Information about bank intangibles, analyst information intermediation, and the role of knowledge and social forces in the ‘market for information’

Abstract

Although developments in the sell-side analyst literature have revealed the role of intellectual capital (IC) in analysts’ work, the whole information intermediation progress of IC remains a “black box”. This paper develops an analyst information intermediation model, illustrating how ‘soft’ information changes through analyst acquisition, processing and disclosure of information. Bourdieu’s ideas of habitus, field and capital are used to develop our explanation of the analyst information intermediation model. We argue that the combination of empirical evidence and theoretical explanation provides a new and more comprehensive way to improve understanding of the role of analysts within knowledge and social contexts.

Keywords:

• Analysts
• Market for information (MFI)
• Business models
• Soft information
• Social context

Notes

1 In Gu and Wang’s (2005) study, they measure industry-adjusted intangible intensity relating to R&D, brand names, and recognized intangibles. These measures indicate the extent to which firms’ intangible intensity deviates from the industry norm, defined as the firm’s reported intangible minus the industry-average intangibles, where industry-average intangibles are defined as the three-digit SIC industry median value (Gu & Wang, 2005, p. 1683).

2 For the case code, A1 to A15 refers to interviews with bank analysts, and B1 to B11 to interviews with managers in the case institutions.

3 It should be noted Abhayawansa et al.’s (2018) content analysis were based on initiation coverage reports, which are argued to be the lengthiest, most detailed and substantiated type of sell-side reports, including comprehensive narratives about the company (Abhayawansa et al., 2018) and excluding incomplete follow-up reports (Flöstrand, 2006).