Revisionist History

Wall Street folklore has long maintained that Bear, Stearns issues new hires paper clips and rubber bands along with a stern admonition to watch the expense line…

Alan “Ace” Greenberg was chairman of the board for nearly two decades from 1978. He has become known for his regular quirky memos to the staff, exhorting them to cut costs by conserving energy, re-using paper clips, and fixing broken rubber bands by tying them back together. The memos, published in the book “Memos from the Chairman”, are said to have created an “atmosphere of camaraderie and humor during the recession of the early ‘90s”. (answers.com)

It seems some shops on Wall Street issue their charges wite out as well. Deal Book is reporting that a new study claims that Wall Street is filled with charlatans and liars…

Wouldn’t it be nice to erase your name from past embarrassments? A study suggesting that this might have been done with stock research is creating some controversy. A paper by a group of business professors reported that the widely used I/B/E/S historical database of stock-analyst recommendations contains nearly 20,000 “changes of an unusual nature,” including “selective removal of analyst names from historic recommendations.” Thomson Financial, which owns the database, disputes the study’s conclusions.

The purported removal of analysts’ names from recommendations — which the paper calls “anonymizations” — are “pervasive and non-random,” according to an abstract describing the study. “Bolder recommendations are more likely to be anonymized, as are recommendations from more senior analysts, Institutional Investor ‘all-stars,’ and those who remain in the industry beyond 2002.” The study also found that “particularly embarrassing recommendations” are the most likely to have been anonymized. read story here

Although Thomson Financial, owners of the IBES database, are disputing the allegations, we are a bit dubious.

Indeed, from where we sit it appears somebody’s pants are on fire.

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