Major Disclosure Failures at CNBC...??????
Why is it that when an analyst appears live to upgrade a stock, CNBC anchors will ask the analyst very pointedly whether he has any position in it or if his firm has done any investment banking for the company, but when a CNBC reporter simply relays an upgrade without the analyst appearing on TV, there is absolutely zero disclosure? This happens dozens of times a day, when Maria Bartiromo, Tom Costello, and others go through lists of upgrades/downgrades without ever offering any of the disclosure that would be required of those analysts if they were they appearing on the air in person.
With the recent emphasis on disclosure, the buzz in the analyst community now is that it's actually preferable in many instances to use "arm's-length" upgrades on stocks through the CNBC proxy, which don't require ANY uncomfortable or inconvenient disclosures if you don't go on the air in person.
Only one example of many: On March 26, from the NYSE, Maria Bartiromo reported "breaking news" that Goldman Sachs was upgrading TVX Gold (symbol TVX). This is a 65 cent penny stock. She reported the upgrade without ever disclosing any Goldman relationship with the company, OR the fact that the company had just priced a secondary the night before the upgrade. If the Goldman analyst had announced the upgrade himself on CNBC, I assume he would have been asked about that secondary, any banking relationship with the company, or any position in the stock.
Dozens of similar examples occur every day, without any disclosure taking place.
In response, CNBC would likely say they need to report these upgrades because they are moving or could move the stock, and that there is not enough time to include disclosures when reporting every upgrade. That reasoning would be specious, since many of the upgrades are reported when the market is not even open, and the reporter goes into extreme detail, seemingly often reading copy provided by the actual analyst. In the case of 65-cent penny stock TVX Gold, it was an upgrade of a stock the vast majority of investors have never even heard of.
The net effect is that in the litany of daily analyst upgrades/downgrades on CNBC, FAR more contain NO disclosure than those that do. Doesn't this violate in spirit as well as practice CNBC's self-heralded disclosure policy? |
