Ownership Structure and Analysts' Earning Forecasts

Abstract

This study investigates the association between the ownership structure of a firm and the accuracy of individual one-year-ahead earnings forecasts made by UK analysts. The relation is explored in the presence of individual analyst and firm-specific characteristics using a research-tailored dataset comprising 11,659 individual analyst forecasts made over the period, 1996 to 2001. To address the multidimensional variation in the dependent variables employed in the study (i.e., a forecast made by analyst i for firm j in year t) and the unique nature of the research question (i.e., the combined use of firm and analyst-specific characteristics), we use an analyst-firm fixed effects estimator. We are not aware of any UK studies in the field that investigate the role of ownership structure of a firm in determining the accuracy of analyst forecasts. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, use of the analyst-firm fixed effect estimator in this context is also novel. The results of the study suggest that insider ownership is associated with forecast accuracy in a non-linear way. Moreover, although analysts are more optimistic for firms with a higher institutional ownership, institutional shareholders seem to be ineffective at addressing the agency disclosure problem. As a result, forecasts made for high institutional ownership firms are less accurate.