Investment Research

A joint task force of the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts and the National Investor Relations Institute released as final voluntary best practice guidelines governing relations between securities analysts and companies they cover ( www.cfainstitute.org ). They address analysts’ independence from corporate issuers’ influence, analysts’ access to issuer executives, disputes between companies and analysts over published reports, corporate issuers’ prepublication review of analysts’ reports, and issuer-sponsored research.