Blackrock (and others) Paid Analysts for Insider Information
nytimes.com
"As one of the largest payers of trading commissions to Wall Street, BlackRock is a client that brokerage firms want to please to keep those commissions flowing. For a period during 2008 and 2009, the firms participating in an expanded survey received cash based on their results.
...One of the company’s survey questions, titled “earnings surprise direction,” asks analysts whether a company’s coming profits “are more likely to surprise on the upside or downside.” Another asks: “Do you think the current consensus earnings forecast” for a specified period “will likely move upwards or downwards?”
A more recent question involves takeovers: “How likely is it that the company will be taken over in the next 6 months?”
... A 2009 document on the firm’s analyst surveys is even more explicit. “We are trying to front-run recs,” it said, referring to trading ahead of analysts’ recommendations."