IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pacfin/v40y2016ipbp403-423.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Which matters: “Paying to play” or stable business relationship? Evidence on analyst recommendation and mutual fund commission fee payment

Author

Listed:
  • Huang, Haozhi
  • Li, Mingsheng
  • Shi, Jing

Abstract

This paper investigates the factors that affect the likelihood of maintaining a stable relationship between a brokerage firm and its client funds and the effect of such a stable business relationship on analyst recommendations. We find that young funds, particularly those in small fund families, have more incentives to maintain business ties with their current brokerage firms. A common ownership affiliation between a fund and a brokerage firm or with a third institution further enhances the probability that the brokerage firm and the funds will maintain a stable relationship. More importantly, analysts issue more optimistic recommendations on stocks that are held by their brokerage firms stably related funds (SRFs) than on stocks that are held by other funds. The effect is more pronounced after excluding large firms. The results are robust after controlling for underwriting relation, commission fees, funds' shareholding and other factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Huang, Haozhi & Li, Mingsheng & Shi, Jing, 2016. "Which matters: “Paying to play” or stable business relationship? Evidence on analyst recommendation and mutual fund commission fee payment," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 403-423.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:40:y:2016:i:pb:p:403-423
    DOI: 10.1016/j.pacfin.2016.02.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927538X16300063
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.pacfin.2016.02.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lin, Hsiou-wei & McNichols, Maureen F., 1998. "Underwriting relationships, analysts' earnings forecasts and investment recommendations," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 101-127, February.
    2. Krigman, Laurie & Shaw, Wayne H. & Womack, Kent L., 2001. "Why do firms switch underwriters?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2-3), pages 245-284, May.
    3. Shuping Chen & Dawn A. Matsumoto, 2006. "Favorable versus Unfavorable Recommendations: The Impact on Analyst Access to Management‐Provided Information," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 657-689, September.
    4. Michael Firth & Chen Lin & Ping Liu & Yuhai Xuan, 2013. "The Client Is King: Do Mutual Fund Relationships Bias Analyst Recommendations?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(1), pages 165-200, March.
    5. Francis, Jennifer & Douglas Hanna, J. & Philbrick, Donna R., 1997. "Management communications with securities analysts," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 363-394, December.
    6. Ulrike Malmendier & Devin Shanthikumar, 2014. "Do Security Analysts Speak in Two Tongues?," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 27(5), pages 1287-1322.
    7. Davis, Gerald F. & Kim, E. Han, 2007. "Business ties and proxy voting by mutual funds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 552-570, August.
    8. Barber, Brad M. & Lehavy, Reuven & Trueman, Brett, 2007. "Comparing the stock recommendation performance of investment banks and independent research firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 490-517, August.
    9. Liu, Xiaoding & Ritter, Jay R., 2011. "Local underwriter oligopolies and IPO underpricing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(3), pages 579-601.
    10. Ljungqvist, Alexander & Marston, Felicia & Starks, Laura T. & Wei, Kelsey D. & Yan, Hong, 2007. "Conflicts of interest in sell-side research and the moderating role of institutional investors," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 420-456, August.
    11. Charles Kahn & Andrew Winton, 1998. "Ownership Structure, Speculation, and Shareholder Intervention," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(1), pages 99-129, February.
    12. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    13. Andrew R. Jackson, 2005. "Trade Generation, Reputation, and Sell‐Side Analysts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(2), pages 673-717, April.
    14. Michael B. Clement & Senyo Y. Tse, 2005. "Financial Analyst Characteristics and Herding Behavior in Forecasting," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(1), pages 307-341, February.
    15. Michael T. Cliff & David J. Denis, 2004. "Do Initial Public Offering Firms Purchase Analyst Coverage with Underpricing?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(6), pages 2871-2901, December.
    16. Michaely, Roni & Womack, Kent L, 1999. "Conflict of Interest and the Credibility of Underwriter Analyst Recommendations," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 12(4), pages 653-686.
    17. Cowen, Amanda & Groysberg, Boris & Healy, Paul, 2006. "Which types of analyst firms are more optimistic?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1-2), pages 119-146, April.
    18. Fama, Eugene F & MacBeth, James D, 1973. "Risk, Return, and Equilibrium: Empirical Tests," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 607-636, May-June.
    19. Mola, Simona & Guidolin, Massimo, 2009. "Affiliated mutual funds and analyst optimism," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 108-137, July.
    20. Nishant Dass & Massimo Massa, 2011. "The Impact of a Strong Bank-Firm Relationship on the Borrowing Firm," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(4), pages 1204-1260.
    21. Petersen, Mitchell A & Rajan, Raghuram G, 1994. "The Benefits of Lending Relationships: Evidence from Small Business Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-37, March.
    22. Gilles Hilary & Charles Hsu, 2013. "Analyst Forecast Consistency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(1), pages 271-297, February.
    23. Erik Devos, 2014. "Are Analysts’ Recommendations for Other Investment Banks Biased?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 43(2), pages 327-353, June.
    24. Trien Le & Trevor Buck, 2011. "State ownership and listed firm performance: a universally negative governance relationship?," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 15(2), pages 227-248, May.
    25. Daniel J. Bradley & Bradford D. Jordan & Jay R. Ritter, 2003. "The Quiet Period Goes out with a Bang," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 58(1), pages 1-36, February.
    26. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1986. "Large Shareholders and Corporate Control," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(3), pages 461-488, June.
    27. Kadan, Ohad & Madureira, Leonardo & Wang, Rong & Zach, Tzachi, 2012. "Analysts' industry expertise," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 95-120.
    28. Michael A. Goldstein & Paul Irvine & Eugene Kandel & Zvi Wiener, 2009. "Brokerage Commissions and Institutional Trading Patterns," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(12), pages 5175-5212, December.
    29. Brickley, James A. & Lease, Ronald C. & Smith, Clifford Jr., 1988. "Ownership structure and voting on antitakeover amendments," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1-2), pages 267-291, January.
    30. Borokhovich, Kenneth A & Brunarski, Kelly & Harman, Yvette S & Parrino, Robert, 2006. "Variation in the Monitoring Incentives of Outside Stockholders," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 49(2), pages 651-680, October.
    31. Hou, Wenxuan & Kuo, Jing-Ming & Lee, Edward, 2012. "The impact of state ownership on share price informativeness: The case of the Split Share Structure Reform in China," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(4), pages 248-261.
    32. Gaoguang (Stephen) Zhou & Xindong (Kevin) Zhu, 2012. "Client Importance and Auditor Independence: The Effect of the Asian Financial Crisis," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 22(4), pages 371-383, December.
    33. Alexander Ljungqvist & Felicia Marston & William J. Wilhelm, 2006. "Competing for Securities Underwriting Mandates: Banking Relationships and Analyst Recommendations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(1), pages 301-340, February.
    34. Conrad, Jennifer & Cornell, Bradford & Landsman, Wayne R. & Rountree, Brian R., 2006. "How Do Analyst Recommendations Respond to Major News?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(1), pages 25-49, March.
    35. Chen, Xia & Harford, Jarrad & Li, Kai, 2007. "Monitoring: Which institutions matter?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(2), pages 279-305, November.
    36. Ernst Maug, 1998. "Large Shareholders as Monitors: Is There a Trade-Off between Liquidity and Control?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(1), pages 65-98, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Saengchote, Kanis & Sthienchoak, Jananya, 2020. "Strategic participation in IPOs by affiliated mutual funds: Thai evidence," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    2. Haozhi Huang & Mingsheng Li & Jing Shi, 2020. "Should Financial Gatekeepers be Publicly Traded?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 175-200, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Juyoun Ryoo & Cheolwoo Lee & Jin Q Jeon, 2020. "Sustainability of Analyst Recommendations in Multiple Lead Underwriter IPOs," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-36, March.
    2. Haozhi Huang & Mingsheng Li & Jing Shi, 2020. "Should Financial Gatekeepers be Publicly Traded?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 175-200, June.
    3. Andreas Charitou & Irene Karamanou, 2020. "Sleeping with the enemy: should investment banks be allowed to engage in prop trading?," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 513-557, June.
    4. Ramnath, Sundaresh & Rock, Steve & Shane, Philip, 2008. "The financial analyst forecasting literature: A taxonomy with suggestions for further research," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 34-75.
    5. Tiana Lehmer & Ben Lourie & Devin Shanthikumar, 2022. "Brokerage trading volume and analysts’ earnings forecasts: a conflict of interest?," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 441-476, June.
    6. Mola, Simona & Guidolin, Massimo, 2009. "Affiliated mutual funds and analyst optimism," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 108-137, July.
    7. Zhang, Chao & Shrider, David G. & Han, Dun & Wu, Yanran, 2022. "Accurate forecasts attract clients; Biased forecasts keep them happy," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    8. William Baker & Gregory Dumont, 2014. "Equity Analyst Recommendations: A Case for Affirmative Disclosure?," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 96-123, March.
    9. Dambra, Michael & Field, Laura Casares & Gustafson, Matthew T. & Pisciotta, Kevin, 2018. "The consequences to analyst involvement in the IPO process: Evidence surrounding the JOBS Act," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 302-330.
    10. Xu, Nianhang & Jiang, Xuanyu & Chan, Kam C. & Yi, Zhihong, 2013. "Analyst coverage, optimism, and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 217-239.
    11. Li, Yi & Shen, Dehua & Wang, Pengfei & Zhang, Wei, 2019. "Do analyst recommendations matter for rival companies?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    12. Lily Fang & Ayako Yasuda, 2014. "Are Stars’ Opinions Worth More? The Relation Between Analyst Reputation and Recommendation Values," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 46(3), pages 235-269, December.
    13. Chatalova, Natalia & How, Janice C.Y. & Verhoeven, Peter, 2016. "Analyst coverage and IPO management forecasts," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 263-277.
    14. Lawrence D. Brown & Andrew C. Call & Michael B. Clement & Nathan Y. Sharp, 2015. "Inside the “Black Box” of Sell‐Side Financial Analysts," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(1), pages 1-47, March.
    15. Mehran, Hamid & Stulz, Rene M., 2007. "The economics of conflicts of interest in financial institutions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 267-296, August.
    16. Daniel Bradley & Sinan Gokkaya & Xi Liu, 2020. "Ties That Bind: The Value of Professional Connections to Sell-Side Analysts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(9), pages 4118-4151, September.
    17. Pacelli, Joseph, 2019. "Corporate culture and analyst catering⁎," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 120-143.
    18. Masahito Kato, 2016. "Analyst Recommendation Bias and Brokerage House Shareholding," Discussion Papers 1635, Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University.
    19. Cheolwoo Lee, 2013. "Analyst firm parent–subsidiary relationship and conflict of interest: evidence from IPO recommendations," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 53(3), pages 763-789, September.
    20. Zhao, Chen & Li, Yubin & Govindaraj, Suresh & Zhong, Zhaodong (Ken), 2022. "CDS trading and analyst optimism," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(4).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Chinese mutual funds; Open-ended equity funds; Analyst recommendation; Stable business relationship; Customer relationship management;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:40:y:2016:i:pb:p:403-423. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/pacfin .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.