The Client Is King: Do Mutual Fund Relationships Bias Analyst Recommendations

This paper investigates whether the business relations between mutual funds and brokerage firms influence sell-side analyst recommendations. Using a unique data set that discloses brokerage firms’ commission income derived from each mutual fund client as well as the share holdings of these mutual funds, we find that an analyst’s recommendation on a stock relative to consensus is significantly higher if the stock is held by the mutual fund clients of the analyst’s brokerage firm. The optimism in analyst recommendations increases with the weight of the stock in a mutual fund client’s portfolio and the commission revenue generated from the mutual fund client. However, this favorable recommendation bias toward a client’s existing portfolio stocks is mitigated if the stock in question is highly visible to other mutual fund investors. Abnormal stock returns are significantly greater both for the announcement period and, in the long run, for favorable stock recommendations ∗Lingnan University, Hong Kong; †Chinese University of Hong Kong; ‡University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; §Harvard Business School. Accepted by Abbie Smith. We thank an anonymous referee, Malcolm Baker, Murillo Campello, Lauren Cohen, Ben Esty, Paul Gompers, Paul Malatesta, Christopher Malloy, Paul McGuinness, Jeffrey Pontiff, Winnie Poon, Jeremy Stein, Michael Weisbach, Sonia Wong, Karen Zhang, and seminar participants at Lingnan University and the Hong Kong Institute for Business Studies for thoughtful discussions and suggestions. Firth, Lin, and Xuan gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of the HKSAR (CERG340309/CERG5403), the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Division of Research of the Harvard Business School, respectively.