The topics: ‘Liability for damages of the investment services company for erroneous stock analyses’

deals with topics such as stock analysis in the capital market, liability for damages under U.S. and German law. Finally, a treatment of the liability regime for publicly disseminated equity research follows. For practitioners: The great value and benefit of the work lies in the excellent structure of the material with more than 1300 footnote references to further references. In practice, the author’s considerations can also be applied to other products; for example, the analyses of closed investments or those of rating agencies.

Essentials of analyst due diligence:

In particular, the author presents the requirements for a careful analysis and describes the central criteria for identifying faulty analyses. This is a systematic catalogue of questions.

For example, this is about:

Addressee Horizon:

• Is the analysis sufficiently understandable for a layperson?
• Are forecasts sufficiently accurate?
• Is the analysis based on a sufficiently complete fact/data base?
• What about the truth of processed facts?
• Was the processing of the data methodologically correct?
• Have uncertainty factors been highlighted clearly enough?
• Was the analysis given a creation date?

Central test criteria for a plausibility check:

The financial service provider will find numerous suggestions here as to which criteria and questions he can use to carry out an initial plausibility check “not only for share analyses”. The issues identified also help in practice when assessing prospectus material, other analyses and ratings. Conclusion: Anyone who is concerned with the spectacular corporate and financial scandals at home and abroad, including in the area of shares, will find here in-depth specialist legal information on liability law.

For many years, clients and financial service providers have been able to observe how some analyses are prepared in a bite-size format to support sales. It is not uncommon for “valuable” analyses to turn out to be incorrect and liable at second glance.