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Does director affiliation lead to analyst bias?

This study examines the ability of security analysts to provide objective earnings forecasts for firms with which the analyst’s brokerage firm has a director affiliation. The affiliation that we examine is where the brokerage firm has, on its board of directors, a director or an upper management individual from the firm which an analyst at the brokerage firm provides coverage. We find that affiliated analysts tend to provide earnings forecasts that are insignificantly different from unaffiliated analysts in terms of accuracy. However, we also find that forecasts provided by affiliated analysts tend to be significantly more pessimistic than those provided by their unaffiliated counterparts. This pessimistic bias in their earnings forecast will more easily allow the covered firm to beat earnings expectations when earnings are realized. We find that this bias surfaced after the Global Settlement decision, an enforcement agreement between large investment banks and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding issues surrounding conflicts of interest.