Brokers don’t die, they just trade away

Two years ago, the days of the European sell-side analyst looked numbered. The UK Financial Services Authority was forcing brokerages to «unbundle» commissions on equity trades, thereby revealing how much they charged for research versus execution. The fear was that fund managers would baulk at how much research cost, and decide to rely on in-house analysts instead. Instead, the opposite seems to have happened. Most bulge-bracket firms have undoubtedly cut back on analysts since the boom. But t...