Chapter 15 Conflicts of Interest in the Financial Industry

Chapter 15

Conflicts of Interest in the

Financial Industry

© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved. 15-2

What Are Conflicts of Interest and Why Are They Important?

• Type of moral hazard problem that occurs when a person or institution has multiple objectives and as a result has conflicts between them

• Might be responsible for

– Previous scandals (Enron)

– Subprime financial crisis of 2007–2008


What Are Conflicts of Interest and Why Are They Important? (cont’d)

• Economies of scale realized from cost advantages in the collection and use of information

• Economies of scope realized by providing multiple financial services to customers


What Are Conflicts of Interest and Why Are They Important? (cont’d)

• Focus on conflicts of interest that arise when financial service firms or their employees serve one interest at the expense of another’s, which could be their own interest, rather than their customer’s, or a firm’s interest who wants to sell securities rather than investors’ who are purchasers of the securities. As a result they might misuse information, provide false information, or conceal information.


Why Do We Care About Conflicts of Interest?

• Conflicts of interest can substantially reduce the quality of information in financial markets increasing asymmetric information problems

• Asymmetric information prevents financial markets from channeling funds into productive investment opportunities and causes financial markets and economies to be less efficient


Types of Conflicts of Interest

• Underwriting and research in investment banking

• Auditing and consulting in accounting firms

• Credit assessment and consulting in credit-rating agencies

• Universal banking


Underwriting and Research in Investment Banking

• Issuers benefit from optimistic research

• Investors desire unbiased research

• Strong incentive to alter information provided to both types of clients, favoring the issuing firm

• Spinning


Auditing and Consulting in Accounting Firms

• Accounting firms provides its clients with consulting services (taxes, business strategies)

• Pressure from clients threatening to take business to another firm

• Reluctance to criticize work done by nonaudit counterparts

• Provide an overly favorable audit in an effort to solicit or retain audit business


Credit Assessment and Consulting in Credit-Rating Agencies

• Issuers pay to receive a credit rating

• Investors and regulators depend on well-researched impartial assessments

• Credit-rating agencies may also provide consulting services– Auditing their own work– Favorable rating to attract new clients


Universal Banking

• Underwriting department: aggressive sales vs. unbiased investment advice for customers.

• Limit losses by selling to customers or to trust accounts

• Encourage underwriting to push securities from firms with increasing risk

• Makes loans with overly favorable terms to earn fees for other activities

• Influence or coerce a borrowing or investing customer to buy insurance products


Can the Market Limit Exploitation of Conflicts of Interest?

• Incentives to exploit conflict of interest may not be very high and therefore this might not be a problem.

• Exploiting conflicts of interest might hurt a financial firm’s reputation

• Empirical evidence suggests that – Credit rating firms do not overrate bonds of its customers. – markets adjust when a potential for conflicts of interest

arise (securities underwriting by commercial and investment banks).


Can the Market Limit Exploitation of Conflicts of Interest? (cont’d)

• In the short run, exploitation is possible and can lead to large gains. Motives:– Poorly designed compensation plans.

– Temporary rewards

• Individuals might be able to capture reputational rents.


What has Been Done to Remedy Conflicts of Interest?

• Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002– Increased supervisory oversight to monitor and

prevent conflicts of interest

– Directly reduced conflicts of interest

– Provided incentives for investment banks to not exploit conflicts of interest

– Had measures to improve the quality of information in financial markets


What has Been Done to Remedy Conflicts of Interest? (cont’d)

• Global Legal Settlement of 2002:– Required investment banks to sever the links between

research and securities underwriting– Banned spinning– Imposed $1.4 billion of fines on accused investment banks.– Required investment banks to make public their analyst’s

recommendations– Required investment banks to contract for a five year

period with no fewer than three independent research firms that would provide research to their brokerage customers


What has Been Done to Remedy Conflicts of Interest? (cont’d)

• Dodd-Frank Bill of 2010:– Created an Office of Credit Ratings at the SEC with its own

staff and the authority to fine credit-rating agencies and to deregister an agency if it produces bad ratings..

– Forced credit-rating agencies to provide reports to the SEC when their employees go to work for a company that has been rated by them in the last twelve months.

– Prohibited compliance officers from being involved in producing or selling credit ratings.

– Required the SEC to prevent issuers of asset-backed securities from choosing the credit-rating agencies that will give them the highest rating and supported earlier initiatives by the SEC to limit conflicts of interest.

– Authorized investors to bring lawsuits against credit-rating agencies for a reckless failure to get the facts when providing a credit rating.


A Framework for Evaluating Policies to Remedy Conflicts of Interest

• The existence of a conflict of interest does not mean that it will have serious adverse consequences– Does the market have adequate information and

incentives to control conflicts of interest?

• Even if incentives to exploit conflicts of interest remain strong, eliminating the economies of scope that create the conflicts of interest may be harmful because it will reduce the flow of reliable information


Approaches to Remedying Conflicts of Interest

• Leave it to the market– Penalize the financial service firm– Promote new institutional means

• Regulate for transparency– Mandatory information disclosure– Might be too costly for financial service firms


Approaches to Remedying Conflicts of Interest (cont’d)

• Supervisory oversight– Appropriate internal controls

• Separation of functions– Agents should not be placed in the position to

respond to multiple principals

• Socialization of information production– Information is likely to be undersupplied if left to

private provision.

Documents

Chapter 15 Conflicts of Interest in the Financial Industry