Radical surgery for high-grade research

Regulatory demands to reduce conflicts of interest have seen US banks take the knife to their investment-grade research. So is it a case of 'new and improved' or a botch job? Saskia Scholtes reports

Credit research, once the bedrock of most sell-side fixed-income businesses, is undergoing a radical overhaul. While high-yield and leveraged finance analysts are not short of job opportunities in research groups up and down the Street, growing numbers of investment-grade analysts in New York are being put out to pasture or transferred to desk analysis positions where they no longer publish