10,000 on a multi-million dollar fraud, I do not know

any con artists that are going to turn down that deal. That is a

pretty good deal.

Mr. LACKRITZ. Congressman, I would take issue with that. Industry has no tolerance for bad actors. We want to do everything we

can to get fraudsters out of the industry.

36

Mr. KANJORSKI. Why, under best practices, do you not have

transparency, enforcement, and penalties that are just like the Bar

Association?

If you have a bad lawyer, you can disbar him and throw him out.

Mr. LACKRITZ. We have transparency in these recommendations.

There’s mandatory clear language and mandatory disclosure of

holdings of conflicts that go beyond these best practices, Congressman, go beyond the regulations that are on the books now.

They take the regulations on the books now and go beyond that.

In fact, part of the reason it took us a while to come to relesae

these was because it was a long process of negotiating among the

firms.

The firms took it quite seriously because they realized in some

cases they might have to change the way they did business in order

to comply with this They took it extremely seriously.

As a result, that’s what held this process up a little bit, but from

the standpoint of their effectiveness, I’m quite confident that they

are going to be effective and I think time is going to be the test.

The proof is going to be in the pudding.

Chairman BAKER. Mr. Lackritz, and Members, if I can, we would

like to recognize Mr. Inslee for these questions. We are nearing the

end of debate time on the next vote. I would like to get him in and

perhaps conclude this panel before the vote starts. You probably

would like that idea.

Mr. Inslee.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We don’t have a rule that we just shoot the analysts here when

the market goes down, if that’s any relief to you, but I’m intrigued

by a thought that Mr. Cole, who was an author, I assume you are

familiar with, who has been critical of the industry in various

ways.

Basically as I understand his approach, he believes that there’s

been such a radical change in the structure of the industry toward

an investment banking oriented part of the industry that it’s

changed dramatically the problems that analysts have internally in

their own structure.

For instance, he quotes a statistic. I don’t know if it’s accurate

or not, that says that 60 percent of industry revenues before 1975

were trading commissions. Today, that’s less than 16 percent.

As I understand his argument, he’s basically saying that analysts

now have this much greater incentive, if you will, to deal on the

investment side, and that’s what skewed judgments perhaps or at

least created a concern in the public about that.

And I just want to read—and he’s going to testify later—I want

to read something I want to get your comments on, if I can.

He said, where the role of analysts has changed dramatically in

the last 25 years, the regulatory environment has little changed

from 1975 or even 1945.

Analysts have safe harbor under the law, even to the extent that

they can tell their larger clients that a stock is really a dog, while

keeping the buy signal on for the public. That is entirely legal.

It is even legal for an analyst to tell their trading departments

that a buy signal will be out on the morrow. If the analyst is influVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:34 Feb 06, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 73368.TXT HBANK1 PsN: HBANK1
37

ential, the trading department can bulk up on the stock and then

sell it to retail demand then generated by the buy signal all legal.

Brokerages call this, quote: ‘‘building inventory to satisfy demand, just serving our customers.’’ Others might call it a license to print money.

I read in your best practices. As I read it, it sounds like your best

practices were designed somewhat to address some of the issues

that he’s raising here.

But I guess what I’d like you to do is if you could respond to his

argument that the dominance of the investment side of the industry has become such that we now need to take another cut at looking at the regulatory aspects on analysts, particularly some of the

issues that he raised.

I’ll leave this open to any of you.

Mr. LACKRITZ. I would just say, first of all, I disagree completely

with some of the things that you read that he’s written.

Clearly, an analyst that’s giving some recommendations to one

side of clients and not to others, that’s not currently appropriate

and obviously that’s not a good business practice.

Second, the business is changing dramaticaly, but I suggest that

it’s changing from a transaction-based business that it’s been historically, to an information and advisory business more and more

and more. This means that the quality of our information is the

most important product that we’re offering.

The quality of our advice is the most important product that

we’re offering, which is why we put forward these best practices.

We think these will help to continue to improve the quality of the

advice that we are offering and in the long run, that’s what’s going

to be successful for the business.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. Congressman, I would also add I would not be

that concerned about the shift in fees investment banks earned

from commissions to advisory fees. I will tell you things have

changed once again back. One would have to wonder what investment bankers are doing these days. Even the fact that the capital

markets are effectively shut down, there hasn’t been, other than

the Kraft IPO yesterday, I don’t remember the last IPO.

It’s a natural cycle in the business. When the markets are going

up, the investors are looking for companies to take public. Therefore, the percentage of revenues in the investment banking department goes higher, the commission and manaegment fees goes

lower. But the cycle changes.

And today, if you took a snapshot of any investment bank, I’m

sure commissions, asset management fees are gaining in the preponderance that they represent in the total revenues of the companies. And in investment banking fees, you can see it by Wall

Street. Look at the layoffs that are occurring. They’re not laying off

asset managers, they’re laying off investment bankers, because

that portion of he business is suffering due to hte fact that the capital markets are shut down.

Mr. GLASSMAN. Congressman, I’d like to respond to this issue of

best practices and what the SIA has done. Also, this addresses

something that Congressman Kanjorski asked.

I’m not so sanguine about it, because I think the way to solve

this problem is by individual firms stepping up to the plate and

38

saying that, at our firm, we have a real Chinese wall, and if we

find anyone breaching it, that person is out. That’s our rules at this

firm.

Now another firm will then compete and say ‘‘No, no, we can top

that.’’ We can have even more objectivity among analysts. There

are good things about industry groups, but one of the problems is

that they all get together and decide what the rule is going to be.

That’s also the problem, by the way, with legislation. It takes

away the competition, which really ends up giving you the best

kind of rules and the best protections for consumers. That’s what

I worry about.

Mr. INSLEE. Let me tell you abuot a concern I have. Obviously

what it sounds like, your best practices are designed to build a Chinese wall. My concern, however, is if you build a Chinese wall, but

you leave it under the control of the Chinese about where the gates

are going to be and how high the wall is going to be, I’m not sure

it gives enough confidence to the people in this regard.

So let me just ask you this. In contrast to the legal profession

or the accountancy profession, or the physicians’ profession, is

there any reason to have Americans trust the industry to be selfregulatory on this issue as to analysts where Americans demand

some independent source, to some degree, to control the behavior

of lawyers and doctors and accountants.

Mr. LACKRITZ. Can I address that?

I think, first of all, the quality of our professionals has never

been higher. We in the securities industry have a mandatory continuing professional education requirement, as I understand that

no other profession even has.

We have to have mandatory retesting your fifth year and tenth

year after receiving a license. So that, in and of itself, makes it different and the quality has gone up considerably.

I also think that it is fairly easy for customers to see, because

they get their statements every month how they are doing.

With other professions, sometimes it’s not as clear; it’s a much

more subjective kind of judgment.

So we have a real bottom line I think that really serves as a very

effective accuntability mechanism, which is one of the reasons that

the quality of the research is so important. Which is why our firms

have an incentive to give out the best quality advice they possibly

can to their investors.

Mr. TICE. Congressman, if I could just add that I do believe that

you hit a hot button issue as far as the magnitude of dollars that

are involved in the investment banking. And the fact is that people

are people and money motivates people. And the structure of these

firms is that the investment bankers are still too powerful within

these firms, because that’s where money is made.

Now as Gregg said, the IPO and the investment banking revenues are down currently. However, paying 6 cents a share or 4

cents a share, which is what institutions are paying for research

today, the profitability is much greater in investment banking, and

therefore investment banking drives it.

We don’t believe the industry can regulate this from within. The

dollars are just too big.

39

Another problem is, the industry, in my opinion, has not even admitted that there’s much of a problem. There’s talk about there’s

a perception of a problem, rather than admitting that there is a

problem.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. You’re not arguing for higher commissions, are

you?

Mr. TICE. I would pay higher commissions, sure.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, gentlemen.

Chairman BAKER. Your time has expired, Mr. Inslee. Thank you

very much.

I want to pick up with a point that I failed to make accurately

perhaps.

Mr. Hymowitz, in your answer to a prior question, talking about

the demand in the market to get paper out, and that as a result

perhaps some of the dot coms move to public offerings that weren’t,

in all circumstances, mature for that position. That is extremely

troubling to me.

What is the role of the analyst? Maybe that’s where there’s a

miscommunication. I want to take you to the days of LTC, and I’m

not making a parallel, I’m not making accusations, merely to understand my level of concern.

We had 3 years of back-to-back trading without 2 days of concurrent loss. There were extraordinary levels of profitability. You had

bankers, you had folks in the international community, literally

throwing money at them.

You were told a million dollar minimum, 3 years. Don’t pick up

your phone and call me. I’ll let you know what’s happening. Extraordinary types of information, lack of exchange.

Now what drove that was the desire by the individual to get a

piece of the action and make a quick buck. I understand that.

In my view of market responsibility, the single person who

should have been in that room when the credit was being extended

by the bank was the credit risk analyst. The little guy sitting in

the corner with the glasses, reading the complicated sheets. Who

says, wait a minute, guys, there may be something wrong here.

If the management overrides him, I understand, but it’s that analyst who should be the one to have the professional standard to

stand in that door and say, no.

What you’re telling me is, because the investor’s demand to get

in on the run up of the market, it was almost embarassing to go

to a cocktail party or a birthday party, or you’re in the back row

of the church, and people saying, man, have you seen my 401K

lately, and if you weren’t in it, there was something wrong with

you.

So the public pressure was to get a piece of it, and within the

firm, deciding what they were going to market and what they

would not, because of the demand for paper.

Because the community was asking for it, the investor lowered

his bar and said, let’s put this out, because we’ve got to get something for people to buy and keep this moving.

Am I wrong?

Is it not the analysts’ obligation to reach a professional opinion

and express it, notwithstanding market conditions and consumer

demand?

40

Isn’t it a professional responsibility to say, no, now is not the

time? People can disagree, but the board can override. But somewhere in the record, that analyst’s view should be noted. Is that

wrong?

Mr. HYMOWITZ. I don’t think it’s wrong, but I think the answer

is very complicated. I’m sure we don’t have enough time for it, but

let me just make a couple of comments.

The capital markets changed dramatically when companies like

Netscape and Yahoo were able to be taken public without profits.

Investment bankers realized, unlike years past, the investor was

willing to take the chance, and risk, and look, that’s what investing

is about.

Chairman BAKER. But on that point, I hate to interrupt, but it’s

so critical and pivotal to the understanding.

The investor was willing to take the risk because the analyst was

telling him it was a good risk to take. You’re telling me the analyst

was saying, don’t invest in this? I didn’t hear that.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. I didn’t say the analysts, I’m not saying that. But

I think it’s more complicated than that. A company is taken public.

We all recognize that the Internet was, a few years back, something completely new.

Let’s remember, I see many Congressmen using their Blackberries. You weren’t doing this 3 or 4 years ago. Without the capital markets financing these companies, we wouldn’t be able to do

it.

So there’s lots of tremendous positives that have come from this,

thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands.

Chairman BAKER. I agree with you. I think that’s great.

What I’m saying to you is, the huge capital flows that appeared

since’ 95 to the current day, come from less-than-sophisticated pension fund managers in some cases, you now, some school teachers’ retirement fund, they are under critical pressure from their owners

of that fund.

Wait a minute. Everybody else is getting 18, 21 percent, why

aren’t you? He goes further out on the risk profile. He is listening

to his analyst.

My point, I want to be focused on, I’m not disputing that the capital markets don’t perform a wonderful function. I am not a regulator. I don’t think the Federal Government is the answer.

But I am suggesting very strongly in terms that I hope are clearly understood, I believe the sentiment’s been expressed in this subcommittee today, if we don’t get this fixed, probably some session

of Congress is going to fix it in a manner the market won’t like.

That’s what we are about here, is trying to not have that occur.

And if you’re telling me the role of the analyst is not to be direct

and forthright, and to tell people what they don’t want to hear in

an environment when it’s not popular to say it, that’s a very disturbing thing. We’ve got to find a way to fix that.

And I want to say to Mr. Lackritz and the SIA, I appreciate what

you have done, but we have now recognized we have a problem. We

have entered the 12-step process. We are step one, maybe two. We

are all getting in a room together and comforting one another. We

haven’t really decided where we’re going to wind up in a few

weeks.

41

We’re shaking it a little bit and we are a little bit worried, but

there is a problem. And in my view, although I fault the media for

hyping the stuff, I fault the investment bank for pushing the analysts, I fault the investor for not doing the due diligence that they

ought to do.

At the end of the day when I get my call from a broker saying,

boy, you don’t want to miss this train, it’s a sure bet, who am I

to disagree?

I rely on their professional judgment to tell me when it’s advisable. Should they be right a hundred percent of the time? Heck, no.

I’d like them to be, you now, 51/49, but at some point we have to

realize the standard of conduct which a reasonable man should expect from the Street has not been utilized, and the formulation of

the best practice standard I think is evidence there was a recognition of a problem. And we’re now about addressing it.

I don’t think we need to skirt around it anymore. I think we’ve

got to figure out what do we do. That’s the last piece. I don’t see

a lot of recommendations beyond the best practice standard.

Mr. Tice, you had a few?

Mr. TICE. Yes. If I could respond briefly to Mr. Hymowitz’ point,

I don’t think it is that complicated and you’re exactly on target that

the analysts should be objective. He should not be looking at what

the customers demand for a product or an investment service.

That’s the problem. The analyst most often serves as a sales person. He’s looking at the customers out there and saying, what can

I sell to them; therefore how can I promote this stock so that he

will want to buy it, rather than being independent and saying, is

this good for the customer.

That truly is the problem today.

Chairman BAKER. Let me give Mr. Hymowitz equal time, because

we have a couple of more Members who want to come back with

another question.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. First, I would say if the whole problem was just

analysts had a lot of buy recommendations on stocks, and that was

it then the railroad stocks would have gone to the moon, the drug

stocks would have gone to the moon, the food stocks would have

gone to the moon. That’s not what happened.

What happened is the public at large, and I don’t know who is

to blame, and I’m not smart enough to figure it out, the public at

large had a very short period of time, 12 months, maybe 18 months

where they got completely enthused with the Internet and anything dot.com, and that’s it.

You know what? Ultimately a lot of these companies will be good

companies. Many companies will employ hundreds of thousands of

people years from now.

The fact is, as I said earlier, for a moment, and I’m not necessarily saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, but for a moment, a short period of time, the capital markets that historically

were mature markets, were funding what I have called and many

other people have called ‘‘second stage venture capital businesses.’’

Chairman BAKER. I agree with you.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Chairman BAKER. We don’t have a dispute about that. My point

is that there was no public discussion that we were into venture

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capital as opposed to long-term investments. When a dot.com only

lost 6 cents instead of seven, they were rewarded. And when a

brick and mortar, who has a 50-year history of profitability, made

6 cents instead of 7 cents, they were hammered.

I can’t explain that either.

My point is that the rational, calm voice in the midst of turmoil

should be the analyst.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. Mr. Chairman, could I just comment on that last

thing.

I actually respectfully disagree with you that we weren’t warned.

We were of course warned. Any investor should have just picked

up the prospectus and read it, and all you had to do is look at the

financial statements of these companies, and you would have seen

the warnings.

You would have seen that these companies were profitless. There

were plenty of warnings out there that these companies that were

being funded were immature, often very young companies.

Chairman BAKER. I respectfully understand your disclaimer, but

it would take someone fairly committed and fairly clever to read

through the 86 pages of disclaimer. It’s the only thing that I’ve

seen that’s more complicated than the first mortgage loan closing

document package. That is not a reasonable man standard.

What I’m saying to you is the reasonable man, the working family was providing the capital for all this wonderful activity. The analysts comfort him and say, yes, I think in the long haul, you know,

don’t buy for today, buy for the long haul. It will be a wise investment. They did.

And when things go south, understandably, the investor is disturbed.

But if the analysts had done the job at the outset in saying, look,

this is a ten percent shot. If you want to do it, I’ll be happy to service your account, but I would strongly recommend you get over

here with this long record. It’ll be slower growth, it’ll be more stable growth, less risk. And I don’t think a lot of those conversations

were held is my concern.

Mr. Castle, I’m sorry I’ve taken so much time.

Mr. CASTLE. I’ll try to be brief too.

If this was asked, somebody cut me off because I had to be out

of the room for a little bit.

But, Mr. Tice, you apparently in your testimony, according to our

staff, cited the tremendous competitive disadvantages that independent research firms actually face.

I think a few of them, such as where is the revenue coming from

and whatever, and I can think of a few of them.* But if people who

are investors believe that Wall Street firms are not giving good advice, then why don’t the market forces send more people to the outside. Why don’t the market forces sort of rise up and say, you’re

not giving us good advice. We have to look someplace else for it.

And give the independent firms greater strength than they presently have. What’s the marketing problem there. I don’t follow the

dynamics of all that.

Mr. TICE. One of the issues there, Congressman, is the fact that

we believe that Wall Street research should be priced. Currently,

Wall Street research is essentially being given away in order that

43

the big investment managers could have access to their trading, to

their IPOs, and so forth.

Therefore, it’s very difficult for a small, independent firm, such

as mine, to be able to garner fees and commissions in order to get

paid. It’s very easy to continue to get the First Boston, the Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch research, because it’s essentially

free.

What we would like to see occur, and we’ve pointed this out in

our solution to a very complicated issue that I can’t get into today,

is to have Wall Street price their research.

Mr. HYMOWITZ. Can I just make one comment?

Wall Street research is priced. You do not get Wall Street research if you’re a client or an institutional money manager unless

you have some relationship with the bank in the form of commissioned business. There’s a price you pay for it.

Mr. CASTLE. Just a final comment. We are sitting here talking

about analysts and Wall Street firms, and securities firms, and

whatever. But the average person out there is usually dealing with

a broker who is then handing them that information. They don’t

know who the analyst is. They don’t even know if the firm that’s

handing them the information is the one who did the analysis or

whatever it is.

There’s sort of a disconnect here between what happens in public

and what we’re discussing.

Mr. GLASSMAN. Not only that, Congressman, they are dealing in

many cases with mutual funds. Forty percent of Americans own

mutual funds. Three trillion dollars are in equity funds, and these

are professionals who are getting advice from lots of sources.

I don’t think we need to have laws passed to protect these professionals.

And also let me just say, I really think it’s important to put in

perspective what has happened in the markets over the last few

years.

Over the last 5 years, the stock market as a whole has gone up

120 percent despite what happened in the year 2000. The

NASDAQ, which is the high tech index, has just about tripled over

the last 10 years.

So the idea of passing legislation, which in fact, if it’s the wrong

kind of legislation, will have a devastating effect on the market

itself, because of a problem that has occurred in stock prices over

the last year, I think that may be going a little bit too far to say

the very least.

Mr. CASTLE. I’ll close with this. I don’t disagree with you perhaps, at least at this point, in passing any kind of regulatory legislation or anything of that nature with respect to Wall Street research or whatever, but I remain adamantly convinced that you

have not made the case that we have unbiased research on Wall

Street.

I think a lot of the conflicts and problems that have been mentioned at this hearing do exist, and I think it is up to you all,

meaning the broad securities industry as a whole, to really take a

good look at this.

44

I think factually that can be demonstrated and I believe something has to be done, maybe away from Congress, but something

should be done.

I yield back.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Castle.

For the record, Mr. Glassman, I don’t think anyone today is suggesting further legislation on the matter. This is an opportunity to

share thoughts and hopefully see some positive results without legislation.

Mr. Kanjorski.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Mr. Hymowitz, you made some interesting comments about reading the prospectus, the profit-and-loss statement,

and the balance sheet of some of these corporations. You suggest

that people are able to ascertain and make a judgment on their

own.

Unlike Congressmen, you probably spend more time at the club

than you do at the gas station. We are about to decide a public policy on whether or not Social Security should be invested in the

stock market. The proposal would allow people to have the voluntary election to do that.

There are about 150 to 160 million workers covered by Social Security. If you know something about the statistics on level of education, I think it is more than 20 percent of the American population that is functionally illiterate. That would be 35-, 40-million

adult Americans that cannot even read and understand what

would be in a business prospectus.

I hope therefore, people are listening to this broadcast that are

going to be deciding whether or not we should open up Social Security money to go into private accounts managed by private individuals for investments. In part of your testimony, I was under the

impression that we were going to have a very high standard of professionalism. You should have taken into account one out of four

people’s total incapacity to understand and comprehend these

things. Without the professionals of Wall Street, they would not

have to.

But you are telling me, you are saying to all Americans now: It

is up to you to understand these things, to read these statements,

and to comprehend these statements. So the Congress, under that

argument, should say look, we know there is more than 20 percent

of the population that is functionally illiterate, who cannot even

read and fill out an employment form, much less read a prospectus.

Should we not protect them and say that is the craziest issue in

the world? Are you not one of the greatest witnesses against

privatizing Social Security?

Mr. HYMOWITZ. Congressman, let me answer the question. What

I was responding to was Chairman Baker’s question about why

wasn’t the public informed when the capital markets switched, in

some respects, to start funding secondary venture capital companies, young, immature enterprises.

And my answer was that prospectuses that this Government requires companies to file hopefully are meant to be read. And the

individual who does not want to spend time and the effort to read

the prospectus then should do what millions and millions of Americans do every day, and that is give their hard-earned investments

45

to mutual fund companies to index funds, to brokers, to money

managers to hedge funds.

Look, I don’t know anything about automobiles, so if I go in and

I attempt to figure out what car to buy, I’m going to get some expert advice on what kind of car I should buy.

Mr. KANJORSKI. The average American does not do that. He does

not hire an engineer to evaluate an automobile. I do not know

where the heck you are living, but you are not going to the gas station to which I go to pump my gas. I talk with people every day.

I want to give you an anecdote. In a coffee shop 2 weeks ago, I

saw a friend of mine, injured seriously on his job, and who settled

out his Workman’s Compensation case at $250,000 about 3 years

ago. He got caught up in the hysteria of the stock market, and

made some investments in early IPOs. These stocks really ran up

at first.

He thought Christmas had now arrived 365 days a year. That

$250,000 is, however, now worth less than $19,000. When he told

me what he was doing, I could not believe it. I recommended

against it. I said, ‘‘Don’t you ever play this game with this money.

This is your livelihood.’’ But he could not resist that temptation.

Everybody else was doing it.

Mr. Baker made the point. Having all my 401(k) in Government

securities, I have to say over these last 5 years, sometimes I have

kicked myself when I look at that bottom line, and I look at my

neighbor’s bottom line. But knowing that I neither have the time

nor the expertise, I just cannot. I may also have a conflict of interest, so I just stay out of it.

But there are an awful lot of American people who are not capable of doing that. We try to open up hope and opportunity to everyone, and there is not any question, as I said in my opening statement, that the American capital markets are the envy of the world.

We are not trying to cast aspersions on all analysts, even the majority of analysts, and certainly not on all investments.

I know these people. They are mostly exceptionally talented,

bright, and highly ethical. Do they police everything or are mistakes made? Yes. But our problem is that we have to respond and

try to protect in some way, even the foolish and the functionally

illiterate. What I think we are asking this panel to do, and the industry to do, is put your heads together and come up internally

within your industry with standards that are acceptable, and enforcement that is acceptable. We need standards that leave us with

the belief that the markets are being handled by people that are

credible with integrity, and not to the disadvantage of the average

person.

And if we cannot do that, I agree with my colleagues: there will

be a time when either the regulator, or this Congress, will act precipitously if conditions continue.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Kanjorski.

If no other Member wishes to ask a question of this panel.

Congressman Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Chairman, I consider this a very important hearing and I was chairing the National Securities Subcommittee and

I just apologize for missing what I was told was an outstanding

46

dialogue with this panel and the Members and I look forward to

the next panel.

Thank you.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Congressman Shays.

I want to thank each of you for your perspectives. I assure you,

the subcommittee will move very slowly. We are, hopefully, not

being viewed as demagoguing an important issue. We want to understand it. We want to know how markets function, the role of the

analyst and all participants.

We would welcome your further comment pursuant to your appearance here today. If you have answers responsive to any Members’ questions, we would welcome them.

I specifically would like further analysis on if we are to proceed

with the best practices model, in whatever form that finally is contemplated, I feel it appropriate to have some confirmation of compliance, whether that is by the Congress, the regulator or some

other activity by contract. But we need to have some assurances

that the standards that are being held up, as in all other professions, there’s some level of accountability for assuring those practices are being followed.

I don’t sense, from the Members of the subcommittee here today,

that we feel like we’re near resolution, but that we can reach an

understanding with professional leadership from the investment

community that I think can be acceptable to all parties, and most

importantly, we all fully understand that the huge growth in our

economic ability and our quality of life in America has been very

positively effected by the activities over this past decade.

We wish to do nothing to impair the efficient flow of capital markets, but we also have a new political responsibility. People who

are working families that had no access to the markets to speak

of are now on-line, as we hold this hearing, making investments because they want to have part of this dynamic growth and that is

creating a new level of responsibility.

As I quoted earlier in the week, I said it may be one thing for

one shark to eat another; it is quite a different matter for the shark

to eat the minnows, and we’re about making sure that everyone

who’s in the tank has equal access to opportunity, a free flow of information that’s unbiased, that will result in the restoration of unquestioned truth and faith in our capital market system.

That really is our purpose and I really do appreciate your participation. It was not easy to get folks to come and talk about this and

frankly it wasn’t easy to call the hearing, but I think we served an

important purpose and I thank you for it.

At this time, I’d like to call our second panel, please. I’m told,

just as an update, we’re getting to a point in debate on the floor

where we’re expecting a vote within a few minutes. I’d like to go

ahead and proceed. If need be, we will temporarily suspend. I think

it may be only one vote and I can run over quickly and be back

just to give you an advisory.

We will start first with welcoming Mr. Benjamin Mark Cole, Financial Journalist, author of the ‘‘Pied Pipers of Wall Street: How

Analysts Sell You Down the River.’’

Thank you, Mr. Cole.

47

STATEMENT OF BENJAMIN M. COLE, FINANCIAL JOURNALIST

Mr. COLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for receiving my testimony

today. With the NASDAQ cut in half from 2000 and Internet stocks

trading for pennies on the dollar, many Americans are asking

themselves what happened.

How come no major securities house predicted you might lose

half your dough on the NASDAQ in less than a year, or lose almost

all your money on an E-toys price line, or an I-Village.

It reminds me of that old joke of the 1970s, made fresh again by

recent events. ‘‘How do you end up with a million bucks on Wall

Street? Start off with two million.’’

What the public doesn’t realize yet, though it is catching on, is

that Wall Street research has become hopelessly corrupt. Today’s

so-called analysts are more akin to lawyers in court. They regard

their job as one of advocacy to make the best case why a stock is

a terrific buy.

Ask an analyst if what they are doing is dishonest, and they will

answer that you don’t understand their job description.

What happened to analysis? Why does a sell signal make up less

than one percent of analysts’ recommendations?

The answer lies in the way Wall Street makes money today compared with 1975. Twenty-five years ago, Wall Street made money

in ordinary retail trading commissions which were fixed by regulation. That environment, something of a cross between Shangri-La

and Fat City, made Wall Street a clubby place of almost assured

profits. The prized customer was a wealthy individual or family

that liked to trade stocks and the prized employee was a stockbroker with a good book of business.

But the SEC erased fixed trading rates in 1975, an action then

fought tooth and nail by the industry, which wanted no part of free

enterprise and competition.

In the years since, if inflation is taken into account, retail trading commissions have fallen to a penny on the dollar.

If you look at a thrifty investor using a discount on long brokerage for securities firms, the downward plummet of trading rates

raised a serious problem.

How do we make lots of money like we all came to Wall Street

for?

Wall Street, after 1975, had to come up with a new way to make

lots of money and they found it, happily for them in their own corporate finance departments, also known as investment banking.

Investment banking is the business of underwriting initial public

offerings of stock, secondary offerings, bond underwriting, or advising companies on mergers and acquisitions.

Increasingly, brokerages have moved upstream in the financing

cycle of companies, often providing private equity, also called venture capital, to a company before they take it public.

This activity can be extremely lucrative. CIBC Oppenheimer,

now CIBC World Markets, invested $30 million in private equity

into Global Crossing Limited, the Telecom giant. After the company

went public and the stock surged, that stake became worth $4.3

billion.

48

Goldman Sachs invested $36 million private equity or stock in Storage Networks, Inc., pre IPO. That stock became worth $1.6 billion after Goldman took Storage Networks public.

Some quick numbers illustrate the changed nature of Wall Street. In 1974, the U.S. securities industry underwrote $42 billion

worth of stocks and bonds. In 1999, the industry underwrote $2.24

trillion of stocks and bonds, more than 50 times the pre–1975 level.

Trading commissions today made up 60 percent of industry revenues before 1975, but today make up less than 16 percent.

The simple story is this: Wall Street makes its money on investment banking, not retail trading commissions. With this change,

came a change in who held power within the brokerage.

In days of yore, as quaint as it may seem today, the stockbroker

with his book of business was the power employee within the brokerage. Sometimes they were referred to as customers’ men.

When an analyst wrote a report, he looked over his shoulder at

the customers’ men who would hold him accountable.

Today, things have changed. Today, analysts look over their

shoulders at investment banking and trading departments, the new

profit centers.

The results of this switch in loyalty are obvious to all within the

industry, so much so that brokerage analysts are referred to often

dismissively as sell-side analysts. Perhaps not surprisingly, numerous industry and academic studies have found that analysts’ recommendations as a group under perform the market.

Investors would be better off tossing darts at the Wall Street

Journal than following analysts’ recommendations.

Although the role of analysts has changed dramatically in the

last 25 years, their regulatory environment is little changed from

1975 or even 1945. Analysts have safe harbor under the law even

to the extent that they can tell their larger clients that a stock is

really a dog while keeping the buy signal on for the public. That

is entirely legal.

It is even legal for analysts to tell their trading departments that

a buy signal will be out on the morrow. If the analyst is influential,

the trading department can bulk up on the stock, and then sell into

the retail demand generated by the buy signal, all legal.

Brokerages call this ‘‘building inventory to satisfy demand.’’ Just

servicing our customers. Others might call that a license to print

money.

What is disturbing in the last 25 years is to see that many practices once limited to regional and one-branch brokerage shops, the

so-called schlock shops have become commonplace in Wall Street

proper.

In particular, when a brokerage finances a company before an

IPO and then has an analyst issue a buy recommendation, it is

mimicking practice commonplace off Wall Street for generations.

Some quick stabs at solutions here.

One, I would increase the budget of the SEC for enforcement actions and beef up the U.S. Attorneys Office for securities industry

prosecutions.

Two. I would require the brokerages to create a uniform standard for rating the accuracy of analysts’ recommendations and that

analysts’ batting averages, if you will, be constantly published on

49

an industry website maintained by the National Association of Securities Dealers.

As an aside, I find it somewhat amusing that we know Marc

McGuire’s batting average day-by-day, how many home runs he’s

hit, but we don’t know what the analysts’ batting average is dayby-day, yet we are investing based upon their recommendations.

In the 1930s, the SEC examined whether brokerages should even

have underwriting and retailing operations under one roof. It may

be time to reexamine that situation.

In care and feeding of short traders, in a nut shell, allow short

traders to have contracts specifying terms for returning borrowed

shares. Short traders can be a tonic on the market.

Lastly, better mandatory disclosure of analysts’ conflicts of interest in both broadcast and print media.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[the prepared statement of Benjamin M. Cole can be found on

page 181 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much, Mr. Cole.

The next witness is Mr. Scott Cleland, Chief Executive Officer of

the Precursor Group.

Welcome, Mr. Cleland.

STATEMENT OF SCOTT C. CLELAND, CHAIRMAN AND CEO,

PRECURSOR GROUP

Mr. CLELAND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the honor of testifying. I’m Scott Cleland, Founder and CEO of the Precursor Group.

We provide investment research to institutional investors. We’ve

aligned our business interests solely with investor interests so

we’ve avoided the common financial conflicts of interest. We do no

investment banking. We don’t manage money. We trade stocks but

we never own them.

And all Precursor researchers may not own individual stocks. We

are a pure research firm because we believe that a company cannot

serve two masters well at the same time. You can’t serve investors

and companies together.

We think conflicts undermine research. We think independence

improves research.

We saw a real market opportunity to be a pure research company.

Our interest in testifying is clear. We are worried that the powerful investment banking and trading interests that have suffocated independence within a firm are at work within the industry

at large, and can suffocate the independent research views at large.

That’s because the firms that have conflicts control well over 90

percent of the market for research commissions, according to our

best estimate.

So what we’re calling for is more competition to conflicted research, not less. The less regulation of pure research and more disclosure and regulatory oversight of conflicts of interest, the freest

and the most competitive flow of information is what best serves

investors and helps the markets operate efficiently.

A system that’s 90 percent or more dominated by companies that

have inherent conflicts of interest profoundly distorts the type of

50

information that the market receives. We think that more competitive research is the answer.

Recently, American shareholders and pension plan beneficiaries

lost over $4 trillion when the NASDAQ fell, and at that time, there

were only one percent of analysts recommending a sell.

I’m not saying that the problem is the analysts. I think they are

being made the scapegoat.

The problem is the regulatory system that is favoring companies

over investors. The analysts and the firms work primarily for companies, so it’s unrealistic to expect that they are going to bite the

hand that feeds them.

So what are our recommendations for you? We have four.

The first recommendation is, encourage fuller and more practical

useful disclosures of financial conflicts of interest. Who does a researcher work for? Is it the companies or is it the investor.

My second recommendation is encourage the alignment of interests, encourage research that is aligned with investment and with

investor interests.

Let me tell you a little fable in a sense. This is a classic case of

the fox in the hen house. Today, the investment research assumes

that the investor hens will be just fine in the same hen house with

the investment banking fox as long as the regulator, the farmer,

makes sure there’s enough chicken wire to keep the fox away from

the hens.

My question to you is: Why not encourage more hens seeking out

hens and why does the system always encourage that a hen must

deal with a fox? It makes no sense, but that’s what the system encourages.

It encourages the hens to live right next to the fox all the time.

Now what’s my third recommendation? Reduce regulatory barriers to people who want to do pure investment research like we

do. Do you realize that in order to become an independent research

broker/dealer, we had to be licensed and regulated and audited to

do investment banking and all the trading.

There are over 900 pages of regulations that we are subjected to

and only ten apply to research. We essentially in the regulatory

system, why you have so little independent research is the regulatory system powerfully discourages it. We have to take a regulatory exam called a Series 24. We took it and we passed it.

However, it was a very difficult exam. We spent over 150 hours

studying for that in order to pass it. And there were very few questions, a very small percent that applied to what we are trying to

do in our business, which is to provide investment research to improve investors’ performance.So we think you can do a little bit of

deregulating. The last recommendation I have is ensure a full and

diverse competition for ideas and information in the marketplace.

More specifically, watch the institutional commission lists, because right now the folks that have 90 percent share of those research commission lists are trying to get 100 percent. That’s the

reason why we’re testifying here today. If you want to have more

independent research, if you want to fix the solution, allow the

marketplace to compete with conflicted research.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

51

[The prepared statement of Scott C. Cleland can be found on

page 184 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much, sir. We appreciate your

appearance.

Our next witness is Mr. Thomas Bowman, CFA, President, Chief

Executive Officer, Association for Investment Management and Research. Welcome, Mr. Bowman.

STATEMENT OF THOMAS A. BOWMAN, CFA, PRESIDENT AND

CEO, THE ASSOCIATION FOR INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT

AND RESEARCH

Mr. BOWMAN. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and other Members of your subcommittee. My name is Thomas Bowman, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Association for Investment

Management and Research, a non-profit organization with the mission of advancing the interests of the global investment community

by establishing and maintaining the highest standards of professional excellence and integrity.

Thank you for the opportunity to and privilege to speak on behalf

of more than 150,000 investment professionals worldwide who are

members of AIMR or who are candidates for AIMR’s Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

For more than 30 years, CFA charterholders, candidates and

other individuals who are AIMR members have adhered to a standard of practice that requires them, among other things, to achieve

and maintain independence and objectivity in making investment

recommendations and to always place their clients’ interests before

their own.

Although AIMR members are individuals, not firms, AIMR has

succeeded in developing other ethical and professional standards

that require firmwide compliance and have been globally adopted.

Based on our experience, ethical and professional standards are

most effective when voluntarily embraced rather than externally

imposed.

To provide analysts with an environment free of undue or excessive pressures to bias their work, we must understand that these

pressures come from many sources, not simply investment banking

activities, and not all of them internal to their firms. None of these

pressures is new, but their impact has escalated in an environment

where penny changes in earnings per share forecasts make dramatic short-term changes in share price, where profits from investment banking activities outpace profits from brokerage and research, and where investment research and recommendations are

now prime time news, or as some would say, entertainment.

Let me elaborate a bit on some of these pressures. Analysts need

to work with their investment banking colleagues to evaluate prospective clients. Although we do not believe that this relationship

is inherently unethical, firms must have procedures in place that

minimize, effectively manage and adequately disclose the conflicts

to investors.

Firms should foster a corporate culture that supports independence and objectivity.

52

They should establish or enforce separate and distinct reporting

structures so that investment banking can never influence a research report or investment recommendations.

They should have clear policies for analysts’ personal investment

and trading.

They should implement compensation arrangements that do not

link analysts’ compensation to work on investment banking assignments; and

Make prominent and specific, rather than marginal and

boilerplate, disclosure of conflicts.

Analysts also have been pressured by companies to issue favorable recommendations. Companies have been known to take punitive action against analysts and their firms for negative coverage.

Some institutional clients also support ratings inflation. Portfolio

managers’ compensation may be adversely affected by a rating

downgrade of a security in their portfolio. Consequently, they may

retaliate by shifting brokerage to another firm.

These and other conflicts are discussed at length in a position

paper that AIMR will soon issue for public comment. This paper

will form the basis for the development of AIMR’s Research Objectivity Standards, which will be specific and measurable practices

addressing each conflict.

Finally, we must address how research recommendations are

communicated. Increasingly, private investors get research recommendations through brokers, the media and the Internet. Typical research reports are lengthy, but are often condensed to earnings forecasts or buy, hold or sell recommendations when communicated to the investing public. This makes a good sound bite, but

investors should know that headline ratings do not provide sufficient information for buying or selling a security.

Investors or their investment managers should study the entire

research report to assess the suitability of the investment to their

own situation, their own investment objectives, and their constraints.

Although the analysts we are addressing are a small fraction of

AIMR members, and the investment profession at large for that

matter, I would like to impress upon the subcommittee that AIMR

and its members appreciate the seriousness and also the complexity of this problem. We recognize that the reputation of the entire investment profession has been called into question. But a precipitous solution is not the answer.

AIMR is committed to work with the profession to develop effective, long-term solutions. I’ll be happy to answer any questions you

may have. And again, Mr. Chair, thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Thomas A. Bowman can be found on

page 195 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Bowman.

Our final witness today is Mr. Damon Silvers, Associate General

Counsel, AFL-CIO. Welcome, Mr. Silvers.

53

STATEMENT OF DAMON A. SILVERS, ASSOCIATE GENERAL

COUNSEL, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS (AFL-CIO)

Mr. SILVERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The AFL-CIO and its

member unions—there are 13 million members—believes today’s

hearings on investment analyst independence is of vital importance

to working families and their pension funds.

We would like to thank the Subcommittee for its efforts in this

area. In particular, Mr. Chairman, let me express our appreciation

to you for your concern for the interests of working families as investors.

Defined benefit pension funds that provide benefits to the AFLCIO’s 13 million members have approximately $5 trillion in assets.

Through 401[k] plans, ESOPs, and union members’ personal savings accounts, there are further extensive investments in equity

markets by America’s working families and union members.

Most of our members and the trustees of our pension funds rely

on a variety of professionals for their information about the equity

markets. America’s working families have an enormous stake in

the accuracy of this investment analysis.

In addition, many of the largest pension funds, whose beneficiaries account for hundreds of thousands of working families,

have placed the majority of their equity investments in index

funds. This decision is driven by index funds’ lower fees and the

difficulty of obtaining consistent above-market returns in active

trading.

However, the funds who invest in indexes are placing their trust

in the transparency and honesty of our markets and have no defense against systematic distortions such as those created by conflicted analysis.

In that context, what are we to make of the data that’s been

cited here frequently today that in December of 2000, 71 percent

of all analysts’ recommendations were buys and only 2.1 percent

were sell?

In the remainder of my testimony, I would like to suggest that

what has happened here is the collapse of what used to be called

the Chinese Wall between investment banking and analysis, and

that only regulatory action can rebuild it.

There is substantial statistical evidence that analysts’ decisions

whether or not to recommend that investors buy a stock are influenced by whether their firm is an underwriter for that issuer or

considering becoming one.

CFO Magazine reported last year that analysts who worked for

full service investment banks have 6 percent higher earnings forecasts and close to 25 percent more buy recommendations than analysts at firms without such ties.

And in the last few months, analysts have been quoted by name

in the financial press saying such things as, quote: ‘‘a hold does not

mean it’s OK to hold the stock’’. And, quote: ‘‘the day you put a sell

on a stock is the day you become a pariah.’’ This data is not surprising given the relationships that have developed between analysts and the investment banking side of the

full service securities firms. It has become a common practice for

analysts to accompany teams from their corporate finance departVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:34 Feb 06, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00059 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 73368.TXT HBANK1 PsN: HBANK1
54

ments on underwriting roadshows, and most importantly, analyst

compensation has become tied at many firms to analyst’s effectiveness at drawing underwriting business.

In addition, the consolidation of the financial services industry

puts issuers in a position to withhold business from the firms of

critical analysts across a wide array of markets, including commercial loans and commercial banking services, pension fund and

Treasury money management and insurance contracts.

For example, the same CFO Magazine article reported last year

that First Union cut off all bond trading business with Bear

Stearns in response to negative comments by Bear Stearns’ analyst, and Bear Stearns then ordered the analyst to be more positive.

Just yesterday morning there was an account of how an analyst

report critical of the Kraft offering that was mentioned here today

was effectively suppressed by Goldman Sachs. They had their reasons, they reported in the press. The fact is, the report was suppressed.

On the eve of this hearing, the Securities Industry Association

announced a voluntary set of principles governing analysts at their

member firms. We would urge the subcommittee to look closely at

this code to see if it leaves room for continued linkage of analyst

compensation to investment banking activity or continued participation by analysts in marketing securities underwritten by the analysts’ firms.

The problem of conflicted analysts is driven by extremely powerful financial pressures, and it will not be halted or reversed by either general statements of a desire to be honest or subtly crafted

principles that on closer examination leave room for a continuation

of business as usual.

Rather, we think Congress ought to assist the Securities and Exchange Commission, the NASD and the national exchanges in continuing the course toward greater market transparency and integrity promoted by the SEC’s recent regulatory initiatives.

Already in Regulation FD on selective disclosure, the subcommittee has taken an important step toward combatting conflicting analysts’ reports. The disclosure targeted by Reg FD gave

issuers power to punish and reward analysts with information that

warped the behavior of those analysts who actually got the selective disclosure.

Unfortunately, despite the improvements wrought by FD, we believe that there is a need amply demonstrated by this morning’s

hearing for this Subcommittee to work with the regulatory agencies, including the industry itself, in the NASD and the SROs to

develop new regulatory approaches.

Some measures this subcommittee ought to consider and raise

with the Commission should include bars on any form of linkage

between analyst compensation and investment banking performance. And in addition, bars on analyst participation in marketing

activities by their firms, most importantly, underwriting

roadshows.

The subcommittee should also consider whether in view of the

pressures at work here a more comprehensive ban on analysts from

issuing reports to the public on companies which their firms are

55

underwriters for should be appropriate. One thing that has not

come out in this discussion very much this morning is that analysts

and broker-dealers are fiduciaries for their clients here. And they

owe a duty to those people under law currently. Unfortunately, it

seems to be somewhat unenforceable.

Working with the Commission on these new initiatives, however,

will take time. In the meantime, we think this subcommittee would

do a great deal to protect investors and the analyst community if

at a minimum it used its influence with the SEC to protect Regulation FD and ensure it continues in its place in current form.

In conclusion, the AFL-CIO believes the question of analyst independence is vital for the retirement security of America’s working

families. We thank this subcommittee for its work in this area, and

we look forward to working with you in the future.

[The prepared statement of Damon A. Silvers can be found on

page 199 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Silvers.

Mr. Bowman, I’d like to start my questions with you, sir. In your

capacity representing AIMR and secondarily as to the content of

your statement, I found it most helpful. You centered on a number

of concerns that I have had, and I express my great interest in the

release of the paper, which I assume will address all of those issues

raised.

Have you had occasion to review yet the Best Practices standard

of the SIA?

Mr. BOWMAN. Very briefly, sir. I think they came out earlier this

week. And I had not had any advance—I had not discussed that

with the SIA prior to their coming out with it. So I’m vaguely familiar with them, but I have not read them in depth.

Chairman BAKER. And you’re not in a position to make a comment today?

Mr. BOWMAN. Well, I found one thing very interesting. As I read

through those, in fact I had an e-mail from one of our members

who had seen it, and if you read through those Best Practices,

while we agree with them all, it’s very interesting to see that most

of what was included in that report has been in our Standards of

Practice handbook for 35 years—analyst independence, clients first,

you know, conflicts.

Chairman BAKER. I was expecting that looking at that manual

for 35 years of practice it would appear to me on first blush from

a distance of about 40 feet, it contains a bit more than the Best

Practices Standard recommended by the SIA. Is that a fact?

Mr. BOWMAN. Well, in fairness it does, but there’s case studies

in here too. So this is not all the standards.

Chairman BAKER. Are there significant elements of its content

which you would deem advisable for the subcommittee to consider

in the application to the Best Practices of the SIA?

Mr. BOWMAN. Very much, sir.

Chairman BAKER. What I will suggest, since I have a suspicion

this will get inordinately complex very quickly, is to request—and

I’ll follow up in writing—your organization’s review of those Best

Practices as recommended, and particularly a contrast between

your Manual of Best Practice and that which is proposed to help

56

the subcommittee better understand where deficiencies might exist

or where we find something of value in the SIA’s proposal.

At least my view, and I think the view of most Members of the

subcommittee is there is not a desire to legislate in this matter, but

we certainly want to encourage the best possible standard to be

self-implemented, but to view the best way to confirm, as Mr. Silvers had pointed out, a way to ensure that the conformity with the

standards is in place. Is there such an audit or enforcement provision with regard to the AIMR standards?

Mr. BOWMAN. Again, sir, as I mentioned in my testimony, we are

an organization of individual professionals. We do not have corporate membership, and therefore no authority over some of the

firms that we’re talking about here this morning.

So we do have enforcement mechanisms over our members.

Chairman BAKER. Right. In other words, if you find somebody

not complying with your rules, they’re out?

Mr. BOWMAN. They’re out.

Chairman BAKER. But my point is that there’s accountability at

least within the organization, and where there is evidence of inappropriate conduct, there are consequences?

Mr. BOWMAN. Absolutely.

Chairman BAKER. Well, see, that’s something that’s lacking I

think in the SIA proposal. There’s not even the beginning suggestion of a consequence for your failure to act appropriately.

Mr. Cleland, did you want to jump in there?

Mr. CLELAND. Yes, if I could. It’s always important to put things

into context. And the SIA Best Practices, everyone should support.

I just would like to put it into context that there’s nothing really

new here; that this is boilerplate.

If you look at the National Association of Security Dealers selfregulatory manual that was first published in the 1950s, this language would be very similar to what the preamble was there.

Chairman BAKER. So you would characterize this as not a particularly bold step, in other words?

Mr. CLELAND. This is probably a needed refresher course. But it’s

been the standard for 45 years.

Chairman BAKER. And by the way, just for the record, it was

stated earlier that perhaps the organization was one of the few

that had continuing education. I can confirm from my own personal

experience there. Annual education requirements for most professional affiliations with annual testing. And I can speak to that

from only the real estate perspective. But it is not an abnormal activity for a professional organization to require continuing education and examination, and I think that’s highly appropriate.

Did you wish to jump in, Mr. Silvers?

Mr. SILVERS. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I think that you have a way

of avoiding the dichotomy that I think you wish to avoid between

purely voluntary self-policing of the sort that the SIA code suggests, and legislation. Congress is fortunate that in its wisdom it

created the structures of the self-regulatory organizations and the

NASD, which are industry structures, controlled by the leaders of

the securities industry who have the authority to enact structures

of accountability in this area.

57

It’s our view that the proper role for this subcommittee here is

to work with those bodies and encourage them to use the authority

they have to address this problem and create the kinds of accountability, Mr. Chairman, that you are concerned about.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you. I’m going to jump to Mr. Bentsen.

I don’t know how soon we’ll get to a vote, but I’d like to try to at

least get Mr. Bentsen and Mr. Shays’ questions in before then. Mr.

Bentsen?

Mr. BENTSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. let me just restate and

make sure it’s clear what my opinion is on this so no one is confused. I think there is some move here to try and treat financial

analysts in the same way that we treat auditors and to link their

positions. And I just continue to believe that those are two different

professions and we ought to be cautious in our approach.

And in a couple of the testimonies that were given, there seems

to be an extrapolation of not just fiduciary responsibility—and I

agree that analysts, because they have contact with investors, are

required to take their Series 7 and I don’t know whatever series

tests they have to take through the SROs.

But no one yet has shown me in the law where analysts’ reports

fall under the same guidelines that offering documents for securities do in terms of providing objective disclosure. And second of all,

no one has yet fully provided for me some widespread pattern of

manipulation of the market on the part of the analyst corps that

creates some real and present problem that needs to be addressed

through regulation or legislative action.

Now at the same time, as I said to the earlier panel, and maybe

I’ll try and be less subtle, that it comes as no great surprise to me

that analysts who work for investment banking firms or brokerage

firms may well be, particularly on the sell side, may well be trying

to add in the pitch of the sale. And I think there is a risk to the

brokerage firms that they be cautious in how subjective they want

to be, because they are trading ultimately on trust. And then if

they cross that line into what is manipulation through false disclosure, even though they are not under the Security Act or other disclosure laws.

I mean, can anybody here give me a pattern that has occurred?

And the other thing I would just add, and I’d ask Mr. Cole, you

talk about the fact that the NASDAQ has been cut in half from

2000, but this is not the first time we’ve seen market corrections

in the 20th century. I mean, you had in 1900, in the 1920s, in the

1950s. You had a brief correction in the 1980s.

And if there’s a correlation between analysts saying sell versus

hold versus buy, is it to say—I mean, how did you get that 50 percent correction in the first place? Had they all said ‘‘sell,’’ would it

have been a 100 percent correction in the market? Or does the

market move on information other than what analysts provide to

them?

And finally, I’d just say, in many respects I think there is a herd

mentality that occurs in the market, and I think the excess capacity of media outlets amplifying what analysts are saying, which

heretofore used to be a subscription-type business sort of amplifies

what their real worth is.

58

But basically, I’d like to know where is the pattern? Where is the

empirical evidence? Because I don’t think that case has been made

today.

Mr. CLELAND. If I could jump in, I wouldn’t necessarily say

that—I wouldn’t try and answer it that way. What I would say is

the entire structure, the economics, the structure, the regulation,

the compensation structures, are all mutually reinforcing that put

company interests ahead of investor interests.

The SIA’s Best Practices said the investor interest comes first.

Well, if you look through the regulation, the structure, the economics of the industry and the compensation, it all rewards companies

over investors.

Mr. BENTSEN. Now Mr. Cleland, do you support Reg FD?

Mr. CLELAND. I think that Reg FD is OK. I think what it means

is that most research has to happen in a stadium, and that generally isn’t how research is done. Research is done day by day,

tough, you know, digging and getting different nuggets at different

times.

Mr. BENTSEN. But wouldn’t it, if we had a Reg FD, isn’t there

a school—I think there’s a school of thought if we had Reg FD that

when a company tells an analyst that they have a cozy relationship

with they also have to disclose to the rest of the world. I mean,

isn’t that what you want to see happen?

Mr. CLELAND. I have no problem with that.

Mr. BENTSEN. Isn’t that what we’re saying in part here today?

Mr. CLELAND. Yes. And I don’t think there’s any—I’m not quibbling with FD.

Mr. BENTSEN. We had a hearing a week ago, or 2 weeks ago,

where some were trashing Reg FD and saying that it was going to

lead to less disclosure and contort the market and all other sorts

of things.

Mr. CLELAND. And I’m not quibbling with FD. I’m trying to tell

you that there is a systemic bias toward representing company interests over investor interests throughout the system. And you will

get biased research, because that’s what the system is geared to do.

Mr. BENTSEN. In the laws governing offering documents, I mean,

issues you raise about companies taking positions, the brokerage

houses taking positions in companies that they’re also writing research for, when they are actually pitching a stock through an offering document is a material item that has to be disclosed in the

document.

And I think what you are arguing is perhaps we need to apply

disclosure standards, legal disclosure standards to research, which

is a pretty far step to take.

Mr. CLELAND. No, I’m not saying that. I think the rules as I

know them that research reports are classified as sales material.

So at least that’s what the current rules do say. They treat research as—they call it sales material.

Chairman BAKER. If I can, Mr. Bentsen, I’m going to jump to Mr.

Shays, and hopefully we can release our witness panel. Mr. Shays?

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I’m intrigued with all your testimony.

Mr. Cole, you start out very clearly and say Wall Street has become

hopelessly corrupt. And I’m interested in you trying to give me the

59

two or three best examples of why you think it’s hopelessly corrupt,

and then I’d like a response by the rest of the panel.

Mr. COLE. Well, when you look at a Planet Hollywood underwriting or Playboy secondary offering and you see the quality of research which was released in either of those companies. Planet

Hollywood went bankrupt shortly after it went public. Or if you

consider the role of analysts at a brokerage where the brokerage

actually provides venture capital to a company, helps create the

company, then takes it to an initial public offering and the company does go public, the brokerage itself has a stake in the company worth from hundreds of millions to billions of dollars.

What analyst is going to come out with a sell recommendation

when the brokerage itself owns billions of dollars of stock in that

company? If the analyst’s sell recommendation only knocked 10

percent off the value of that stock, it could hurt the brokerage to

the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr. SHAYS. I’m struck by the fact, though, I don’t know how a

brokerage firm does well if its analysts are constantly telling people to do something that’s not in their best interest. I see the builtin bias, but in the end, it seems to me that analysts—— Mr. COLE. The day of reckoning may come, as I said in my statement. I think the public is catching on. And if you want to be a

little bit dramatic, what happens when the public does catch on

and loses faith in Wall Street?

Mr. SHAYS. What about all the other analysts who work for other

companies who will express an opinion about a particular area

where one company has a vested interest in? In other words,

doesn’t the fact there are so many analysts out there ultimately

modify, provide additional information? So one brokerage firm says

buy and another one says sell.

Mr. COLE. I wish that it did modify it, but it seems to magnify

it since as we’ve heard, 99 percent of recommendations are buy, it

seems to have a reinforcing effect rather than a moderating effect.

Mr. SHAYS. I guess my question is, other firms that don’t have

a vested interest in it. Therefore, I don’t see where their bias is.

Mr. COLE. They may seek business in the future. They may be

owned by a commercial bank which has a commercial banking relationship with the company in question. It never pays to make enemies.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just hear the response of others. Mr. Cleland,

I want to just say, the way you organize your statement tells me

it’s based on your training as an analyst. I’d love to show my staff

how clearly you organize your statement. It’s intriguing.

Mr. CLELAND. Thank you.

Mr. SHAYS. But I’d love you all to just respond to Mr. Cole’s comments.

Mr. CLELAND. Well, I think I wouldn’t use the word ‘‘corrupt’’. I

would use the word ‘‘conflicted’’. I mean, there’s nothing wrong

with representing companies. The problem in the system is, is people think the system represents investors. And the structure, the

economics, the compensation and the regulation is all biased toward helping company interests subordinate investor interests.

That’s the system. That’s the problem is that it’s not transparent

that the system is so skewed.

60

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Bowman?

Mr. BOWMAN. With all due respect, I categorically disagree with

Mr. Cole’s statement. As I think Mr. Glassman and the earlier

panel indicated, life has conflicts, as does any business.

As I mentioned, I represent an organization of 150,000 investment professionals and I deal with thousands of investment professionals every day, and I can tell you that in 99.99 percent of the

cases, all they want is for the investing public and for us to be able

to demonstrate that these people are honest, forthright and are

putting their clients first.

In fact, since this whole issue arose several months ago, I have

probably never been inundated with e-mail, mail and fax from

members about the concern that they have and the black eye that

they’re receiving over what is really an isolated set of conflicts. And

that is a relatively few number of sell-side firms who have these

potential conflicts.

So I can tell you that over 30 years of investment practice, all

the investment professionals that I’ve ever run into and at least

those who are members of our organization, are honest, forthright

and only interested in serving their clients.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Shays.

Mr. Royce.

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I missed a little bit of the

testimony here, because the Investor and Capital Market Relief Act

is on the floor and I was speaking to that bill. But I caught some

of the earlier testimony.

And I have yesterday’s Wall Street Journal with me here. And

I just want to read for the panel here a comment made in yesterday’s Journal: ‘‘Investors increasingly are blaming analysts for

helping to pump up the dot.com bubble by issuing favorable research reports in recent years on companies handing out fat investment banking fees and not warning investors of the problems at

these companies until long after the bubble burst.’’

And what the Journal does is just give a short example here,

which I’d like you to comment on. It says: ‘‘A week ago Credit

Suisse First Boston was appointed lead underwriter on a new stock

deal for GoTo.com, a Pasadena, California Internet search engine.

And Credit Suisse First Boston beat out Merrill Lynch and Company for the lucrative position. A few hours later, Merrill’s high

profile technology stock analyst, Henry Blodgett, who had been

bullish on GoTo.com shares, did a turnaround on the stock. He

downgraded the stock to a neutral from accumulate.’’ And the Wall

Street Journal asks the question, a coincidence? And that’s the

question I want to ask you. Is that a coincidence?

Chairman BAKER. If I may suggest, gentlemen, respond very

quickly, and here’s the incentive. If we get through this round of

questions in time, we will adjourn our hearing. If not, we’ll come

back. It’s your choice.

[Laughter.]

Mr. ROYCE. Those types of examples. Are they a coincidence?

Mr. SILVERS. Congressman, I think that if you look at the academic studies in this area which were cited extensively in my written testimony, you’ll see that not only is that not a coincidence, but

61

that it preceded the bubble. That those people at the leading business schools of this country who have taken a look at the relationship between whether or not an analyst’s firm has an investment

banking relationship with the company that analyst is looking at

has an effect on their reports, the answer time and time again has

been yes in the 1990s.

It’s a matter I think of statistical proof. And in addition to the

academic studies that were done all through the 1990s that are in

my testimony, the Journal had reports yesterday on a study that

showed someone who followed the recommendations of conflicted

analysts would have had a 50 percent grater loss than one who did

not. And furthermore, there was a study in CFO Magazine that I

mentioned earlier. And there is to my knowledge no contradicting

studies.

I think that there is ample data for the proposition that you’re

asserting here and that regulators’ inaction, frankly, at this point

is inexplicable to me.

Chairman BAKER. If I may suggest, we’re down to probably a

couple of minutes left, Mr. Royce on the vote.

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much. I would enter into the

record, Mr. Silvers, the document you were referring to is the

Investars.com study in which 53.34 percent—investors lost an average of 53.34 percent when they followed analysts employed by

firms as opposed to independent analysts lost 4.24. Now both were

losing. I mean, there’s nothing to brag about in this message. But

the point is that it seems to have been exacerbated by the affiliation.

To that end, I think the testimony given here today has been

very helpful.

I’m sorry, Mr. Bentsen. Very quickly.

Mr. BENTSEN. If I could clarify very quickly, on a point Mr.

Cleland made, talking to counsel, the 33 Act for disclosure purposes does not cover analysts’ reports. And I think we’re again

being very confused here that analysts’ reports are not offering documents. And at the end of the day, people who are buying stocks

and bonds should read the offering document where the disclosure

is in and we are now extrapolating that, expanding that to cover

analysts reports. And I think we need to think long and hard before we make that assumption.

Chairman BAKER. We’re down to a minute, Mr. Bentsen. And I

don’t dispute your point. Investors should have some responsibility.

But this complicated matter, I hate to close our hearing in this

fashion, but I must. We will address the remaining issues in hearings that are yet to come. I would welcome your written comments

and suggestions, and certainly Mr. Bowman, I eagerly await the

findings of the paper and look forward to working with each of you

toward appropriate resolution.

Our hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:25 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

(63)

ANALYZING THE ANALYSTS

TUESDAY, JULY 31, 2001

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CAPITAL MARKETS, INSURANCE,

AND GOVERNMENT SPONSORED ENTERPRISES,

COMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL SERVICES,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:05 p.m., in room

2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Richard H. Baker,

[chairman of the subcommittee], presiding.

Present: Chairman Baker; Representatives Castle, Royce, Oxley,

Fossella, Toomey, Kanjorski, Bentsen, J. Maloney of Connecticut,

LaFalce, Sherman, Inslee, Moore, Gonzalez, Ford, Hinojosa, Lucas,

Shows, Crowley, Israel.

Chairman BAKER. I’d like to call this hearing of the Capital Markets Subcommittee to order. I’m advised Members are on their way

to the subcommittee, but to try and keep our proceedings on a

timely basis, I will open our hearing.

This is the second in a series, and I expect a long series of hearings over the concerns of market practice and the free flow of unbiased information to investors.

Many people have expressed concern over the under-performance

of the market over the last few weeks, and individual investors

have seen portfolios shrink rather dramatically. That is not the

basis on which the subcommittee conducts its review today.

As always, investors have the ultimate responsibility to make

their own determinations based on their own best judgment. However, it has become increasingly clear that market practices are not

what they used to be, and, in fact, there will be today, I believe,

testimony to indicate that the scope of concerns the subcommittee

has had are fully warranted and, in fact, may be more pervasive

than originally contemplated.

The purpose of the hearing will be to determine the breadth of

those problems and to begin the initial process of assessing the appropriate steps that are responsive to the problems that are identified. As everyone is aware, we have appointed a peer review committee which now has under advisement the best practices standards as issued by the Securities Investment Association, (SIA).

It is our hope that with the information provided in the hearing

today, that we can properly assess the effectiveness of those rules

and determine what enforcement mechanisms may be appropriate

in light of the difficulties that have been determined to date.

I’m particularly grateful for those who are participating on today’s panels. There’s pretty clear agreement among all the witVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:34 Feb 06, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00069 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 73368.TXT HBANK1 PsN: HBANK1
64

nesses as to the fact that a problem exists. I suspect there may be

some differing opinion as to the remedies that might be appropriate, but I very carefully reviewed all the witnesses’ testimony

and think the hearing today will be very helpful for the subcommittee in understanding what will be an appropriate remedy to

our concerns.

To put a fine point on that process, the subcommittee will conduct a hearing in the fall, after the August recess. We will develop

recommendations for the industry to consider, and we will develop

a mechanism by which those recommendations can be verified as

to the level of compliance.

However, I should make it fairly straightforward, at least in my

opinion, that should there not be an appropriate or adequate response by the industry to the identified public policy concerns, I am

not turning my back on the question of providing a legislative remedy should we fall short of achieving the desired goal.

With that, I would like to recognize Mr. Kanjorski, the Ranking

Member, for his opening statement.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Richard H. Baker can be found

on page 209 in the appendix.]

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We meet today for the second time to consider the issue of analyst independence, a subject of great significance to our Nation’s

capital markets. Increasing the transparency of analysts’ work

should make it easier to detect faulty research and should enable

investors to more easily evaluate the differing views of analysts

who cover a particular stock.

Increased transparency should also help restore confidence in

Wall Street’s research. Since we last met on this subject in June,

a number of developments directly affecting the subject of analyst

independence have occurred.

Therefore, I will summarize some of these events before we begin

today’s hearing. First, the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) recently proposed changes to its disclosure rules. These

amendments propose, among other things, to include common stock

as a financial interest that firms and analysts must disclose.

More importantly, the proposal would also require abbreviated

disclosures during public appearances on radio and television

shows. When implemented, these changes should help retail investors to better understand analyst conflicts.

Officials with the NASD have also personally assured me that

this rulemaking is not the last step that their organization will

take to enhance analysts’ capabilities. A number of securities firms

have additionally announced revisions of their existing policies to

manage analysts’ conflicts. These changes exceed the recommendations for best practices announced by the SIA at their last hearing.

For example, Merrill Lynch, Edward Jones, and Credit Suisse

First Boston have announced plans in July to prohibit their analysts from owning securities in companies they cover in their research. In the coming weeks, I expect other firms will follow the

lead of these companies by announcing changes in their own policies and practices designed to increase the independence of research.

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Furthermore, the Nation’s largest brokerage firm announced that it has agreed to pay $400,000 to a pediatrician in Queens, New

York. This doctor claimed that he lost more than one-half million

dollars following the advice of his broker who regularly cited the

bullish research of a prominent Wall Street analyst.

Although this settlement establishes no legal precedent by itself,

it does raise important ramifications for the brokerage business, especially if other investors, in the weeks and months ahead, pursue

similar cases.

I predict that just one or two more settlements of this type will

create an incentive for the investment banks to take further action

to improve the quality and trustworthiness of their research. Although each of these actions demonstrates that the marketplace

has begun to self-regulate on the issue of analyst objectivity, we

must still do more.

Mr. Chairman, in the week since our last hearing, the debate has

intensified about whether we should privatize Social Security. Social Security presently covers about 160 million persons. Because

more than 20 percent of the adult American population is functionally illiterate, we can estimate that about 35 to 40 million Americans cannot read or understand a business prospectus. Yet, we

would be asking these very same individuals to make decisions

about their retirement funds under Social Security privatization

schemes. If they cannot read and comprehend a business plan or

an accounting statement, it seems likely that many of these individuals would become reliant on the advice of Wall Street researchers when making their investment decisions.

Therefore, industry has an obligation and a responsibility to comprehensively address the issue of analyst conflicts and resolve all

related concerns before we begin any public policy debate on the future of Social Security.

With that said, Mr. Chairman, today’s hearing will further our

understanding of the nature of this growing problem and help us

to discover other actions that might restore the public’s trust in analysts.

As you know, I generally favor industry solving its own problems

through the use of self-regulation whenever possible. And I was

pleased to join you in recent weeks in creating a review board to

assess the adequacy of the industry’s reform proposals. I will also

listen carefully to today’s testimony and continue to encourage our

subcommittee to move deliberately on these matters in the months

ahead.

As I advised at our last hearing, we should not demagogue on

the issue of analyst objectivity to score political points. Only cautious action on this subject will help to ensure that our capital

markets remain strong and vibrant.

In closing, analyst independence is an issue of the utmost importance for maintaining the efficiency of and fairness in our Nation’s

capital markets.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this hearing today and

raising these concerns.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Paul E. Kanjorski can be found

on page 217 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Kanjorski.

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Chairman Oxley.

Mr. OXLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I commend you for holding this important hearing, part of a series of hearings on issues

of Wall Street research practices. These practices have come under

fire in the past year for some good reason. As we learned at our

first hearing on analysts last month, and as even the trade group

for analysts acknowledged, conflicts of interest do pervade Wall

Street’s research machine and taint the recommendations of equity

analysts.

There’s one reason institutional investors pay little attention to

sell side analysts, relying on their own research professionals instead.

Robert Sanborn, a former portfolio manager of the Oakmark

Fund says that anyone who follows a recommendation from a sell

side analyst is an absolute fool. Most investment advisors caution

investors to consider analysts’ recommendations not as definitive in

any way, but rather as a single factor in making a buy or sell decision. That is good advice, but even as a single factor in an investment decision, an analyst’s recommendation should, at the very

least, be free from the taint of bias.

The financial media has played an important role in elevating

the profile of Wall Street analysts. Mary Meeker and Henry

Blodgett are now familiar names to a large number of American investors. Many have criticized the news media for its failure to hold

analysts accountable for wildly wrong predictions. I would urge the

news media to require sources to disclose whether they hold any

interest in stock, long or short, and whether their firms have business relationships with the company. Then let investors weigh that

information. Some news media already take these steps, but it

should be universal.

Having said all that, as a free market Republican, I am loathe

to legislate in this area. My preference is for industry to clean up

its own mess. I’m encouraged by steps that some companies have

taken to address the issue. I will continue to work with the industry to make sure sufficient steps are being taken to resolve the

problems and to restore confidence in Wall Street research practices.

This subcommittee has established a peer review board of industry practitioners, money managers, academics, and regulators to

comment on the industry’s proposals for reform. That group will

present its findings to the subcommittee at a hearing this fall.

I look forward to our distinguished witnesses today who will provide new perspectives on the issue including Commissioner Laura

Unger, the Acting Chairman, who has done considerable work on

this matter as Acting Chairman of the Commission, and on our second panel, a variety of esteemed experts in research and investment banking, and the financial media.

Welcome, Ms. Unger, it’s good to have you back before the subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Michael G. Oxley can be found

on page 225 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. LaFalce.

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Mr. LAFALCE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And thank

you, Mr. Kanjorski, for the fine work the two of you have been

doing in the hearings you’ve had thus far on these very, very important securities issues. They, along with the many meetings that

I’ve had with market participants and regulators and academics

have increasingly convinced me that analyst conflicts have seriously eroded confidence not only in the capital formation process,

but in the way stocks are evaluated by investors who seek objective

advice in a very complex marketplace.

It’s also become clear to me that the analysts have a role in

boosting and supporting the stock price of certain companies. That

is but one piece in a series of activities that contributed to the market exuberance of the late 1990s and the early months of this century. We must redress these practices.

The centrality of the market, as both the measure of a company’s

success and a fundamental source of wealth creation for insiders

especially, has tilted companies’ attention toward their stock price

and away from the fundamentals of their business.

Executive compensation is now most often intertwined deeply

with the performance of a company’s stock. The stock price, in

turn, is very much affected by the expectation of the securities analysts and the investor community. Companies live and die by meeting analysts’ predictions each and every quarter. Missing the estimates by as little as a penny can send a company’s stock price

plummeting, even when there has been no substantive change in

the firm’s condition or prospects.

Since the last hearings, the SIA, in an effort to stem the public

and vocal tide of criticism, released its voluntary guidelines, and

shortly after its release much of the industry claimed they were already following these guidelines.

In response, Ms. Unger was quoted in the press as saying that

this would, quote: ‘‘Suggest that perhaps the guidelines need to be

enforced more stringently.’’ Perhaps so, if you can enforce guidelines.

In any event, shortly following those remarks, in a very positive

but telling step, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse First Boston, amongst

others, barred their analysts from owning the stocks that they

cover. Now I think that was a clear indication that something was

very wrong. I also think it’s a clear indication that the wrong can

be righted. As a result, I’ve communicated with Ms. Unger, and the

NASD on two occasions to call for a rulemaking that goes beyond

the enhanced disclosure recently proposed by the NASD to amend

Rule 2210.

We know that the role of the analyst is both a mechanism to win

business and a voice to speak objectively about the business fundamentals of the companies they cover. This advice is relied upon

by small investors and by large investors alike.

What is at risk is often a person’s entire future, a person’s retirement, a person’s financial security, a person’s fortune. Conflicts are

not simply facts to be disclosed. Conflicts of interest undermine the

objectivity of the analyst and the efficacy of the work that they do.

Like any profession that requires trust by the public, conflicts

need to be minimized or eliminated, not simply disclosed. Therefore, I have suggested to Ms. Unger, and I invite her to respond

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today, if not on behalf of the Securities and Exchange Commission

(SEC), on behalf of Laura Unger personally, to the following recommendations.

First, to affirm through regulation the actions of companies such

as Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse by banning securities analysts

from owing or having an interest in the stocks that they cover.

Second, to engage the academic community, the NASD and market participants to arrive at a workable construct that will alter

the present compensation structure of analysts to separate analysts’ compensation from their investment banking function, and

reward them based on the quality of their research.

Third, to require securities firms to disclose on each research report or recommendation, how many issuers they cover, and an aggregate breakdown by category of the ratings assigned to these

issuers. For example, xyz investment firm covers 200 public companies. Of these companies, 50 are strong buys, 100 are buys, 49 are

holds, and one is a sell or two are sells or three or four or whatever

it may be. But that might put the recommendation in perspective.

I made additional suggestions to the Commission in late June

following this subcommittee’s first hearing. Without objection, I

would ask that they also be made a part of the record.

Chairman BAKER. Mr. LaFalce, without objection, but I hate to

ask if you could begin to close.

Mr. LAFALCE. Yes, I do support many of the modest changes supported by the NASD in its proposed rulemaking. But I’m increasingly concerned that industry self-regulation may not be sufficient

and that more disclosure of these conflicts in itself will not suffice

to protect the American investor.

So I urge the regulators to act quickly to eliminate these conflicts, because if the regulators do not, Congress must.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John J. LaFalce can be found

on page 219 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. LaFalce.

I go next to Mr. Bentsen.

Mr. BENTSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Unger, it’s good to have you and the rest of our panel. Mr.

Chairman, I appreciate that you are having the second round of

hearings on this important issue, and I think the panel that you

have today, Ms. Unger from the SEC, and our other, broader panel

will be very helpful for both the Congress as well as the public,

who is watching this, to get a better understanding of both how the

process of research analyst works as well as what, if any, the response from the Federal Government should be.

However, I would caution my colleagues, and I would caution the

Securities and Exchange Commission to be careful in our attempt

to, as we look for a culprit for the collapse—or I don’t want to use

the word collapse—but the rapid decline in the value of certain

markets, that we shouldn’t try and go and pin it, in this instance,

on the case of the research analyst and try and sterilize the research business.

I would remind my colleagues that on the books we have existing

securities laws, existing disclosure laws which, whether or not people are actually looking at what is being disclosed, is something

that we should not ignore.

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Second of all, I think we have to be realistic and understand that

this is a problem that the industry not only has a responsibility to

the general public, but has a responsibility to their own shareholders and their own partners to fix. I think that any firm which

gains a reputation of irrational research will soon find that reflected in their bottom line.

So I would hope that we gather as much information as we can,

but that we proceed very cautiously in this approach, and that we

do not try to equate the research business in the same way as we

might equate the auditing business. Because, in this Member’s

opinion, those are two very, very different things.

I thank the Chairman for calling this hearing.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Bentsen.

Mr. Fossella.

Mr. FOSSELLA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

To follow up on my colleague, Mr. Bentsen, it’s a great thing that

more Americans have become investors. I think it’s a healthy thing.

I think what is important, as well, is to remind all Americans who

want to become investors that it’s in their interest to become educated for their own good.

We acknowledge the critical role I think that research analysts

play in developing the markets and maintaining the integrity of

the markets, and ultimately providing a service not only to their

companies and firms, but to ordinary investors across this country.

I think that what’s happened in the last several weeks is a positive thing, that is, the industry, I think, has identified that there

seems to be a problem. While the vast majority of individuals who

work for these firms I think are of the utmost integrity, they have

to comply with their own firms’ standards, and deal with the SEC,

among other regulatory entities, to comply with the law, there

seems to be a strong belief that something needs to change.

Some firms I think initially have thought that the best practices

in events recommended by the SIA are necessary. It is healthy and

good that some firms have said, no, I think we need to make some

changes and modifications to our practices.

What’s left to be asked, however, is how much time should the

industry have in order to change the way they go about these practices. There are different firms. Each firm has a different standard.

How is it that the SEC is going to look upon the implementation

of these best practices to ensure that as many firms as possible, if

at all, are going to comply? You look at a Merrill Lynch, it has a

different standard than a First Boston and a different standard

than Salomon.

I think over time it’s up to the SEC to put a timeframe on those,

is it 3 months?; is it 6 months?; is it after bonuses are given in December, to see if these things are working?

I share Mr. Bentsen’s views, and I believe my other colleagues

who have said let’s not jump to legislative remedies for this, because ultimately it’s up to the investor to beware. But there is a

degree, and a large degree of questions at stake with those few research analysts who compromise not only themselves, but their

firm’s integrity, as well as that of the individual investor.

There are going to be conflicts always. There’s no question about

it. You have the responsibility, and I think you would do well to

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ensure that those conflicts and compromises are kept at a minimum. As the market decreases, it did so rapidly in less than a

year, people are going to start pointing fingers and looking for

someone to blame.

I don’t think that’s the right thing to do in the long term. The

right thing to do in the long term is to bring all these firms as close

as possible to the best practices as recommended by the SIA and

try to take another snapshot, in say 6 months’ time to see what’s

happened. But the rush to judgment may just be a big mistake.

I yield back.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Fossella.

Does any other Member have an opening statement?

[No response.]

Chairman BAKER. If not, it would be my intention to recess pending the floor, Ms. Unger. I’ll come back very quickly. My best guess

is that that will take me about 10 to 12 minutes, and then we’ll

get started.

Thank you very much.

[Recess.]

Chairman BAKER. I’d like to reconvene our hearing. We had two

votes instead of one so we were detained a little. The other Members will be returning as soon as possible.

I’d like at this time to recognize our first witness for today’s

hearing, The Honorable Laura Unger, Acting Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, certainly no stranger to the

subcommittee.

Welcome, Ms. Unger.

STATEMENT OF HON. LAURA S. UNGER, ACTING CHAIRMAN,

U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Ms. UNGER. Thank you very much, Chairman Baker, and others

who may be returning to the hearing. A lot of what was said really

resonated with me, and I think you’ll find that what I say today

will resonate with you.

I thank you for the opportunity to address the subcommittee

today concerning analysts’ conflict of interest. The Commission

commends the subcommittee for its continued attention to this important issue. I thought I would spend my time this afternoon addressing three issues.

The first is, what conflicts affect analysts and why do these conflicts exist? The second is, what have we observed about analyst

conflicts as a result of our staff’s recent exams of brokerage firms?

The third is, what is being done to address these conflicts?

Before I turn to these particular questions, I think a preliminary

remark is in order. It is fair to say, as others have said today, that

it has not been a banner year for analysts. The profession has been

the subject of intense public scrutiny. In many respects, analysts

are a victim of their own success. The longstanding bull market

and the record number of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) made research—and the positive impact on stock price that research could

have—a basis on which investment banking firms competed for underwriting business.

But I think it’s important for us not to lose sight of the important

role that analysts play in our securities markets. As the CommisVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:34 Feb 06, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00076 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 73368.TXT HBANK1 PsN: HBANK1
71

sion recently stated, in adopting Regulation Fair Disclosure (FD),

analysts provide a valuable service in sifting through and extracting information, the significance of which might not otherwise be

apparent to the ordinary investor.

We should also not forget that the overriding majority of analysts

operate on the highest ethical plane. In other words, the issue of

analysts’ conflicts is largely structural and not personal.

With that preface, I will begin by identifying a few of the more

acute conflicts. Most stem from the blurring of the lines between

research and investment banking that I just alluded to. This blurring can be seen in a number of ways. First, an analyst’s salary

and bonus may be linked to the profitability of the firm’s investment banking business, motivating analysts to produce favorable

research that will attract and retain investment banking clients for

the firm.

Second, at some firms, analysts are accountable to investment

banking for their ratings. Third, analysts sometimes own a piece

of a company that they cover, mostly through pre-IPO share acquisitions.

SEC staff has conducted on-site examinations of several full service brokerage firms, focusing on analysts’ conflicts of interest. The

staff, in its examinations, selected nine firms that underwrote significant numbers of IPOs, particularly internet and technology-related IPOs. These examinations focused on the three areas that I

just mentioned: compensation arrangements; analysts’ accountability to investment banking; and analysts’ financial interest in

companies they cover.

Today, I will share with you some of the preliminary observations. The first is that the line between research and investment

banking, has indeed blurred. Seven of the nine firms inspected reported that investment banking had input into analysts’ bonuses

and the analyst hiring process. In at least one of those firms, 90

percent of the analyst’s bonus is based on investment banking revenue.

The staff inspections found that the investment banking department does not formally supervise the research department, but

that analysts assist investment banking by consulting on IPOs,

mergers and acquisitions, participating in pre-IPO road shows, and

initiating research of prospective investment banking clients.

Second, interviews with former analysts revealed that it was well

understood that they were not permitted to issue negative opinions

about investment banking clients.

Third, about one-quarter of the analysts inspected owned securities in companies they covered.

The staff found that 16 of 57 analysts reviewed made 39 investments in a company they later covered. All of the investments were

pre-IPO. Moreover, the examiners found that three of these analysts traded contrary to their research report recommendations. Examiners also found that in 26 of 97 lockups reviewed, research analysts may have issued ‘‘booster shot’’ research reports. These reports reiterated buy recommendations shortly before or just after

the expiration of the lockup period.

As you know, a lockup is the time period during which insiders

and others who have obtained pre-IPO shares are prohibited from

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selling those shares. In each of these instances, the firms

underwrote the IPO of the company in which the firm’s analysts

owned stock. So, you may ask what is being done to address these

conflicts?

As has been noted today, the industry, the Self Regulatory Organizations (SROs), and the Commission have taken action to improve the objectivity and independence of research analysts. Both

the SIA and the Association for Investment Management and Research recently issued a set of best practices in this area. These

best practices provide a basis or foundation for on-going discussions

about managing conflicts.

Firms are reviewing their internal policies and procedures. Several securities firms have already taken some initiatives to revise

their existing policies and procedures to manage conflicts. As reported in the press, at least three securities firms have recently

adopted policies that prohibit analysts from owning securities in

companies they cover.

The NASD recently proposed for member comment changes to

enhance and harmonize its conflict disclosure rule. The Commission has two roles in managing analyst conflicts. The first is making sure that disclosure is adequate and effective. The second is

educating investors.

So far, we have worked with the SROs to improve and more diligently enforce the disclosure of conflicts of interest. Our Office of

Investor Education and Assistance has also issued an Investor

Alert to explain to investors exactly what conflicts analysts may

face and how investors should interpret disclosures about these

conflicts.

I believe investor education is particularly vital to managing analyst risk. I say this because we can really only manage the conflicts. Some conflicts will always exist, such as pressure from institutional investor clients protecting their portfolio value, and pressure from issuers who put analysts in the dog house for downgrading their stock.

It is my hope that with a little help from the regulators, the industry will resolve these issues. The recent industry initiatives are

a step in the right direction. But I would be remiss, especially as

a former enforcement attorney, if I did not emphasize that the industry and the SRO initiatives will only succeed with vigorous enforcement.

The SEC staff inspections revealed that firms had policies on the

books that were virtually ignored and rarely enforced in practice.

For example, one firm approved an analyst’s pre-IPO investment 3

years after the fact. In another example, only one firm could identify accurately all pre-IPO investments by analysts. This situation

cannot continue. The firms, the SROs, and the SEC must work together to ensure that we have information with integrity out in the

marketplace.

I look forward to continuing this partnership. Thank you, Mr.

Chairman. I will now be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Laura S. Unger can be found

on page 227 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much. I was optimistic that

your testimony would satisfy all the concerns of the subcommittee

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and I think you’ve done an outstanding job of energizing the subcommittee’s concerns.

Ms. UNGER. Thank you.

Chairman BAKER. There is considerable content to your testimony that I would like to question you about, but I’m going to

focus on two or three things that I think are particularly disturbing.

Examiners found that three analysts executed trades for their

personal accounts which were contrary to the recommendations in

their research report. That’s from page 6, footnote 8. It goes on to

say, and this is what really got me concerned, that the analysts’ profits generated by acting in what I think is at least unethical if

not a violation of some rule somewhere, between $100,000 and $3.5

million for each transaction by selling their shares while continuing

to maintain buy recommendations. One analyst sold securities

short while maintaining a buy recommendation on the subject company.

What was the scope time-wise of your inquiry in the market?

How recent are these examinations that led you to this discovery?

Ms. UNGER. The examinations occurred in 1999 and 2000. What

we saw as far as the scenario you just mentioned in terms of analysts deriving significant profits from selling activity contrary to

their recommendations is something that we are taking a very

close look at. And in fact, in those cases, it’s possible that the analysts violated not only firm policies, but also the Federal Securities

laws.

Chairman BAKER. That really was my next question. Was there

a regulation, a professional standard of conduct, or a statute, and

if not, I would welcome, once your review is finished, advising the

subcommittee as to what, if needed, any steps might be taken. I

find it frankly appalling that someone could tell me to buy while

they’re selling in the back room profiting from my investment.

If that’s not a bedrock of necessity to correct, there is nothing in

this marketplace that we can correct. I just found that very troubling.

The staff found instances in which the analysts’ ownership in

stock of the covered company was not disclosed in the research at

all. Now I have trouble with the boilerplate that says we may have

an interest, but to not say it at all is not a violation of current

practice or regulation or is there any rule that says you have to

disclose at least that the firm may have an interest?

Ms. UNGER. Well, this is part of the problem. The New York

Stock Exchange has rules, as does the NASD. There is a disparity

between what each of the SROs require in terms of disclosure. For

example, one SRO requires that the firm disclose the common stock

position, and the other doesn’t. One SRO requires that there be a

disclosure of the investment banking relationship that’s more detailed than another.

And so what we really need to do as a first step is harmonize

the existing SRO rules to make it easier for firms to comply with

those rules.

Chairman BAKER. I think the subcommittee would be interested.

Again, one of the footnotes, page 8, footnote ten, despite the language of the rule, the NASD has stated that it does not interpret

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the disclosure requirement to apply to media appearances by analysts. So the SRO doesn’t see anything wrong with someone getting

on the television set saying what a great investment opportunity

this is and there are no consequences. In fact, it doesn’t violate the

code of conduct.

Again, I commend you for great testimony, but you’ve just increased our workload here for the considerable future. If we don’t

now have rules sufficient to govern practice from the SRO, I think

we have a long struggle to get the industry to get where I believe

you think they ought to be without significant encouragement.

Ms. UNGER. Well, the Commission, as you know, has been engaged in a dialogue over at least the last year with the NASD

about their interpretation of what disclosures must be made by analysts in media appearances.

Chairman BAKER. Well, for what it’s worth, I’d like to see a Surgeon General’s warning that says, ‘‘Warning. I have an interest in

this thing I’m talking about,’’ kind of flashes on the screen.

Ms. UNGER. Well, we have taken the position that the disclosure

requirement applies irrespective of the media.

Chairman BAKER. Absolutely. Just because you whisper it instead of standing up and saying it in public is no different, you still

have to disclose.

Ms. UNGER. I think the NASD is coming around to that viewpoint.

Chairman BAKER. Well, for what it’s worth, I hope we can encourage them.

I have one more point I want to make, but my time’s coming to

an end, and so I’ll do it real quickly. This is a what-if, and you may

not be comfortable to comment today. But let’s assume we had a

standard of conduct which we all would prescribe as being good,

and that we were able to get the industry to voluntarily implement

that standard. We don’t have it and we’re not there yet. But assume for the moment we had it.

The other point of your testimony was many of the organizations

have very well written, very well thought out codes of conduct, but

they’re also ignored. So we have pretty books sitting on the shelf

that nobody reads.

What we need, no matter what the standard may look like, is

someone to determine compliance and a consequence for not having

compliance. It seems to me there is a great deal of non-compliance

and there’s no consequence. For example, the fellows who are trading against their public position.

What would be the effect of having just a grading system, A, B,

C, for example, real simple. A you comply with everything, B you’re

pretty close, but you’re not there, and C you better really get your

stuff together or bad things are going to happen.

Now I don’t know whether that would be the role of the SEC, the

NASD, the SRO, but there has to be some measure of performance

of your conduct, because without that, the market can’t act and

bring about the discipline we all want.

Can you comment generally on the idea?

Ms. UNGER. You are correct. I would like to see the SROs first

make the disclosure requirements crystal clear and consistent. I

would next like to see the firms adopt policies across the board that

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would make disclosure with the requirements an everyday practice,

and then I think we need to ensure a way for firms to enforce those

rules.

And what you’ve described is certainly one way and a powerful

incentive, I’m sure, for the firms to comply with their own internal

policies which in turn comply with the existing SRO rules, or soon

to be existing SRO rules.

I’m not sure what the extent of the SEC’s involvement would be

in something like that. I would prefer the Agency not to have any

type of merit review, because we are traditionally not involved in

merit review, and this would be something like that. I think we

could be helpful in the process of developing standards and certainly we’d like to be engaged in the dialogue.

Chairman BAKER. But do you see merit in the public disclosure

of outcomes? That’s really my point, that today there are—although

we all wish for self-discipline in the market—there is are consequence if you do not, and you can’t make an informed judgment

as an investor unless you know how the company functions. And

it appears to be a very difficult determination to make today.

Ms. UNGER. The Commission often uses disclosure as a means of

discipline.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you. I’ve exhausted my time.

Mr. Bentsen.

Mr. BENTSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. Unger, let me ask you this at the outset, because of how this

is being portrayed and I want to make sure that I don’t dig myself

in too deep in the situation, because I’m a little worried that we’re

on a little bit of a witch hunt here.

But do you believe that given the current situation and the concerns about conflicts of interests with analysts, that this is something akin to—there was a movie called ‘‘Game Show’’ about the

1950s and the hearings in Congress, long before you and I were

born.

Ms. UNGER. Yes, I know what you’re talking about.

Mr. BENTSEN. But it was sort of a rigged market. Is that your

perception?

Ms. UNGER. No. And I think maybe you missed my opening comment where I said that, in fact, analysts perform a critical role in

today’s market, and in large part, they are victims of their own

success.

I think what’s happened is that the market was so strong for so

long and with the huge influx of IPO activity, firms looked for ways

to compete to get that IPO business. Part of the way they began

competing was to include analysts in the mix. The ability to provide favorable analyst coverage became part of the mix of services

the investment banking firm offered clients.

Mr. BENTSEN. Let me ask you this. I mean, hasn’t the analyst

position always been part of the mix of investment banking and the

mix of the trading and underwriting? I mean, haven’t brokerage

houses always relied, at least for internal purposes, for their own

internal credit risk purposes, on the work of their research analysts?

Ms. UNGER. Well, I hate to do this, because it always seems like

we point to the deregulation of commissions as the pivotal point for

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changes in the industry, but I do think that had some impact on

the underwriting business. Commissions were where most of the

money was being made by Wall Street at that time, and deregulation changed the focus of that business and how that business was

conducted, and what made it profitable.

I think analysts have probably always been involved in the deals,

but not to the extent that they are now, and not to the extent that

they have become so idolized in some respects.

Mr. BENTSEN. Well, they have become the masters of the universe, I guess, of the 1990s, as opposed to the investment bankers

of the 1980s, at least in the media’s eyes.

Let me ask you this. Is there anything under the existing securities laws that subjects analysts’ documents, analysts’ reports or

whatever, to the same disclosure requirements that are required of

offering documents. And if not, should there be?

And furthermore, didn’t the Commission, just a few years ago,

pass—I can’t remember what the colloquial term was for this—but

a plain English approach to the writing of offering documents so

that they would be more easily understandable and possibly used

by the public?

Ms. UNGER. Well, it’s interesting, because you raise, I think, a

critical point in the discussion which is not only have the dynamics

of the marketplace changed the role of analysts, but the role of research reports themselves and the extent of their availability have

also changed. Investors can now access research reports that they

were not able to before, as a result of the internet.

So what does this mean in terms of how the Commission needs

to educate investors about the conflicts, and what investors need

to know in using these research reports? Yes, there are the offering

documents; yes, they are subject to review by the Commission, but

we don’t have the resources, nor would we want to be engaged in

merit review with respect to the contents of a research report.

Mr. BENTSEN. Well then, in fact, the law doesn’t cover the research documents in the same way, I don’t think, as it does the offering documents.

Let me ask you one more question.

Ms. UNGER. Well it’s slightly different, because Section 11 is

strict liability for what is contained in a registration statement.

Mr. BENTSEN. Right.

Ms. UNGER. Section 10(b), the anti-fraud provision, applies to everything.

Mr. BENTSEN. Let me ask you this, because my time is up, but

I want to ask you this. Can you be concerned about conflicts of interest between analysts and companies and be opposed to Reg FD,

and be consistent?

Ms. UNGER. I’m sorry, can you repeat that?

Mr. BENTSEN. Can you be concerned about potential conflicts of

interest between research analysts and the companies that they review and the relationship with the investment banks, and also be

opposed to Reg FD and be consistent?

Ms. UNGER. Me personally?

Mr. BENTSEN. In general.

Ms. UNGER. Yes, I think you can, because I think you can note

that the conflicts exist, but I believe that Regulation FD does not

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cure the conflicts. Reg FD goes to communications between an

issuer and an analyst and not to insider trading, which was purported to be the original objective or reasoning for Reg FD’s adoption.

So it depends how far you want to go with the conflicts. The conflicts are the underpinnings of the discussion on both Regulation

FD and today’s hearing, but in a very different way.

Mr. BENTSEN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Bentsen.

Mr. Castle.

Mr. CASTLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have an opening statement which I would like to submit for the record.

Chairman BAKER. Without objection.

Mr. CASTLE. Thank you.

Ms. Unger, I have some questions. I’ve got to tell you that this

whole practice bothers me a tremendous amount. And I, in my

opening statement that I’ve just submitted, state that I don’t think

we should legislate in this area. But I’m just not sure anymore. I

mean, I’m becoming more and increasingly concerned. I mean,

there could be anything from just bad analysis which of course

should not be punishable by anything to the classification situation, to the so-called ‘‘hold’’ business, which apparently is a red flag

to sell which most of us never understood, except for the analysts

owning the stock, to the firm for which the analyst works owning

the stock and the retirement accounts or otherwise, or other individuals just having big placements in that particular stock that the

analyst is recommending or the investment banking side of the

firm owning it, or the analysts’ compensation being tied to overall

profits of the firm for which the analyst works, or the analyst being

involved in the early IPOs at a lower price than the IPO is going

to come out, and then huckstering it in some way or another, either

verbally or in writing some way or another.

Are there any situations such as that where the SEC does step

in now?

Ms. UNGER. Step in and do what?

Mr. CASTLE. Step in and enforce, do something about it?

Ms. UNGER. There are instances——

Mr. CASTLE. Are any of those things violations of laws or regulations at this point?

Ms. UNGER. I wish you had asked me that before you enumerated them. None of them jumped out at me as violations of the law,

but I will say that the Commission looks very closely at what’s disclosed, whether there was material information that was not disclosed by an analyst and the firm’s involvement in recommending

and selling. But sometimes you can’t just look at one particular activity—you need to look at the whole picture to really get a sense

of whether it’s an area for an enforcement action or not.

But yes, we brought cases involving analysts.

Mr. CASTLE. You have brought cases that just involve the analyst

side of it, is that?

Ms. UNGER. Well, we’ve brought cases where an analyst was

making reckless statements——

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Mr. CASTLE. Are these penny stock-type cases or are these major

firms that may have these conflicts in which you’ve brought the

cases?

Ms. UNGER. There’s a handful of cases that I could get you more

information about if you’re interested.

Mr. CASTLE. I mean my judgment is there have been billions of

dollars put on the table as a result of a lot of these practices and

which probably occasion losses of a tremendous amount. Do you

trust the industry itself to be able to do this as a self-regulatory

matter, or does the SEC have to get tougher with its enforcement

in order to back that up? Or should we be passing laws up here

which frankly I’m loathe to do, but is that something we should be

considering?

Ms. UNGER. Well, I think there are three prongs. One is compensation, one is the accountability of analysts to investment banking, and the third is the stock ownership. And I think you need to

look at each one of those individually in determining whether or

not there are issues that need to be addressed.

I think there are disclosures that apply in each of these areas

and there are existing rules that, as I said earlier, need to be harmonized and clarified and followed. And I think we need to do a

better job, the industry and the SROs need to do a better job in

inspecting firms to make sure that they comply with rules that are

on the books and rules that are about to be improved that will be

on the books.

I also think that the firms need to do a better job of ensuring

compliance with their existing internal policies and procedures,

most of which exist at the firms that were inspected, most of which

are not being enforced adequately today.

Mr. CASTLE. Well, and you’re right. I mean, there’s a whole level

of enforcement in various ways. But do you believe that the SEC

should change its rules and regulations or specifically its enforcement mechanisms to address some of the problems which you have

spoken to in your opening statement, which we’ve had another

hearing, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, and which is going to

be continued later today by another panel involving a number of

the different situations that I have set forth, all of which you’re familiar with in terms of different practices that are at least questionable.

Or do you think the SEC is fine the way it is?

Ms. UNGER. The SEC has broad antifraud authority. We have

ample authority to bring cases involving fraud and violations of

Section 10(b) and Rule 10(b)(5). The first line of defense in this

whole discussion about managing analyst conflicts really are the

SROs whose rules deal with this more directly than the Commission.

Again, I think we all need to do a better job. I think of course

the Commission is doing a great job, but we need to do more in our

oversight of the SROs in making sure that they conduct the inspections and examinations that are needed to determine whether the

firms have the appropriate policies and whether the policies are

being followed.

I think that’s really the first step that we need to take in this

discussion which I think is why the Chairman of this subcommittee

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is asking about ways to improve enforcement efforts and make the

firms accountable to the public in terms of what they’re doing internally.

Mr. CASTLE. Well, my time is up, but I mean, this won’t be a

question but, you know, I think it’s our job to worry about the consumer out there. I can’t worry about the big firms, I can’t worry

about the practice of the SEC, but I think a consumer should be

able to look at an analyst’s recommendation on a stock and it could

be wrong, but at least it should be done with integrity and honesty

and they get a pretty good idea of what they’re dealing with.

Until we’ve gotten to that point, it seems to me we all haven’t

done our job. And I yield back the balance of my time.

Chairman BAKER. Mr. Castle, just to finish up on your point, in

earlier questions to Ms. Unger, I’ve made reference to her footnotes

of her own document. In just one transaction, the fellow profited

$3.5 million by selling his interest while publicly telling his clients

to buy. On its face, unless it’s the gentleman’s estate—that’s the

only reason I could see it would be OK—that in itself is a serious

problem, and yet that is under advisement at the moment for determination as to whether action is appropriate or not. That is a

very large concern. Your point is right on target.

Mr. Kanjorski.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I wanted to follow up. Did I hear you respond to Mr. Bentsen

that you don’t have the resources to do some of the things you’d

like to do?

Ms. UNGER. We would always like to have more resources, but

I don’t think that merit review of analyst research reports is something that’s appropriate for the agency, given our mandate as it exists today.

Mr. KANJORSKI. So in order to have you do something, we would

have to enact statutory law to give you greater authority or direction to do that?

Ms. UNGER. I guess you would, but I also don’t think it’s a good

idea. With all due deference to this subcommittee, I think the problem is in managing the conflicts. Whether the Commission reviews

the substance of the research or not, you still have the issue of the

conflicts and managing those conflicts.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Let me direct ourselves to some of those conflicts. The Chairman and I were talking when we went over to the

vote, particularly about these transactions that you mention in

your testimony. One example is that of pools of analysts that were

investing and giving advice to buy when, in fact, they were selling,

and, in fact, they were making single transactions in the range of

$100,000 to $3.5 million.

I think the Chairman made the observation that if this activity

happened in Louisiana real estate, there’d be somebody in jail.

Chairman BAKER. That’s a pretty bad comment too. You know,

when you think about it, when we put anybody in jail in Louisiana,

they’ve got to really be out of it.

Mr. KANJORSKI. And I tend to agree with him. Doesn’t that constitute fraud? Forgetting conflicts, isn’t that just out and out fraud?

Ms. UNGER. I did say we were reviewing these particular transactions.

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Mr. KANJORSKI. How long ago did these transactions happen, Ms.

Unger?

Ms. UNGER. 1999 and 2000.

Mr. KANJORSKI. So they are almost 2 years old and we’re still reviewing those transactions? The reason I asked you how long is because I recall from law school that most of the court decisions on

bills and notes were around 1934, 1935 and 1936. It seems to happen that we want to find somebody at fault or responsible when the

market crashes.

What I am wondering is why these transactions were going on

when the market was pretty healthy in 1999 and 2000. Are you intending that we realize that you didn’t know at that time? Did you

just found out recently? Or did you know in 1999 and 2000 before

the market crashed?

Ms. UNGER. Well, no, we did just find out last month, and in fact,

I think it would be highly unlikely that anyone would be making

that kind of money in today’s market.

Mr. KANJORSKI. OK, but when did you find out about it, I said?

Ms. UNGER. Pardon me?

Mr. KANJORSKI. When did you find out?

Ms. UNGER. We have just been conducting these reviews about

analyst conflicts.

Mr. KANJORSKI. So there isn’t any reporting or any way that you

could pick that up without doing these reviews?

Ms. UNGER. No. There are inconsistent requirements that exist

currently, SRO requirements, about the firms’ disclosure of stock

ownership.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Did they make the proper disclosures in a timely

manner?

Ms. UNGER. This is what I’m trying to explain to you. Of the

firms we inspected, which were nine firms that account for the majority of the IPO and technology underwritings, only one of the

firms was able to give us a list of employees who invested pre-IPO

in a company that the firm had as a client.

So in fact, the internal controls at the firms apparently did not

require this information.

Mr. KANJORSKI. And you have no regulations that require that

internal information?

Ms. UNGER. They are required to make the disclosure.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Under your regulations they’re required to make

it?

Ms. UNGER. No, under the SRO regulations, they’re required to

disclose in the research report, depending on which regulation

you’re looking at, the firm is required to disclose certain ownership

positions.

Mr. KANJORSKI. I understand that. I have limited time, and I’m

trying to rush you along.

What I understand is they didn’t make the disclosure, and they

may not have had the internal controls to do that. However, neither do you have the internal controls to know that they weren’t

doing that.

Somebody here is responsible at the end to know whether or not

these SROs are doing what they are supposed to do, or whether or

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not you have a requirement to find that out in a reasonable time:

I think 2 years is beyond a reasonable time.

And then for you to tell me you’re reviewing these things; these

guys may retire or die before you get all done with those reviews.

And I think the Governor made a good point. You know, we’re not

worried about the big, the conflict, quote: ‘‘that may exist between

the analyst and his own company.’’ I don’t know if there is a clear

conflict with those ten million people who are watching nightly television and listen to this guy saying, ‘‘Oh, this is a great buy.’’ And

I watch them every night. And I have yet to hear anybody telling

me to sell. And they’re still doing it. And every now and then they

do say, ‘‘Oh, our company does have stock in them or represent

them in some stock offering.’’ I don’t understand it.

I want to get to the point. What I’m indicating to you is, if you

don’t have the authority to test whether the SROs have internal

controls and are properly reporting or having transparency back to

the SEC, then you should be up here asking us for that authority.

But second, I’m worried about another thing that I brought up

in my opening statement. You’re sitting back here and there is a

public policy decision that’s going to be made probably in the next

6 months or a year, but certainly within the next 18 months, to privatize Social Security. We’re going to throw 160 million consumers

into the marketplace, 25 to 30 percent of which are functionally illiterate. That 25 to 30 percent are going to be guiding their own

accounts.

Has the SEC started to enlarge its structure and anticipate what

is about to happen, which could cause massive fraud and conflict

of interest if all these billions of dollars and millions of people come

into the marketplace? Or are you just going to wait around and

have this happen and then come in and say—2-3 years after the

fact, that you have a problem?

Aren’t you anticipating that if we, as a matter of public policy,

decide to privatize Social Security, then we are putting at least another 80 to 100 million people into the market that have never

been there before? And aren’t a good portion of these people not

qualified to read financial statements and understand this information? Many certainly are not qualified in ‘‘newspeak,’’ and I think

that is what we are talking about here. We’re in 1984. These people are using terms that are not standardized. The language that

sometimes is only understood within their own house or within a

limited number of houses, but certainly not by the general public.

And it just seems to me that the SEC ought to be proactive in

anticipating what is about to occur, what may occur. Looking back

at these experiences that you have been reviewing for the last 2

years and anticipating how they will be compounded if we put another 50 or 80 million people into the marketplace.

Instead, 2 years after we do that, we are going to have a hearing

within the halls of Congress filled with a lot of middle-aged and

older people that will claim that we led them down the primrose

path. They will say we drove them to take their 2 percent of Social

Security and invest in these horrendous start-up entities that

weren’t regulated, weren’t controlled, and didn’t have transparency:

and they will claim ‘‘people were telling us to buy and we bought,

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and then some people who were telling us to buy were selling and

cleaning up and making $3 million per transaction.’’

What is your response to that?

Ms. UNGER. Are we talking about Social Security or analysts’

conflicts now?

Mr. KANJORSKI. I’m talking about looking at what we’ve already

seen in a hyper market in 1999 and 2000.

Ms. UNGER. Just the market generally?

Mr. KANJORSKI. With analysts and anticipating what may happen if we enlarge this market by 80 million more customers?

Ms. UNGER. Well, as part of my testimony, I said I thought the

SEC’s role in analyst conflicts was disclosure and educating investors. We have put out a very comprehensive and well-received ‘‘Investor Alert’’ about analysts’ conflicts so that investors would understand exactly what we’re talking about and to highlight for

them what analysts’ conflicts are and how they should approach interpreting a research report.

I would never counsel, and I think many people have said that

no investor should rely exclusively on an analyst research report or

recommendation in making an investment decision. The Commission generally is very proactive in terms of investor education.

I presume that if Social Security were privatized and there were

special needs presented to the marketplace and to the Commission,

we would attempt to fulfill those special needs by outreach in further investor education.

With respect to the analysts’ conflicts we’re talking about today,

it was the SROs’ responsibility to supervise and monitor and inspect for the private investments by the analysts and the firms at

which the analysts work.

Mr. KANJORSKI. I love the terminology education and I do appreciate it and I hope you’re very successful in educating all the people

that are in the marketplace today. However, I doubt that you are

going to give them the equivalency of a working understanding of

the marketplace and terminology, but I’m not talking about those

people. I’m talking about knowledge that there are 20 to 25 percent

of the American people that are functionally illiterate. They cannot

even fill out an application form, let alone read a profit and loss

statement or a balance sheet.

Are you suggesting to me that you’re going to put together an investor educational program that are going to take 25 percent of the

American population’s functional illiterate and have them understand what they need to understand to be privatized and investors

in the marketplace and not have to rely on analysts or security

house recommendations?

Ms. UNGER. Well, if they are functionally illiterate, they’re not

reading research reports either, are they?

Mr. KANJORSKI. No, I doubt it. That’s why I’m suggesting that.

Ms. UNGER. Just checking.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Well, that’s the next question. Have you been

asked for, or have you been given by either the Commission or this

Administration, recommendations as to whether or not we should

privatize Social Security and put 160 million more Americans in

the stock market? And are they qualified by basic learning and

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education to manage their accounts, or are we setting them up for

a tremendous let-down?

Ms. UNGER. Commissioner Carey, who recently passed away, was

the Commission’s expert on Social Security privatization and he did

a lot of work on that. And I commend him for that work. He, however, is no longer with us, and we have not yet determined who

will take on that responsibility at the Commission.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Are you prepared though to make a recommendation to the Congress?

Ms. UNGER. We have not adopted a Commission position yet on

Social Security privatization. There’ve been numerous different

permutations of how that could occur. We would be happy to participate in any discussions about Social Security privatization.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Could you succinctly tell me, though, have you

made a recommendation, positive or negative, on that particular

issue? Are we prepared to see 40 million functionally illiterate

Americans put into the market?

Ms. UNGER. We have not adopted a Commission position.

Chairman BAKER. We’ll have to move on.

Mr. Royce.

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman Unger, one of the things I was going to ask about is

the interviews that we have with people who are analysts, the information that we’ve received indicate that one of the things that’s

changed on Wall Street is the business model. One of the things

that used to drive profitability was revenues from research and

trading, and as that began to decrease, it was supplanted instead

by enormous revenue gains from initial public stock offerings. As

you saw a 15-fold increase over a decade in the fees coming into

the firms, then the business models changed.

And the allegation here is that included in that change was a

change in the way the analysts were compensated. In the past, bonuses were given to analysts based on research quality, or on the

brokerage arm’s profitability.

Now it is common for those bonuses instead, and typically this

would be the bulk of their annual compensation at most of the

firms, to be tied to the amount of banking business that they generate for the firm. And that change in business model could explain

a lot. It certainly could explain the disparity between positive and

negative recommendations. Could it be that analysts are fearful of

offending their banking colleagues and fearful of those existing underwriting clients or potential underwriting clients? I mean, why

would it be that only two percent of the stocks covered would have

that sell rating? I mean, that’s one of the things I wanted to ask

you.

Another question that I had, we have a witness coming on to the

next panel and he submitted his testimony in advance, Chris

Byron. And he calls this an outrageous situation. He says IPOs are

offered to investment bank clients at cheap pre-market prices even

as the bank’s analysts engage in non-stop commentary designed to

pump up demand for the stock in the after-market.

And I wanted to ask you also what is your view of that practice,

OK?

Ms. UNGER. OK. I will try to address those questions in totality.

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Mr. ROYCE. Thank you.

Ms. UNGER. I agree that there has been a change in the business

model which has led to a lot of what we’re talking about today. It’s

not just the investment banking client that applies the pressure

though; it’s also the institutional investors who don’t want their investments downgraded. Firms are competing for underwriting business, and favorable analyst coverage is part of the package.

No investment banking firm will take a company public that its

analysts couldn’t issue favorable research about. Why would they?

Nor would a company want to have an underwriter like that. So,

in a sense, they become intertwined at the very beginning, which

accounts for why you see a large number of favorable research recommendations. The business itself demands that, and it makes

sense. Many firms do not bring many deals for that reason.

Mr. ROYCE. Should we then rename them from analysts to salesmen?

Ms. UNGER. Well, that’s sort of the gatekeeper function of the

firms and the analysts that have become part of that. Once the

company goes public, the analyst issues a report, which we know

is going to be favorable, 25 days later. Then the firm begins putting

its clients into that stock, a lot of which are the institutional investors with sizable portfolios.

As you can imagine, the research is favorable, there may come

a point when the analyst says, ‘‘Gee, this company’s not doing as

well as I thought it was going to, I’d like to change the rating.’’ Well, consider all of the pressure that’s applied by the company

with the investment banking relationship, the institutional investors where the firm has a stake in its commissions and with its relationship, and perhaps stock ownership on the part of the firm or

the analyst.

I don’t know that you can ever eliminate these conflicts and I’m

sure there is some good in all of it in terms of understanding the

company and the dynamics and everything else.

What I do think you can do is manage the conflicts, and the way

I think you can manage the conflicts is to have the investment

banking firm disclose the analyst’s involvement in the deal, and to

have disclosure if the analyst owns stock in a particular company

that it’s issuing research reports about, and have that all be very

clear to the investors, so that the investor understands any potential conflicts and can take that into account.

I think we’re not even seeing that threshold disclosure at this

particular point. I think we’re seeing that stock ownership exists,

that the pre-IPO share allocations exist, and that there’s considerable influence exerted over the analyst by the investment banking

part of the firm, but we are not managing all of that very well

right now, in terms of disclosure.

Mr. ROYCE. And I guess for the SEC and for us, one of the critical questions is, how is that disclosed in a way that the small investor really comprehends, really sees that disclosure, as opposed

to the institutional investors? How do we do this in a way that the

market really understands?

Ms. UNGER. And that question really takes us full circle, because

the reason that this is a discussion that many people are having

now is because of the broad dissemination of research reports and

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the fact that they are reaching the individual investor who may not

be as experienced in interpreting the documents and knowing what

the conflicts are.

So that is the challenge of the SEC in terms of educating investors, and that’s what we try to address in our Investor Alert that

we released last month.

Mr. ROYCE. We have a long way to go.

I thank you, Chairman.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Royce.

Mr. Toomey, you’re up.

Mr. TOOMEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I’d like to first follow up briefly on a line of questioning that my

good friend and colleague from Pennsylvania made earlier about

Social Security accounts and his concern that 25 percent of the

American public is insufficiently literate to accumulate savings in

personal accounts.

I would point out that most of these people have jobs, they buy

homes, they raise their children, they do lots of things in life, and

I think if we suggest that they are not competent to invest their

savings, we may not be giving them the credit they deserve.

Furthermore, I would observe that any mechanism by which investments would be made in personal accounts within Social Security has yet to be defined. It’s entirely possible that it would consist

of choosing from a range of funds in which the individual investor

would never have the occasion to actually attempt individual

stocks. So I, for one, hope that you won’t suggest any major new

policies and initiatives in anticipation of what I do hope will be a

significant move to allow personal accounts within a reformed Social Security.

But my first question for you, I’d like to harken back to an example that’s been referred to several times and the suggestion that an

analyst who sells a stock, while recommending a buy, has prima

facie committed fraud and that this is outrageous. Now I’m not defending any particular individual or circumstances that I’m not familiar with. But perhaps you could comment. It seems to me that

one could recommend a buy on a stock while selling it into one’s

personal account, and that there might not be anything wrong with

that whatsoever.

There are a lot of reasons a person might choose to sell stock.

It could be the individual simply needs to raise cash for any number of reasons. It could be that the person’s portfolio is too concentrated in a particular industry or too concentrated in that particular company. It could be a function of the profit that’s been accumulating in a particular holding, and the person’s own personal

investment criteria.

But would you agree that selling a stock while recommending a

buy in that stock is not necessarily evidence prima facie of fraud

or even any nefarious activity on the part of the analyst by itself?

Ms. UNGER. And I’m glad you raised that point, because I would

hate for this subcommittee to walk away today thinking that it is

prima facie evidence of wrongdoing. We would need to conduct a

very fact-intensive review of exactly why the analyst was acting

contrary to the recommendation. There are firm policies that have

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very specific times and circumstances under which an analyst can

buy or sell contrary to a recommendation.

I’m not sure that in this case, or these couple of cases that we’re

talking about, that was done. If it was so clear and it was prima

facie, we would have brought those cases. So that I’m sure we are

assessing exactly what you are describing and that is whether

there other reasons for the selling in the account.

I have heard anecdotally that firms have very strict procedures

in terms of looking at the overall portfolio. I’m confident that firms

are able to make and develop internal policies to make sure that

it happens under the proper and appropriate circumstances.

Mr. TOOMEY. Thank you. Perhaps you could comment on this

idea, that there are no consequences for firms which would engage

in inappropriate compensation or creating incentives for analysts

that they ought not to have.

I disagree with that. First of all, I think there’s a very competitive marketplace out there. There are a lot of alternatives for any

investor, and we’ve seen the industry take many steps already. The

securities industry has put forward an industry best practices

guideline, there are rating agencies that assess the performance of

analysts’ recommendations, individual firms disclose their

underwritings, and it is public information what kind of underwritings are going on.

As you pointed out, the SEC has done an alert which strikes me

as the obvious, that investors should not rely solely on the advice

of a particular analyst. And when I look at all this in a cumulative

sense, it strikes me that certainly most investors, the overwhelming majority, it’s going to occur to them that they ought to

have a certain amount of skepticism about what an analyst recommends, and that that should be one of various factors that they

would include.

But there are alternatives for investors. There are consequences

imposed by the marketplace and we ought not go too far in trying

to impose regulations on this.

Ms. UNGER. I think you’re right, we ought not go too far, but I

think all we’re talking about today or all I’m recommending today

is that we follow the existing rules and actually improve the existing rules to make clear what the disclosure obligations are of the

firm and the analyst and to follow those rules. For firms to either

follow the best practices or their own internal procedures that

they’ve already established and to actually enforce those.

And I think that’s the first area that we need to focus on in

terms of managing the conflicts.

Mr. TOOMEY. Thank you. I yield the balance of my time.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you. Just for the record’s sake on

whether or not folks trade inappropriately, I think I recall you

making the comment that of the firms you surveyed, only one could

tell you all the positions of every analyst. It would make it rather

difficult, I think, to make the judgment that the firms are therefore

making appropriate disclosure over these matters when they don’t

know what the investments are. That’s my point.

And second, the statement that there are perhaps adequate rules

in place, but I believe, in accordance with your own observation,

that they are not being followed, is the core of the problem. And

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if we don’t bring enough attention and focus on it, practices are not

likely to change.

I do appreciate your appearance here. There are a number of

questions that I would like to follow up with. For my own sake, and

for any of the subcommittee, we’d like to hold the record open for

a few days and perhaps submit additional inquiries for the record.

And we do very much appreciate your courteous participation

today. Thank you, Ms. Unger.

Ms. UNGER. Thank you very much.

Chairman BAKER. We’d like to have our second panel come forward, please.

Welcome. I’d like to get started with our panel. I regret we have

so much territory to cover and such a distinguished panel of witnesses here today. Without further ado, I’d first like to call Mr. Ron

Glantz, former Managing Director, Tiger Management, former Director of Research and Chief Investment Officer of Paine Webber.

Incidentally, in light of your written testimony, I think I need to

say you’re rated by Institutional Investor for seven consecutive

years as the top investor. So I particularly appreciate your willingness to appear here today, sir. Welcome.

STATEMENT OF RONALD GLANTZ, FORMER MANAGING DIRECTOR, TIGER MANAGEMENT, FORMER DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AND CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, PAINE WEBBER

Mr. GLANTZ. Chairman Oxley, Chairman Baker, Ranking Members LaFalce and Kanjorski, and Members of the subcommittee,

thank you for inviting me to testify on Wall Street’s research practices.

My name is Ronald Glantz. I was in the investment business for

32 years before retiring last year. I began my career on Wall Street

as an equity research analyst. Money managers polled by Institutional Investor Magazine selected me the top analyst in my field

for seven consecutive years. I then became Director of Research,

Chief Investment Officer, Director of Economics and Financial Markets and a member of the Management Board of Paine Webber, one

of the largest brokerage firms in the United States.

I ended my career as a Managing Director of Tiger Management,

one of the largest hedge funds in the world. This has given me a

good perspective on how the role of analysts has changed over the

last three decades.

When I began in the business, the top-rated equity research firm

was named Laird. Within 5 years it failed. So did most of the other

top-rated firms. What happened? When I began, the average commission was over 40 cents a share. A few years later, institutional

commissions became negotiated, almost immediately falling to less

than six cents a share. The only way for research firms to survive

was to merge with someone that could spread research costs over

a larger base, usually brokerage firms whose main clients were individual investors.

Retail commissions had remained fixed and retail brokerage

firms discovered that good research helped them gain retail clients

and stockbrokers. By the end of the 1970s, the largest number of

top analysts were at Paine Webber, which had bought the top-rated

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research firm, and Merrill Lynch, which hired talent from failing

research firms.

Meanwhile, as analysts became more influential, companies increasingly pressured analysts to recommend their stocks, since a

higher price means fewer shares have to be issued when raising

new funds or acquiring another company, they are less vulnerable

to being taken over, executives make more money when they cash

in their options, and shareholders are pleased.

It is easy to reward favored analysts. They are given more access

to management, ‘‘helped’’ in making earnings estimates. They’ll

even call you up and tell you that your estimates are too high or

too low, and invite you to resorts for ‘‘briefings.’’ And most important, their firm receives lucrative investment banking business.

Companies penalize analysts who aren’t sufficiently enthusiastic.

Let me give you a personal example. When I was a brokerage firm

analyst, I downgraded a stock. The company’s chief financial officer

called my firm’s president to say that unless I recommended his

stock, he would cease doing investment banking business with my

firm, and would order the bank which managed his company’s pension fund to stop doing any business whatsoever with my firm.

I have seen top analysts removed from company mailing lists,

their telephone calls left unreturned, and even physically barred

from company presentations. Once I was doing a reference check

on an analyst I was considering hiring. A chief financial officer told

me that the analyst was disliked so much that he was deliberately

given misleading information. In 1980, top analysts made just over $100,000 a year. Today, top analysts make up to $20 million a year. How is this possible, considering that institutional commissions have fallen even further

and brokerage firms now discount retail commissions to avoid losing customers to such firms as Schwab and e-Trade?

What happened is that brokerage firms discovered that highly

rated research helped them gain investment banking clients. Soon

the largest number of top analysts were at investment banking goliaths such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. They could pay

considerably more because investment banking transactions were

much more lucrative than trading stocks. The institutional commission on trading $300 million worth of stock was only $300,000, of

which less than $25,000 would go to the research department. This

barely paid for printing and mailing research reports on that company. However, underwriting a similar dollar value of a new issue

would bring in at least $10 million, and bankers thought nothing

of giving a million dollar fee to the analyst responsible for the business. A merger or acquisition could bring in even more. Soon, firms

were including anticipated investment banking fees in the contracts they offered analysts. The huge fees earned by investment

banking gives them the ability to influence and, in some cases,

even control the equity research department. As we all know, whoever ‘‘pays the piper’’ names the tune.

Analysts used to view retail customers and investment managers

as their clients. My first boss told me ‘‘widows and orphans depend

upon you to give good advice.’’ Now the job of analysts is to bring

in investment banking clients, not provide good investment advice.

This began in the mid-1980s. The prostitution of security analysts

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was completed during the high tech mania of the last few years.

For example, in 1997 a major investment banking firm offered to

triple my pay if I would join them. They had no interest in the

quality of my recommendations. I was shown a list with 15 names

and asked, ‘‘How quickly can you issue buy recommendations on

these potential clients?’’ Let me pause here to assure you most analysts still want to give

good advice. Not only is it the right thing to do, it helps their reputation, which brings in investment banking business. Nevertheless, the pressures are enormous.

When I was Director of Research, analyst compensation was

based upon the performance of his or her recommendations, commissions generated, and ratings by institutional clients and the retail system. Today, name analysts are given guaranteed contracts,

whether or not their recommendations are any good. Every year,

The Wall Street Journal lists the analysts who have provided the

best investment advice. These analysts are rarely the best paid in

their field.

Why is that? Investment banking. It is an open secret that ‘‘strong buy’’ now means ‘‘buy,’’ ‘‘buy’’ means ‘‘hold,’’ ‘‘hold’’ means

that the company isn’t an investment banking client, and ‘‘sell’’ means that the company is no longer an investment banking client.

[Laughter.]

Mr. GLANTZ. Less than one percent of all recommendations are ‘‘sell.’’ Some analysts call their best clients and tell them that their

real opinion differs from their published opinion, even though this

is illegal.

But what about the individual investor? No one told my 86-yearold widowed aunt that the internet stocks she was buying in 1999

had no hope of ever earning any money, or that the analyst recommending purchase was being paid by investment banking.

Investment banking now dominates equity research. Bankers

often suggest and are usually asked to approve hiring analysts

from other brokerage firms. Investment banking provides the bulk

of proven analysts’ pay package. Some analysts report directly to

investment banking. Analysts routinely send reports to the companies and to bankers for comment before they are issued.

Three years ago, Tiger was able to hire the top-rated analyst in

his field from a Wall Street firm. This analyst had consistently

been negative on one company, a major source of investment banking fees, because of its many acquisitions. Then his firm hired an

investment banking team from another brokerage firm. As reported

in the Wall Street Journal, the analyst was fired so that a more

‘‘compliant’’ analyst could be hired, one who would recommend potential investment banking clients. Disillusioned, this analyst

moved over to money management where the quality of recommendations was still more important than the quality of relationships with potential buyers of investment banking services.

To give one of many personal examples, 4 years ago I came up

with some extremely negative information on a company, including

bribery, defective product, accounting irregularities, and serious

pollution problems. I called the three most visible analysts recommending the stock, one of them the top-rated analyst in his field,

and gave them my evidence. Every one of them continued to recVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:34 Feb 06, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00095 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 73368.TXT HBANK1 PsN: HBANK1
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ommend the stock. Why? This company was an investment banking

client. Incidentally, within a year, every member of top management was thrown out and, of course, the stock plummeted.

The genie has been let out of the bottle. As long as investment

banking is the most profitable part of the firm, then investment

bankers will find a way to pay analysts who bring in business.

Money managers can hire their own analysts. But my elderly aunt

will never know whether the advice she is receiving is unbiased or

not. That’s not only bad for the average investor, it undermines one

of the primary reasons for having a stock market—the efficient allocation of investment dollars.

My proposals can only address part of the problem. At the least,

brokerage firms should list in large type on the first page of all buy

recommendations any investment banking business they have had

with the company over the last 3 years and any equity ownership

by the analyst, members of his or her immediate family, or the

firm.

Second, no buy recommendation should be permitted if the analyst, members of his or her immediately family, or the brokerage

firm purchased stock or options for their own account in the month

preceding the report, nor should they be permitted to sell stock

until 3 days after a sell recommendation is issued.

Third, any shares purchased of a new issue by the analyst, members of his or her immediate family, or a money management arm

of a brokerage firm should be held for a minimum of 1 year.

Thank you, I would be happy to answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Ronald Glantz can be found on page

241 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much, Mr. Glantz.

Our next participant is Mr. Christopher Byron, Syndicated Radio

Commentator, Columnist for MSNBC.com.

Welcome Mr. Byron.

STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER BYRON, SYNDICATED RADIO

COMMENTATOR, COLUMNIST, MSNBC.COM

Mr. BYRON. Thank you very much, Chairman Baker, distinguished Members of the subcommittee.

Chairman BAKER. I should make a special notation. As our

MSNBC.com and also our Bloomberg News participant, you are our

first media-related types willing to stand in front of the subcommittee in a public forum. I welcome you for that reason.

Mr. BYRON. Before I go any further, I want to thank the subcommittee enormously for inviting me to appear before it and give

me this opportunity to do just that. It’s an enormous personal

honor and a pleasure to be able to appear before you and give testimony on a subject that I’ve written about in one form or another

for a number of years now in various publications that I write for.

You’ve asked me for some brief biographical information about

myself, and I’ll give you that very quickly. I’m a magazine, newspaper, and internet columnist and radio commentator. My columns

appear weekly in the New York Observer newspaper, on

MSNBC.com interactive on the internet, where I host a daily

webcast radio show called ‘‘High Noon On Wall Street.’’ I also do

a radio show called ‘‘Wall Street Wake Up with Chris Byron’’ that’s

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syndicated on 40 AM radio stations around the country, and I write

a monthly column for Red Herring magazine as well.

Over the years, I’ve written for a great number of newspapers

and magazines. They are listed in my submitted testimony. I won’t

bother you with them now.

The subject that we are about here today is enormously important to me personally, because it affects what I do for a living. The

changing role of financial analysis and journalism on Wall Street

is a very important topic for a whole variety of reasons.

I have a long perspective on this subject. When I came to Wall

Street as a reporter in 1968, the beginning of 1969 was at the tail

end of the go-go 1960s bull market. Three decades later, I’m still

here covering essentially the same material that I covered then. A

lot of the money and equity markets of America, now the world, a

lot has changed in that time. When I came to Wall Street as a reporter in 1969, not a single person I knew, including myself, owned

a computer. I had never seen a computer. Today, I know of no one

who doesn’t work with a computer.

When I came to Wall Street as a reporter, it took days, sometimes a week or more, to get my hands on the most single valuable

asset that any writer in this subject area, any investor, any financial analyst or reporter can have, and that’s an audited financial

statement from a company.

Today, that information is instantly available to anybody with a

desktop computer, a telephone connection, and a dial-up service on

the internet. There’s also been an enormous explosion in the

public’s interest about financial information itself. When I began

covering financial markets at the end of the 1960s, The Wall Street

Journal was generally viewed by people in my profession as kind

of a second tier publication. There was no CNBC, no CNFM, there

was no internet. Now The Wall Street Journal is regarded as one

of the world’s premier newspapers. Electronic media likes CNBC,

MSNBC.com on the internet all have global audiences on every

continent.

I’ll give you one personal illustration of this, and I think it is sort

of revealing about the kind of thing that we’re talking about here.

I do, as I said before, a daily noon time webcast radio program

called High Noon On Wall Street With Chris Byron. It’s carried

from my home office in Connecticut via a distribution system provided by Microsoft in Redland, Washington to 24 time zones around

the world simultaneously. I must tell you, it is pretty daunting to

sit in my den at noon every day and start to offer opinions and

commentary on whatever happened in the market in the last 3

hours, and instantly receive back from every continent on the

earth, emails from people listening to what I’m saying and saying

‘‘Byron, that’s a great point,’’ or ‘‘You’re an idiot, you don’t know

what you’re talking about.’’

It’s really a very, very large audience that reacts instantly to financial information all over the world.

There’s one thing, however, that hasn’t changed in the 30 years

that I’ve been doing this job, and that is fundamentally Wall Street

remains what it has always been: the place you go to get the

money. That’s where the money is.

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You may hear discussions from time to time about socially responsible investing and phrases like that. But the reality is people

go to Wall Street to get the money and the promotion of concepts

like socially responsible investing, and phrases like that are simply

another way to enable them to get the money.

The financial markets of Wall Street are, in my personal opinion,

the single most successful self-regulatory arena the United States

has had, at least in my life time. I think that’s because people are,

generally speaking, honest by nature and we have the oversight capacity of the Securities and Exchange Commission hovering in the

wings over the self-regulatory bodies that we’ve been talking about

this afternoon.

But there’s something different now. There’s a huge, huge amplification of voices provided by the digital age. This is creating what

I think are really important new difficult challenges for the selfregulators and for the SEC. I think you can make a convincing case

that this entire tech sector bubble that we saw begin in the mid1990s, swell over the following 4 years, the last two of which the

NASDAQ composite index nearly tripled in value, and then popped

like a champagne bubble and just disappeared in the glass, was

caused by, and I think the responsibility lies directly at the feet of

the amplifying megaphones of the digital age, the internet, the

world of cable television, and the access to them that financial analysts and compliant journalists have which reaches investors all

over the earth.

This has huge and obvious policy ramifications for Congress, in

my opinion, because the collapse of the market, the NASDAQ national market is in collapse and we would be remiss to call it anything other than that. It has lost over 75 percent of its value from

its stock. Some of it’s come back, but it is still way, way off.

This has brought an end to the longest running bull market

we’ve known in this country’s history. It now threatens to tip the

entire economy into recession. No one has any clear idea what to

do with it. Trillions of dollars have vanished from the economy by

the implosion of what Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan

referred to as the ‘‘wealth effect’’ created by this bubble and the

dot.com stocks that were in effect the miner’s canary of that bubble.

The Bush Administration and the Federal Reserve are now engaged in efforts to replace it with a combination of tax rebates, lowered short term interest rates. No one is entirely clear whether this

is going to work or not. But if prices hadn’t been pumped up to the

levels they reached in the first place, they wouldn’t have fallen as

far as they have, and we wouldn’t now be groping for a way to

pump them back up again.

This bubble was financed largely by individual investors. And it

is the Wall Street analysts and the media voices that helped turn

the analysts into pseudo-celebrities whom I believe now have to

bear the consequences for their actions, the responsibility for their

actions. In some cases, we’ve seen what I thought I would never

see in my life time in this business which is the spectacle of professional investors, who simultaneously wear a hat purporting to be

an analyst, an investor and a journalist simultaneously.

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I think is just a circle. You can’t square and you can’t put any

kind fine line, fancy talk around it. Those three things don’t go together. For nearly 4 years from the Yahoo IPO in 1996 to the deluge of IPOs that spread across Wall Street in the first 3 months

of 2000, the analyst community, Wall Street, and the media organizations that covered them engaged in what I would call nothing

less than a massive, shameless, totally irresponsible free-for-all riot

in the pursuit of money.

I have included with this testimony a collection of stories and columns I wrote during this period that attempted to call the public’s

attention to the colossal pocket picking that they were being subjected to. Most particularly, I wrote repeatedly about the outrageous situation in which IPOs would be offered to investment

bank clients at cheap, pre-market prices, even as the bank’s analysts and the firms engaged in non-stop public commentary designed to pump up demand for the stock among individual investors in the after-market.

There are dozens of billion dollar examples of this in the public

record before us today. Then when the stock would come public, the

insiders would instantly dump their shares into the waiting and

outstretched arms of individual, after-market investors at four, five

and sometimes ten times the price they paid for them, often within

hours.

You can call that what you want, but I call it fraud. You may

review the trading histories of dozens of tech sector IPOs and dot

com IPOs during this period and find precisely this pattern repeating itself over and over again. To that end, I would thus respectfully call the subcommittee’s attention to the following IPOs which

are simply illustrative of the process I’ve described.

VA Linux Systems, Inc. The insider price in this deal was $30,

the first price to an after-market investor in the public market,

$320.

TheGlobe.com, Inc., a deal that failed the first time around and

couldn’t even be gotten off, because the underwriter couldn’t even

find a market for it. The second time around at a mark-down, Cy

Sims’ basic sale price of nine bucks. This deal got off at $9. First

sale to individuals in the after-market, $97.

WebMethods, Inc., sale price to the insiders, $35; first sale to the

after-market individual investors—everyday citizens, $336.

All these stocks have since collapsed. There are dozens more like

that. These stocks and countless more were pumped to wildly supportable prices by impossibly grand claims from analysts regarding

their potential as businesses. We all knew, as journalists, that

these claims were absurd, and we would constantly talk with each

other about that. Not often did our private opinions about what we

were seeing make it into public print. The fact that these claims

echoed through the megaphones of TV and the internet to reach individual investors from every corner of the globe simply underscores how much capital can be raised on Wall Street now that the

whole world is watching.

And this is only the first instance of this in which this unexpected alliance of analysts and the electronic media has come to

bear on the marketplace. Unless efforts are undertaken to prevent

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this recurrence, I think we can look for even more disruptive

recurrences of this in the future.

To that end, I would respectfully suggest the following:

Without going into the specific Sections of the 33 and 34 Act, because I’m not entirely certain, in the amount of time that I had to

prepare this testimony, I have the correct references in my written

submission.

Chairman BAKER. To that end, please feel free on reflection to

forward that information in writing at a later time. That will help

you in your presentation.

Mr. BYRON. I would simply say Section 17(b) of the Securities

and Exchange Act of 1933, which I understand it in laymen’s

terms, requires anyone who is paid by an issuer to circulate, publish, or otherwise disseminate stock recommendations, be augmented to require, as a matter of law, that anyone publishing or

disseminating that information disclose on that document in which

the dissemination takes place, any financial interest, either direct

or indirect, he or she holds in the stock in question, and I would

wholly endorse the vivid image that the Chairman offered before

of I want to see the surgeon general’s warning stamped across the

front of these things. It says ‘‘Caution! Investing in This Deal May

Be Hazardous To Your Financial Health’’ in big red letters.

In this particular area, I think that volunteerism just hasn’t

worked. And I don’t think that the’ 33 Act, I live by the First

Amendment. I say things that anger lots of people so the First

Amendment is very important to me, and I don’t feel that the 1933

Act, as it’s written now, violates my First Amendment rights, and

I don’t think that the augmentation in the way I’m saying, you

might want to consider augmenting it, would violate them either.

Second, I think that Section 10(b) of the 1934 Act, which deals

with the general concept of fraud of the market, could be aggressively enforced by the SEC Enforcement Division. For example, the

black letter law we all know well in my line of work, the Foster

Wynans case. This is a case that the Wall Street Journal reporter

ran afoul of the act by using information that he had obtained in

the course of his work to trade on stocks before putting it in the

paper, in violation of his agreement that he signed with the Wall

Street Journal not to do that.

I think the essential holding in that case boils down to this: He

promised not to do something that he went ahead and did anyway.

While I think the basic principle there can be expanded to find an

implied covenant, not just with your publisher, but with the whole

world of your consumers, particularly when you’re disseminating financial information that is offered to the public under the color of

impartiality.

Nobody is going to believe what you write if it comes stamped

all over it and says ‘‘I make a buck so long as I get your money,’’

but if it’s stamped on the front of it, if it comes representing itself

to be this is unbiased material, in that case I think when you don’t

deliver unbiased material, you ought to be held to account with a

sanction that hurts.

I think we shouldn’t be looking at the minimum amount of disclosure necessary to find adequate disclosure, but the maximum

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possible disclosure to protect the individual investor, a completely

different orientation.

I’ve probably run over my time. I thank you for your patience.

[The prepared statement of Christopher Byron can be found on

page 245 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much, sir. We appreciate your

remarks.

Our next witness is Mr. Charles Hill, Director of Research at

Thomson Financial/First Call. Welcome.

STATEMENT OF CHARLES L. HILL, DIRECTOR OF FINANCIAL

RESEARCH, THOMSON FINANCIAL/FIRST CALL

Mr. HILL. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Baker. I would

like to thank you and the Members of the subcommittee for the opportunity to espouse my views on this important subject. Let me

first mention the usual disclaimers. The views expressed here

today are my personal ones, and are not necessarily those of my

employer, Thomson Financial/First Call, where I’m Director of Financial Research, or those of the Boston Society of Securities Analysts, where I’m a Vice President and a Director.

I’m a chartered financial analyst and proud of it. My only aim

today is to uphold and improve on the quality and integrity of my

profession.

The problems we are talking about today are not new. They tend

to wax and wane with each stockmarket cycle. The only difference

this time is that some of the problems may be worse than in past

cycles. There does to be some secular trend underway that may

have been exacerbated by the cyclical swing in the market and that

needs to be corrected.

Any prolonged corrections in stock prices tend to wring out some

of the excesses we’re talking about today. Nevertheless, some of the

underlying secular trends are disturbing and it may take more

than just a market correction to remedy the situation.

Let me point out that in this market downturn, as in past ones,

investors always look for scapegoats. The broker/analysts are an

easy target. There is no doubt some basis for this, but it is most

probably over done. Let the record show that at the time of the

market’s frothiest peaks, there were many broker/analysts doing

very thorough and objective research.

The problem was that there were not enough in this category.

There were too many whose work was shoddy and/or biased because of naivete, laziness or outside pressures.

But let’s not paint all the analysts with the same brush. As a

former sell side analyst for 18 years, I shudder at the thought of

returning to that field and having to compete with some of the top

analysts today with all the technology tools available. There is no

question in my mind that today’s stock research for the top sell

side analysts is better than from the top analysts of 25 years ago.

What we need to improve is the quality and objectivity of the

work from the rest of today’s sell side analysts that are not currently doing their job as well as they should. Before we turn to the

causes of deteriorating stock research quality, it is worth looking

at how the problems of quality and bias can manifest themselves.

There are four data items by which analysts can distort an invesVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:34 Feb 06, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00101 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 73368.TXT HBANK1 PsN: HBANK1
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tor’s perceptions of a company’s stock or leave the investor confused.

The first is recommendations, the second is target prices, third

is earnings estimates, and fourth is earnings basis. On recommendations, this subcommittee has previously raised this issue

and has cited bar data, first calls data. The rough rule of thumb

is that about one-third of all broker recommendations are in the

positive category, strong buy, or whatever the broker’s equivalent

term is.

About one-third are in the second most positive category buy or

whatever the broker’s equivalent term is. About one-third are in

the third most positive category, hold or the equivalent, with only

about one percent in the two bottom categories, sell and strong sell

or their equivalents.

The individual investor needs a decoder that would put all the

brokers’ various terminology for their recommendations on a common scale. The brokers are doing a better job of putting in each research report a definition of what their recommendation terminology means, making it easier for investors to compare one broker’s recommendation with another. However, not all are doing

this. A better answer might be if the brokers could agree on a common scale with common terminology.

Let me digress from my printed text for a minute to refer to

something Congressman Kanjorski was talking about. When you

mentioned about the confusion of the terminology, let me just read

you the different terms that the brokers used for the third category. We’ve gone to all the brokers and said, you fit whatever your

scale of terminology is to a common scale from one to five where

one’s a strong buy, two’s a buy, three is a hold, and so forth.

Here are the terms that are used in category three: Accumulate,

attractive, hold, average, hold/neutral, long-term accumulate, longterm attractive, maintain, market average, market perform, neutral, neutral/hold, no action, out perform, perform in line, speculative buy, trading buy, market out perform, stock pick.

Now what is the individual investor to do without this decoder?

But let me go on. Unfortunately, the investor needs a second

level in their decoder to adjust for the over-optimism of the broker

analyst recommendations. Since the better companies get more analyst coverage than do the weaker companies, there is a justification for somewhat of a positive bias to the recommendations. As of

the end of July, yesterday, this data was run. 27.6 percent were in

the strong buy category, 36.9 in the buy, only 1.1 percent were sells

and 0.4 percent were strong sells. That means the number of buys

of all kinds were 47 times the number of sells of all kinds. That

much of a positive bias is hard to justify.

Last year when the market was at peak levels, the spring of

2000, and many stocks were substantially overvalued, the ratio

was even worse. On 1 March, it was 92-to-1. As the market crept

up to a bigger peak on May 1st, it was 100-to-1. As the market

began falling, the ratio was still a very high one, 99-to-1 on the

first of August. By October it was 78-to-1. Today, as I mentioned,

it’s 47-to-1. It’s a bid harder to understand why the recommendations were even more positively biased than normal at the market

peak.

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Second issue, target prices. Target prices are another area where

the analysts have the opportunity to put their naivete or biases to

work. Target prices became the rage of the 1990s, but their popularity seems to have abated slightly. Many were unrealistic, but

many of the analysts that were providing those target prices have

lost considerable credibility.

Earnings estimates. Most analysts, most of the time, tend to

start out too high with their estimates at the earnings report time.

On average, the analysts start out too high ahead of the reporting

period. They bring the estimates down, but take them down too far

at the end of the period. More than half of the companies in the

S&P 500 beat the final estimates every quarter.

Whether the analysts have been misled by the company’s guidance or whether they knowingly went along with that guidance is

debatable, but there does seem to be too regular a pattern of companies beating the estimates, particularly at some companies.

Now Regulation FD hopefully will diminish that problem. Now

the fourth one is earnings basis. One of the problem areas that is

mushrooming, but is often overlooked is the determination of the

earnings basis used to value the stock. The SEC requires companies to report earnings on the basis of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, (GAAP). Most everyone would agree that those numbers often need to be adjusted to exclude non-recurring and/or nonoperating earnings.

The problem is that what one person considers non-recurring or

non-operating, another may not. There is no right answer. It is all

in the eyes of the beholder. A big part of the analysts’ job is to determine the appropriate basis for earnings as used in the price

earnings ratio or other earnings-based valuation yardsticks.

A company’s earnings can often be enhanced by excluding items

that normally would not be excluded or by including items that

normally would be excluded. The excesses in this area have been

most common in the technology sector where the use of the cash

earnings or pro forma earnings have taken on a wide variety of

special meanings that have greatly enhanced some companies’

earnings.

Chairman BAKER. Mr. Hill, if you can begin to wrap up, I want

to get all of our panelists in before we get interrupted by a vote.

I hate to do it.

Mr. HILL. OK. There’s a growing trend for companies to put out

releases that emphasize an earnings number that has been adjusted to a basis the company espouses, sometimes to the almost

total exclusion of the GAAP results. What this is amounting to is

a way for companies to gild the lily on their earnings reports, and

it’s an issue that Lynn Turner did bring up before his leaving the

SEC.

But, let me just quickly say that the four ways that the analysts

are being pressured is first, themselves, in that the analysts have

fallen in love with the industries they cover, or they’d be covering

some other industry. So they start out with what I call an honest

bias, come to the table looking through rose colored glasses. Second

is the investment banking issue that we’ve talked quite a bit about

today. The third is the public companies, the companies themselves

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putting pressure on the analysts or they’ll be cut off communications-wise.

Last, the institutional shareholders who also can pressure the

analysts not to put out a sell when they own the stock.

[The prepared statement of Charles L. Hill can be found on page

248 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much, Mr. Hill. Your testimony and all the witnesses’ testimony will be made a part of the

record in full, and I’m sure—I know I do—we’ll have further questions in writing as well. Pleased don’t feel dispossessed if you don’t

get through your entire prepared text.

Our next witness to appear is Mr. Matt Winkler, Editor-In-Chief

of Bloomberg News. Welcome, Mr. Winkler.

STATEMENT OF MATT WINKLER, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF,

BLOOMBERG NEWS

Mr. WINKLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I’m delighted to appear before the subcommittee as part of your continuing discussion of analyzing the analysts. My name is Matthew

Winkler. I am the Editor-In-Chief of Bloomberg News, a global

news service with 1100 reporters and editors and 80 bureaus in 50

countries.

Bloomberg News produces more than 4,000 stories daily on the

economy, companies, governments, financial and commodity markets, as well as sports, politics, and policy. Many of these stories

are published in more than 350 newspapers including the New

York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, and the Daily Yomiuri. Since its inception in 1990, Bloomberg News has received more

than 50 awards and citations for the quality of its journalism, including awards from the Overseas Press Club, the Gerald Loeb

Foundation, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Society

of Professional Business Editors and Writers. Bloomberg News is

the main content provider for Bloomberg print and broadcast

media. These include several magazines, a New York-based radio

station and network, and a 24-hour television network operating in

the U.S. and in a dozen languages in countries in Europe, Asia,

and South America.

Financial stories are both complex and critically important. As

someone who is passionate about providing the public with the context and analysis necessary to make sound decisions, I want to salute this subcommittee for its extraordinary commitment to ensuring that investors have broad access to the highest quality information about the marketplace. When this subcommittee greets with

skepticism efforts to create a property right in stock market quotes,

or highlights the question of whether investors are getting unbiased research from Wall Street, you are taking a step toward ensuring public access to information. In the information age, that is

no small accomplishment.

It may take a bear market for investors to realize that many

stock analysts have never been anything more than fancy pitch

men for the firms that sell securities. As long as shares went up,

as they did in the 1990s, analysts rarely had to say ‘‘sell.’’ In their

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lingo, the stocks were never ‘‘fully priced.’’ Now that the NASDAQ

composite, the symbol of the greatest bull market ever, is down

about 50 percent from a year ago, it is easy to attack the analysts

because the few occasions when they might have said sell came

long after the damage was done.

Analysts always will have a conflict of interest as long as the

firms that employ them participate in initial public offerings, arrange stock and bond sales, and use analysts’ research to help win

new business. In such circumstances, it’s hard to find any analyst

on Wall Street who met a stock he or she didn’t like. Analysts are

part of the sales team.

Analyst conflicts of interest are a symptom of something much

more sinister. Until the Securities and Exchange Commission late

last year approved Regulation FD, public companies routinely invited analysts and some of their shareholders to private meetings

as they discussed sales, profits and losses. Until adoption of Regulation FD, analysts were protected under law from insider trading

liability and liability for ‘‘tipping’’ if they did not have a special relationship with the corporate officials that fed them insider information—a monetary or other quid pro quo.

That protection was designed to shield analysts from unlimited

risks of liability for attempting to ferret out information. It quickly

became perverted, however, as issuers figured out they could punish analysts that did not give them good ratings. The punishment

came in the form of exclusion from the inside information gravy

train which was provided to their competitors. Inside information

was thus joined with analysts’ recommendations in a troubling

form of barter. It was as if a student could punish the teacher for

giving him or her a bad grade by withholding the teacher’s pay.

In short, this practice of selective disclosure increasingly made

the stock market a financial ‘‘Animal Farm’’ in which some shareholders were more equal than others. The sloped playing field created by selective disclosure during the 1990s was so common that

many analysts and publicly-traded companies assumed it was the

price of capitalism. Analysts equipped with inside information, they

argued, were needed to grease the wheels of the market, even if

they could trade on that information before Aunt Betsy and the

rest of the company’s shareholders.

The SEC disagreed because in too many instances, trading in a

company’s shares turned out to be rigged, undermining the integrity of the stock market. I believe the SEC got it right. What precisely does Regulation FD have to do with analyst conflicts of interest? Everything. Conflicts and bias breed in the dark. The more information that is available to the public the greater our collective

ability to assess independently whether the analysis we are receiving is potentially biased.

Does Regulation FD solve the problem of analyst conflicts? Of

course not. I repeat, as long as firms employ them to participate

in initial public offerings, arrange stock and bond sales, and use

analyst research to help win new business, analysts will always

have a potential conflict of interest. Initiatives that enhance broad

dissemination of information to the public will have a salutary impact.

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Justice Brandeis is remembered for observing ‘‘publicity is justly

commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight

is said to be the best of disinfectants. Electric light, the most efficient policeman.’’ Like seeing a policeman in the rear view mirror

or knowing a Congressional Oversight Committee is looking over

your shoulder, the availability of information enhances accountability. That serves as a catalyst that sometimes prods better behavior, and that is very much in the public interest. Again, I commend you for your willingness to explore this important issue.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Matt Winkler can be found on page

253 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much for your remarks.

With apologies, Mr. Kianpoor, Chief Executive Officer for

Investarts.com, also a media panelist of sorts, I have been informed

that I have overlooked as well TheStreet.com also being an internet

site. Thanks to both you gentleman for your willingness to appear

today.

STATEMENT OF KEI KIANPOOR, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,

INVESTARS.COM

Mr. KIANPOOR. Speaking on behalf of the Investars.com team and

our co-founder, John Eagleton, I’m honored to have the opportunity

to contribute to these hearings. Investars.com was founded in October 1999 to give investors tools to better interpret stock recommendations made by Wall Street Analysts. With the huge

growth in the number of individual investors in the mid-1990s,

Investars.com sought to measure the track records of Wall Street’s

research providers, thus giving investors the tools that would allow

them to sift through dozens of stock recommendations made daily.

Investars.com degree of success system calculates the hypothetical

return an investor would have made if he or she had traded based

on each brokerage’s recommendations.

Investars currently ranks more than 200 research firms, based

on their overall hypothetical returns for every stock since January

1997. Hindsight has made it clear that the boom and bust of the

past 4 years did not leave lasting benefits for anyone. Investors

have suffered, businesses built on unrealistic have collapsed, and

the brand equity of many brokers whose businesses depend on public trust is being eroded as we speak.

We must join forces to implement common sense reforms that

will benefit all parties. Respectfully, we’d like to propose three

basic reforms.

One, to make historical recommendation and earnings estimate

data public; two, to encourage disclosure of investment banks relationships with covered companies; three push for a common recommendation language.

In the interest of saving time I’ve pared down some of my testimony on subjects that have been mentioned before. I would like to

focus on some of the more important things. Historical Wall Street

recommendations and earnings data is not available only to institutional investors. Individual investors suffered in the recent boom

and bust cycle, because they lacked these key facts. They lacked

these facts, because there’s a virtual monopoly on the distribution

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of analysts’ historical data, namely, financial data distributors who

agree with investment banks not to make historical ratings information available to the public.

This is the single most important, most absurd, and least addressed issue affecting the individual investor today, that investment banks can prevent the release of their historical recommendations data to the public. Historical recommendations and earnings

estimate data must be made available to all investors and preserved in the public venue, such as the SEC database.

Please refer to the statements made by other analysts ranking

sites, such as Validea.com and MarketPerform.com in our written

testimony.

The second issue is the disclosure of investment banking relationships. Our IPO bias feature compares the track records of investment banks based on their recommendations for companies

that they underwrote to their track records in companies that they

did not.

Overall, since 1997, the returns in the first case are approximately 50 percentage points lower than the returns on the second.

Due to the lack of availability of historical information, the possibility of conflict of interest was not previously quantifiable for investors.

As their second reform, Investars proposes that investment

banks disclose to an SEC database their historical underwriting relationship with any company which they cover. I believe that’s been

brought up before. Disclosure is not an end in itself. We call on the

media on-line brokers, financial advisors, research firms, and sites

such as Investars, to educate and protect the people. By placing

this information in context with current technology, we can explore

investment banks’ track records and conduct a detailed peer group

analysis, and the media should avail itself of these new tools. If it

proves impossible to obtain full disclosure, the media should emphasize the implications of its absence.

The third issue we need to address is Wall Street’s language.

Again, that has been mentioned before. We need a common scale.

It’s just common sense. In that case, our conclusion is that we cannot lose sight of the average investor who must be equipped to assess the quality and integrity of market analysts.

It is common sense when you buy a car, you check consumer reports. When you buy a house, you have it inspected. To make such

assessment possible, we need to establish a standard language and

break the investment banks’ control over factual historical recommendation data. Investars also suggests that the media start to

delve into more detail when reporting on analysts’ recommendations to the public.

We now possess the technology to refer to analysts’ batting averages and provide play-by-play commentary on their ratings. We can

publicize the good and transparent and underscore the deficient,

heighten investor awareness that will self-enforce industry compliance with higher standards.

I’d like to end my testimony with a statement. There’s a greater

fool theory in the market. It states that no matter what a stock is

worth, investors buy it, because they believe there will be a greater

fool willing to buy the stock from them at a higher price. As long

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as brokers and financial data providers can block the distribution

of factually historical data to the public, the average investor will

ever remain as a greater fool in the market. That’s just common

sense.

I’m grateful for this opportunity to share our views with you

today.

[The prepared statement of Kei Kianpoor can be found on page

261 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate your

willingness to appear.

Our final witness today is Mr. Adam Lashinsky, a Silicon Valley

columnist, and employed by TheStreet.com.

STATEMENT OF ADAM LASHINSKY, SILICON VALLEY

COLUMNIST, THESTREET.COM

Mr. LASHINSKY. Thank you very much, Mr. Baker. I had the

privilege of interviewing you recently for an article that I was writing, so turn about seems fair play. I’m happy to give you my

thoughts today.

When I first started out as a business reporter, I was handed a

large book called the Nelson’s Director of Investment Research. I

was told there are lists of analysts in this book. Call them if you

need comments for the stories you’re writing on public companies.

I knew nothing about what the individual analysts did, the importance of their firms, whether some were better than others. All

I knew was that the ones who returned my phone calls were more

valuable than the ones who didn’t return my phone calls. If they

said something germane on the record, they were even more valuable because they could go into my articles.

I think that as we entered the bull market, the individual investor found him or herself in a similar position. They were told in either the newspaper article or on television that an analyst had

something good to say about a stock. They had no ability to judge

whether or not that analyst was good or bad. They knew that an

expert was speaking and that information was good enough.

The news media plays a role in this, and I’d like to address that.

The point is that professional investors have understood the games

that have been played on Wall Street all along. The individual investor didn’t understand what the conflicts were, came into the

game cold, if you will, just as if having been handed a big book.

One thing, Congressman Baker, that I think hasn’t been addressed in the hearings yet is who is entitled to the information

that we’re discussing and how they should be using it. There’s been

discussion today of research reports being entered into historical

records or indeed being regulated like a securities offering.

The fact remains that at least for now, these are not public documents, these are proprietary pieces of research for which investors

pay. So Fidelity understands that it is a client of Goldman, Sachs,

to choose one example.

To the person watching on CNBC, it’s not typically a client of

Goldman, Sachs. It they act on the research that Goldman, Sachs

has produced, in a sense, they’re taking a shot there on their own;

they’re not the client, they didn’t pay for it. But what is the media

role here?

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TheStreet.com has had a policy since its founding in late 1996 of

always stating a conflict of interest that an analyst has. So if we

quoted an analyst whose firm was the underwriter of the IPO of

the company that we’re discussing, we simply say so. It doesn’t

mean that the analyst is good or bad, it means that we’re cluing

our readers in that there’s a potential conflict here.

I would point out that sometimes those analysts are the best informed because they spend more time with the companies, but an

investor has to have his or her eyes open to the fact that there may

be a conflict here. Thus, Street.com is not immune from some of the

criticism that the financial news media deserves.

Over the past few years, we had, for example, something called

the ‘‘Red Hot Index’’ where we participated fully in the momentum

of the era. However, I’m proud of what TheStreet.com has done in

terms of outlining analysts’ conflicts. I don’t think the rest of the

media has lived up to the same standard, in particular the broadcast media has been particularly harmful in putting analysts or

putting fund managers on television without explaining to the overage viewer at home what the full story is behind the recommendations that they’re making.

I would offer to you several solutions that you’re addressing, not

all of which I necessarily endorse, but I offer them as food for

thought.

One, you could write legislation to split investment banks from

brokerages. This would solve the problem. It would be very painful.

It would fly in the face of the last 10 years of consolidation in the

financial services industry, and of course brokerages wouldn’t be

able to make much money in that scenario, because trading is not

a particularly profitable endeavor, but it would solve your problem.

Then you could allow fixed rate minimum commissions again, so

that brokerages could run a profitable business. That flies in the

face of Congress’ concerns about price fixing.

You could require, and you are discussing requiring greater disclosure as the industry itself is discussing. My personal opinion is

that these are palliatives. They will have little impact on the conflicts. They simply will make people more aware of what the conflicts are and perhaps make people feel better.

Lastly, you can rigorously support Regulation FD. There is an

undercurrent that isn’t stated loudly that there are elements with

in the SEC and certainly on the Commission and certainly in the

securities industry to diminish the effects of Regulation FD, because it makes the industry uncomfortable, and it is requiring the

industry, in my opinion, to work harder.

In my reporting, it’s my opinion that Regulation FD is one of the

best things that has happened for individual investors in recent

history, and Congress can do its part by standing firmly behind

Regulation FD and not give in to some of the demands that it be

weakened.

Thank you, sir.

[The prepared statement of Adam Lashinsky can be found on

page 266 in the appendix.]

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much, Mr. Lashinsky.

Let me say to the whole panel, thank you very much. This has

been again very informative, but also very troubling. From the first

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hearing, when there were some observing, wow, Congress is looking at the conflicts of interest on Wall Street, isn’t that news?

Obviously we all know that there are conflicts and firms have assured us of their ability to manage those conflicts. But the further

we have gone in looking at the divergent list of individuals who

have unique perspectives of market actions, there is no doubt that

the character and nature of the market has changed over the last

decade.

Unfortunately, I think there is reason for most investors to have

great concern about the independence of the information flow when

they make such significant investment decisions coupled with the

advent of online trading, and now what many of us in political life

call the working moms and pops investing on line and, to some extent, using media appearances. Look at what’s happening here in

this sector today, the type of analysis in order to make all those

small individual transactions in the aggregate responsible for the

huge inflows of capital to the market. We have a very volatile circumstance.

In speaking with most members, we are all reticent to act legislatively. But it would be my intention, based on the support of the

subcommittee, that we would move forward from this point with

some recommendations through the fall and winter and perhaps

come back with the assistance of the NASD, the SROs and the

SEC, and determine whether our actions and recommendations

have not only been implemented, but there is actual day-to-day

practice and consistent following of the recommendations that appear to be warranted.

Let me make a couple of statements and then kind of get the

consensus, yes or noes. My view is everybody thinks there’s a problem. You all may not see the same problem, but generally there’s

a problem that we need to fix. Nobody objects to that?

Second, that it would be better, if possible, for the industry,

itself, to craft the remedy, but have that remedy be subject to the

light of day. For example, additional committee hearings, SRO insight, that’s maybe in the middle of the pack.

Are there those who agree with that sort of general context that

we ought to do something, look to the industry, and then verify.

The next question is much more difficult. Let’s assume we’ve gotten through those first two steps. We’ve prepared a list, we’ve gotten the industry to look at it, but there’s still not consistent uniformity in compliance. What should be the enforcement mechanism? Is it sufficient, as I suggested to Ms. Unger earlier, to have

just a rating mechanism; a, you’re complying with all the rules; b,

you’re trying, but you’re not quite there; c, you’ve got a problem.

Will the publication of you being on the c list have a consequence

in the market? Is that a point of discussion?

Yes, sir?

Mr. WINKLER. Mr. Chairman, I think the greatest impact on the

market is disclosure and the more disclosure there is, just as you

yourself said earlier today, a warning on a package of cigarettes is

a very powerful way of letting people know that they are about to

use something that’s possibly fatal. Reg FD goes a long way toward

that kind of goal.

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And I do think that if this subcommittee were active in doing everything it can to promote and enforce Reg FD, that would be very

helpful.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you for that. I do have some concerns

about Reg FD, but not from the perspective of the industry having

a difficult time complying. I just want to make sure it functions in

the intended fashion. And further to the point, it would have no

implication on an analyst making a recommendation to buy when

he’s selling his own interest.

I think we have to get not only at the flow of information but

the personal conduct issue of the individuals. For whatever reason,

it makes no difference; are they being pressured by the firm or is

it the opportunity to make four or five million dollars on a deal.

If they do it, it’s wrong. That’s where we have to have, I think, significantly more involvement by the SROs than we have today.

For example, it troubles me greatly that, at least according to

Ms. Unger, the NASD does not look at an analyst or require disclosure, if he makes a television appearance, if he’s got an interest in

the stock which he’s talking about. I find that unfathomable from

a regulator’s perspective.

Mr. Lashinsky, did you have a comment?

Mr. LASHINSKY. Yes, sir. I was going to say that in every instance I know, the compliance department of any firm would not

allow the type of department that Ms. Unger described earlier.

Without being a lawyer, that strikes me as fraudulent behavior and

bad ethics, so there’s a break down in how the SROs are regulating

the compliance departments of their own members.

Chairman BAKER. Ms. Unger also stated that in the short-term

audit they conducted, there was only one firm that could give her

an accurate reporting of all the analysts’ interests within the firm.

How could you possibly have any capacity to govern analysts’ practice if you don’t know what they own?

There’s a fundamental structural problem here that is going to

take more than one hearing and one simple piece of legislation to

fix. To that end, we will get back to each of you with additional

questions and insights for you to give us your educated opinion on.

But we would very much welcome, over the course of the August

recess, your best thinking along the idea of here are the elements

we think would be important as we have a peer review group now

looking at the SIA’s best practices.

By the way, just a show of hands, how many of you think the

SIA’s best practices recommendations are sufficient?

[No response.]

Chairman BAKER. That’s what I thought.

Over the August recess, if you’ll give me your insights into those,

as well as additional steps from your various perspectives, it would

be very helpful to us in trying to construct very carefully a package

for us to suggest to the SROs that they review, and our process

would be very slow. We’re not going to rush to judgment. But to

take the fall and winter and come back next spring and make an

assessment about the effect and consequences and recommendations that the subcommittee may make this fall. It’s just by way

of process.

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I don’t want to go on at length because Mr. Kanjorski and Mr.

Crowley have been very patient sitting here.

Mr. Kanjorski.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Kianpoor, you made an observation that the value of a stock

will be whatever the next idiot will pay.

Mr. KIANPOOR. That’s right. It shouldn’t, but it did for the last

2 years.

Mr. KANJORSKI. And after the excellent testimony of the entire

panel, each one of you added a great deal of insight into some of

the problems in analysis on Wall Street.

I don’t think any of you are my age, but I’m going to relate a

story. You may remember my favorite program when I was a young

man in the late forties, was Captain Midnight. Captain Midnight

was sponsored by Ovaltine, you’ll remember.

I was just about able to read, write, and figure out how to do

things, and I was pressed at 5:00 o’clock every day to listen to Captain Midnight. And Captain Midnight started this process of the secret code and secret information, and every day you would write

down the numbers. They were useless to you if you didn’t have a

decoding device, but Captain Midnight offered a decoding ring with

ten bottle labels of Ovaltine and a dollar.

And as a dutiful follower of Captain Midnight, I bugged the hell

out of my mother to get those ten bottles of Ovaltine. By hook or

crook, I got that dollar and I wrote in, and at that time, nothing

was instantaneous like the internet; thus, with bated breath every

day, when I’d come home from school, I’d look for my package from

Captain Midnight. It wasn’t there. It took weeks. But every day at

that program at 5:00 o’clock, I copied down all those numbers so

that when my ring came, I’d know what Captain Midnight was saying to me.

Finally, the day arrived and it came, and I remember it very

well. I tore that box open. I immediately ran in and I couldn’t wait

for the program to be over when the message would be given, and

finally it was given. And I took my ring and I decoded the message.

It was probably the best lesson I ever learned in my life, because

the message was——

Mr. HILL. Congressman, that was the information for my reference. I had my Captain Midnight Decoder.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Do you remember what the decoded message

was? ‘‘Buy Ovaltine.’’

[Laughter.]

Mr. KANJORSKI. Well, it taught me a lesson. We can’t encourage

Americans to necessarily buy decoder rings when they’re not available. Somebody’s got to do something with this decoding. We have

to move out of the Orwellian world. I think the Chairman and I

both agree we would least like to do it by Government action. But

clearly, I was disappointed. I listened to the testimony of the SEC

today. And I got the feeling that it’s not our fault, it’s somebody

else’s responsibility if they are not doing something.

It didn’t strike me that the proper attention was paid, but then

I thought about listening to all of you six gentlemen here. I want

to compliment you. You are all competent and very successful in

your field, but you have to answer this question for me.

107

Why wasn’t there anyone that did investigative work in 1998 and

1999 and 2000 to tell the American people and most of us about

these terrible analysts when the market was going up?

Yes?

Mr. KIANPOOR. As I said before, the data was not being made

available to individual investors. That means to do this investigative work, you need to get the historical data for what these analysts and investment banks have been recommending for the past

10 years.

Mr. KANJORSKI. You mean that there is nobody?

Mr. KIANPOOR. The data is being provided by investment banks

to certain financial data providers which will not allow—— Mr. KANJORSKI. Then, we are going then through a fog, is that

it?

Mr. LASHINSKY. Mr. Kanjorski, there were plenty of people during that period who did research and said repeatedly ‘‘this is madness, this stock is not worth what you say it’s worth. There are

ways to fundamentally value this stock, and it’s highly over-valued.’’ And those people were laughed at for roughly 3 years because

the stock kept going up and kept going up and kept going up. That

was the period we just came through.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Would it have made any difference if we had the

historical knowledge?

Mr. KIANPOOR. It would have, Mr. Kanjorski, and it will in about

4 or 5 years. As early as now, people are looking at our site and

finding out what people’s track records are instead of having a Surgeon General’s warning on TV coming up, you could have the person’s track record and see either the guy is a complete crook or a

complete idiot. It’s far more effective.

Mr. KANJORSKI. It strikes me as something like Monday morning

football reporting, how well we played the game that was played

on Saturday. We are the greatest analyzers of why Al Gore lost the

election. But I don’t think anybody could have told you that or

would have told you that beforehand.

And I’m just wondering, are we chasing a phantom?

Chairman BAKER. Let me jump in too, because I think Mr. Byron

wanted to make a comment in response to that question.

Mr. BYRON. Yes. I would simply say, Congressman Kanjorski,

that the data on which you can base informed judgments with respect to the value of a stock, given that no one can foresee the future, at least makes some reasonable guess about the likely course

of a stock’s value. It’s available to everybody, whereas 20 years ago,

it wasn’t. And I mean by that, the instant access to audited financial statements, balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements, shareholder equity statements from publicly traded companies via the filing system of the SEC. That stuff is all available and

usable by anyone.

Most people have neither the time nor the expertise to dig into

that stuff and understand it. That’s where the role of the media is

critically important, because in my respects, we’re the unelected,

self-anointed proxies for public understanding of what these documents are.

Mr. KANJORSKI. How am I going to know, though, if I’m listening

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press? How do I know whether or not that’s influencing what

you’re saying to me?

Mr. BYRON. There is an inherent problem in that with everything

in the capitalist system obviously. At some point, we all need to

pay the rent.

The question that I want to get at is when the conflict becomes

gratuitous, particularly in the media, when media voices begin to

have a demonstrable self-interest in the outcome of their own opinions and their own reporting at the same time the entire system

tends to break down, because there’s no place left for the public to

go unless a investor wants to take the time to learn how to read

a 10K statement from the SEC. Most people don’t want to do that.

So in my opinion, a very important part of this equation has to

be the role of the media and financial journalists. When we start

thinking of ourselves as superstars in the same way that the analysts do, we have a really serious problem on our hands, because

who stands to inform the public when you have a situation like

that?

Chairman BAKER. If I can recognize Mr. Crowley, do you have a

comment or question, sir?

Ms. CROWLEY. I do, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much.

It’s funny. If I close my eyes, I think I’m listening to election reforms sometimes, some of the comments that are made. I appreciate that, because there are some analogies I think you can draw

between the two in terms of the sharing of information by electoral

analysts or financial analysts in terms of expertise dealing with

election results or, in this case, maybe before the bell rings, what

they hope would be the market results for a particular product.

Mr. Glantz, I have a couple of questions, and first of all, let me

thank you for being here. It’s good to have, from a retired analyst,

insider information basically on how some of this may work.

The Henry Blodgett case put the analysts into the forefront for

millions of small investors. While this case was before the SEC and

Mr. Kanjilal—I hope I’m pronouncing that right—of Queens, my

hometown, went to arbitration, and it first looked like that was

going to be the road we were going to be going down.

This event brought to light a serious issue that when small time

investors, who are the bulk of the American public, set up a brokered deal, many of these firms require that that individual agree

to arbitration as opposed to going to the courts to address any

wrongdoings down the road.

In your view, do you think the current law should be overturned

or reviewed so that private plaintiffs are provided with the right

of action against analysts?

And with respect to the current arbitration system, do you believe that the arbiters should be outside the securities industry and

that they rather be from the American Arbitration Association or

some other outside firm to oversee the arbitration?

Mr. GLANTZ. Yes. I agree that investors should be able to sue in

courts. I believe that any arbitration should be done by people outside of the system.

If I can also add a response to a previous question. One of the

problems with the rating systems is that the greatest excesses are

made by people who have no track record. Whoever heard of Henry

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Bodgett before the internet stocks went up? It would have taken

until the stocks fell that you would know that he had been overenthusiastic. I think the basic problem is not the analyst, but the

pressure on investment banking.

If you tell the investment bankers, ‘‘Gee, I think this is a terrible

company,’’ you get fired. If you don’t support the stock, you get

fired.

Ms. CROWLEY. Today, but not in the past.

Mr. GLANTZ. Right.

Mr. HILL. Back in the days when I was an analyst, I could put

a sell, as I did on investment banking clients, and I did not hear

anything from the investment banking side of the firms I worked

for or from the companies involved. But that’s changed today.

Mr. KIANPOOR. Mr. Crowley, that’s why we are looking for historical information on investment bank recommendations. We don’t go

by analysts, because we believe that going by analysts would be

like saying that the tail is wagging the dog. We go by Merrill’s recommendations or CFSB’s recommendations. Every time they make

one, they put their equity at stake, and the public should know

what their track record in different stocks and different sectors is

when they’re making those decisions. That’s a market-based solution to the problem.

Ms. CROWLEY. In the interest of time, I yield back, but before I

do, I thank the Chairman. I believe this is the second hearing on

this and there are going to be more hearings. I look forward to it

because this is a very interesting issue. The whole concept of an

analyst being rewarded for information that he or she gives over

the mass media is troubling to me. It’s substantial dollars. We’re

talking in the range of $100,000 plus dollars for every time they

give a bump to a product over the media, the mass media. That’s

troubling, because it affects my constituents, the general public

that is more involved and more interested in the market than ever

before, those are the people that we have to look out for.

And that seriously troubles me. So I thank you all for your testimony today.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Crowley, and yes this is only

the second, but it really is the beginning of this subcommittee’s jurisdictional responsibility. I don’t see even the passage of legislation as the end of our responsibility. If there’s anything I’ve learned

from pass excesses, the Long-Term Capital Management and others, there has to be outside constant review of business practice in

order for the system to work without distortion.

Ms. CROWLEY. I agree with you, Mr. Chairman. In fact, I think

the hearings you’re holding are doing in many respects just that.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you, sir.

I believe that it’s an important responsibility in light of the way

the market has changed, technology has opened up the world to the

small dollar investor, they may even, despite FD, be flooded by information they can’t even understand. So I don’t know that folks

today have the confidence that the people they pay for information

are necessarily giving them the unvarnished truth.

That’s what this is all about. I would like to return to the remedy

aspect. I don’t think it’s that difficult. I think it’s difficult because

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ficulty in securing the IPO client for the investment bank. But if

you have the research department not reporting to the investment

bank, where their compensation package may be based on the quality of their work, is it facetious to be believe that, as a research

analyst, that if you do your work, and go out and say this is a dog

and say this one is so-so, and this one is where we want to put our

money, and based on those recommendations at year end, if you did

identify the dog, you did tell them where to put their money properly, isn’t that a mechanism which could work with reasonable support from professional management?

Mr. Hill.

Mr. HILL. It could work if the compensation system was changed.

It did work in the past, but the problem is, and this is where the

buy side institutions have to look in the mirror. They have been

one of the big complainers about the deterioration and the objectivity of quality of sell side research, but they’ve driven commissions down to extremely low rates. There’s more of a premium

today on trading execution so it’s difficult to get paid the way the

brokers used to be able to for their research.

When I was an analyst, I was incentivized monetarily to do good

fundamental research. Once a quarter, the institution sent a letter

in saying, we did X amount of commissioned business directed to

your firm in return for research services provided by the following

analysts.

If my name appeared on more of those letters than my compatriots did, I got a bigger share of the research department bonus

pool. In those days, the research department generated enough

commission business to have a bonus pool. If I did something for

investment banking along the way, there may be a little sweetener

in there for that, but it was the frosting on the cake.

The problem today is it’s the cake, because they can’t get paid

for research and they’ve had to return to investment banking to

compensate the analysts.

Chairman BAKER. Let’s take that point. Let’s assume for a moment that business practice has changed. We can’t undo it and it’s

a fact of life. The conflict of interest will continue. Is merely the

disclosure of the relationship somehow doing something about the

IPO problem that was referenced, I believe, by Mr. Glantz in your

testimony. Is that going to be sufficient along with Reg FD-like disclosure requirements sufficient to bring back or to establish credibility in analysts’ work with the average investor.

If we can’t unwrap the investment bank research problem, where

do we go from there?

Mr. GLANTZ. You have asked two question. One question that

you asked earlier, if I have an investment banker who is making

the firm hundreds of millions of dollars, I don’t care what the formal relationship is, he runs research. The second is to restore investor credibility. Unfortunately, the investors who are hurt the

most are not paying for the research, they’re trading on

AmeriTrade.

Chairman BAKER. A network.

Mr. GLANTZ. They’re trading on the internet. Every once in a

while I used to go into one of these chat rooms to find out what

people were saying. I was amazed at the illiteracy, the lack of

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knowledge, ‘‘So-and-so’s stock is going to go to a hundred,’’ and

that’s not the analysts’ fault.

The criticism I make of analysts is conflict of interest and I think

that should be on the first page. But is that going to cure the problem of the reputation of analysts? No.

Chairman BAKER. Any other comment on the next step?

Mr. LASHINSKY. I would just disagree with one thing that Chuck

Hill said to get to Ron Glantz’s point. Typically, the buy side is not

particularly upset with the situation. They see it as an unfortunate

situation, but they know that they can’t rely on the sell side for

buy and sell recommendations. So they take the sell side for what

it’s worth. It’s expertise, it’s knowledge, it’s analysis, not its recommendations on the stocks. They have their own research teams

for that.

Chairman BAKER. Would you like another round, Paul?

Mr. KANJORSKI. I was going to confess something. I gave up holding equities when I got elected to Congress. But I have to tell you,

I gave up going to cocktail parties about 5 years ago, because I just

couldn’t stand to go to them and listen to all my friends making

30 and 40 and 50 percent return on their investments knowing I’m

in Government bonds.

Now I appear absolutely brilliant, but I want to make the point

that what some of you were talking about here goes to the question

of ethics and business. These investment banking houses are very

substantial houses employing very substantial people. It seems to

me they are prostituting, as I think the word was used, their analysts to help that side of the business.

Am I to believe that Wall Street is so much different than say

the journalistic area where Katherine Graham stood behind her investigative reporters even against the President of the United

States. Have we lost that standard of ethics in the business field?

Has capitalism gotten to the level that money and money alone is

the determining level of what ethics exist in the business?

Mr. BYRON. Congressman Kanjorski, I would simply say that

we’re at the end, or we were in March of the year 2000, to the longest sustained bull market in the Nation’s history. We saw levels of

premium value attached to stocks that really turned people’s heads

around.

I think that it’s really possible to lose your moorings when you

can go from $30,000-a-year to $2- or $3-million dollars a year in 2

years in a job. So, yes, I think that the correction that you’re now

seeing in the market is likely to correct a lot of that.

Nobody was complaining. Nobody ever complains about the stock

market when it goes up. It’s only when it stops going up that people start wondering, well, why didn’t you tell me before. So the ethical question I think is likely to disappear as values return to their

historical norms.

Mr. KANJORSKI. With the market coming down, everybody’s going

to get ethics and morals?

Mr. BYRON. You’ll find ethics returning to their mean, yes.

Mr. KANJORSKI. I had the one question that I brought up in my

opening statement. Maybe if you could just individually respond if

you have a comment on it. I have a great fear on the public policy

question of privatizing Social Security and turning those millions

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of investors and billions and trillions of dollars over to what you

describe as an ‘‘unethical, ethical or egoistic omen market.’’ What are your feelings on this as individuals? Are we prepared

to do that?

Mr. Glantz.

Mr. GLANTZ. I think this has to be extremely well thought out

or we’re going to have a repetition of the S&L problem. With your

constituents saying, ‘‘I just lost half my money, make me whole.’’ Mr. LASHINSKY. I work for a website that is committed to informing the individual investor and I think your concerns are extremely

valid.

Mr. KANJORSKI. I just want to congratulate you two. Are you the

last two existing dot com companies?

Mr. LASHINSKY. I’m not sure how to respond to that.

Mr. KANJORSKI. Going back to what I said before, when I was

growing up in a rather conservative investor home, we used to

think of real estate investments the way you figure out the value

of property was ten times earnings rentals: That was a pretty good

mix of whether the profit was going to be there and the real estate

investment, a maximum of 12 to 20 percent profits or earnings to

price.

Then, of course, I went to these cocktail parties 5 years ago and

I heard 100-to-1. You didn’t worry about companies even making

earnings. It was what do we call it, a new market, a new economy?

Chairman BAKER. Stupidity, I think is what it was.

Mr. KANJORSKI. We do not want to go into overkill. I, for one,

would like to see more Americans have the capacity to participate

in equities. I think that is a major positive feature of America

today and the world today, but we cannot allow unrestrained exposure of the fox in the hen house, and I’m even worried about H.R.

10.

Now we have allowed these securities companies to become part

of huge banks and huge insurance companies. If they are willing

to pollute and prostitute any measure including the media, maybe

we have some fear out there. Unfortunately, maybe we need Government restraint, even though so many of us would like to have

less regulation. Maybe we are starting down a trail that we have

created our own monster.

How is H.R. 10 treating this? I talked to a banker the other day

and he expects the world to have six multi-trillion dollar banks in

the next 10 to 20 years and that will be it. The rest will be little

mom and pop operations out there. That’s an awful lot of economic

power to put in the hands of single people. The questions are what

will they do with it, and what will the people that work for them

do with it, and how willing will they be to surrender their ethical

standards or morality?

Anyway, Mr. Chairman, again, great panel, great discussion. I

think we can take back to our membership a great transcript.

Thank you.

Chairman BAKER. Thank you very much, Mr. Kanjorski. I too,

like Ranking Member Kanjorski, don’t have any investments in the

market. Given my responsibilities, I don’t think that’s appropriate.

But my son asked me some time ago, ‘‘Dad, when should I get out

of the market?’’, and I told him ‘‘About 31⁄2 years ago.’’ This thing

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can’t last. He just started speaking to me a couple of weeks ago

now that things have gone in a different direction.

There is no doubt that the individual investor shares a great deal

of responsibility in the current market circumstance. People don’t

make you put your money in the market, you have to make a conscious decision to write the check, to add the debit to your account.

But I think our concern, properly focused, is when you make that

decision that the information you are receiving is unbiased, accurate, and any interest in the party that is giving you the information material to your investment decision should be made clear.

There’s nothing wrong, and I’ve used it numerous times in prior

hearings, in Louisiana real estate law, if I’m going to represent

buyer and seller, I must have a written disclosure by both that that

is OK, and then I am not allowed by law to give any information

about the buyer to the seller or conversely that would prejudice the

ability of the other to get full market value, or for the seller to get

the best price.

I become basically a letter carrier at that point, and can no

longer espouse a particular party’s interest in that transaction. We

have got to get our standards and the consequential effects for violating the standards in a position where I can have the same confidence in the analysts that my constituents are utilizing that I

think my constituents can have in a Louisiana realtor.

I don’t think that is a standard that’s too high to achieve. So

from my perspective, with your good help over the coming months,

we hope to be able to encourage the private market to see the advisability of this effort to be cooperative and to perhaps lead us in

the right direction.

But, as some have indicated, if we are not successful and the

problems do not appear to be remedied, then I certainly would not

at this time rule out the possible further actions of this subcommittee, given the Members’ interest expressed here today.

With that, I thank you for your courteous and lengthy participation and we look forward to hearing from you further.

Our hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 5:15 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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A P P E N D I X

June 14, 2001

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