Investor Conferences as a Research Service

Abstract:     
Broker-hosted investor conferences are invitation-only events that allow select clients to interact with firm management. We find that firms that attend investor conferences tend to have high intangible assets, consistent with greater demand for management access among hard-to-value firms. Using a sample of institutional transactions, we find that investor conferences have a significant effect on broker revenues in the days following the event, and the effect is larger when conference disclosures are more informative, which suggests investors reward brokers for facilitating informative disclosures. Our results indicate that brokerage research extends beyond the distribution of published reports and establish investor conferences as a distinct research service.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 54

Keywords: Analyst Research, Institutional Trading, Brokerage Commissions

JEL Classification: G14

working papers series