Free iPhones, revealing miniskirts and Chinese new year “red envelope” cash are among the tactics bankers say investment strategists are employing to attract votes for annual rankings in China’s “Oscars of sellside research”.
免费iPhone、暴露的超短裙和新年“红包”,这是银行家们口中投资策略师为在中国的“卖方奥斯卡”年度排名中拉票而祭出的种种招数。
The intense competition for recognition in the annual rankings, run by business magazine New Fortune, is another sign of how Chinese financial markets are adopting western-style practices with domestic characteristics.
为了在商业杂志《新财富》(New Fortune)的年度排名中获得认可而展开的激烈竞争,是表明中国金融市场正在采取具有中国特色的西式做法的又一迹象。
“Winning the award means getting big pay packets rivalling or even surpassing those on Wall Street. The incentive to cheat in an immature system is high,” said Hong Hao, head of research at Bocom International n Hong Kong.
“获奖意味着拿到媲美甚至超过华尔街水平的巨额薪资。在一个不成熟的体系中,作弊的动机是很高的,”交银国际(Bocom International)驻香港的研究主管洪灏说。
Late last year, financial media on the Chinese mainland buzzed after a female construction materials analyst at Changjiang Securities posted studio-quality photos on her WeChat profile during the New Fortune vote period. One showed her wearing a black business suit with a short skirt, lying across a bright red sofa. In a follow-up post, she stated that her WeChat was “purely a record of my personal life” and not intended to court votes.
去年9月,在《新财富》排名投票期间,长江证券(Changjiang Securities)建材团队一名女分析师在微信朋友圈发了两张高清照片,此事在中国内地的财经媒体上闹得沸沸扬扬。在其中一张照片里,她穿着黑色西装和短裙,趴在一张大红色的沙发上。这名分析师后来在微信发朋友圈称,自己的微信朋友圈内容“纯属个人生活记录”,并不是为了拉票。
Bankers say gifts such as iPhones are also common practice on the mainland, as well as the use of digital red envelopes sent via mobile payment apps.
银行家表示,赠送iPhone这样的礼物是内地的常见做法,通过移动支付应用发数字红包也很常见。
In Hong Kong, stricter compliance procedures prevent outright bribery but the new European Mifid II regulations, which force global investment banks to charge their buyside clients for research, are adding new urgency to the yearly campaign. The assumption is that clients will be more willing to pay for research from the higher-ranked analysts.
在香港,有更严格的合规程序防止公开贿赂行为,但新的《欧盟金融工具市场法规II》(Mifid II)规定,投行必须向买方客户收取研究费用,这使一年一度的评比活动更加迫切。这其中的假设是,客户将更愿意为排名更高的分析师付研究费。
A new brokerage ranking — where fund managers vote for favoured analysts — by Institutional Investor magazine for Asia ex-Japan is now under way.
《机构投资者》(Institutional Investor)杂志目前正举行一项针对亚洲除日本以外地区的新券商排名活动,由基金管理公司为其青睐的分析师投票。
“People have always taken it seriously, but I’ve never seen it like this before,” said an analyst at a big western investment bank in Hong Kong.
“人们一直都很当回事,但我以前从来没见过像今天这样的情况,”一家大型西方投行的一名驻香港的分析师说。
In an attempt to stand out from the crowd, a power sector analyst from Daiwa Capital Markets in Hong Kong recorded a video of himself performing a Korean pop-style dance routine early this month. The stunt worked, as Bloomberg reported that his biography on its financial terminal received more hits than US president Donald Trump’s for a brief period.
为了脱颖而出,香港大和资本市场(Daiwa Capital Markets)的一名电力业分析师本月早些时候录制了一段跳韩国pop舞的视频。这一招奏效了,据彭博社(Bloomberg)报道,这名分析师在彭博金融终端上的简介的点击率曾一度超过美国总统唐纳德?特朗普(Donald Trump)。
This year, New Fortune strengthened its code of conduct, specifying that research institutions must maintain a “rigorously professional attitude”. Violators will now be banned from the competition for life. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
2017年,《新财富》收紧了评选规则,指出研究机构须“秉持严谨专业的态度”。违规者有可能被永久取消参评资格。《新财富》方面未回应置评请求。
More harmless forms of persuasion are still thriving, however. The lead macro-economy analyst at Guotai Junan Securities, the country’s third-largest brokerage by revenue, composed a poem in Tang dynasty style entitled “Guotai macro’s goose call of everlasting spring”. At Sinolink Securities, a utilities analyst recorded an original song titled,“The song of a simple secondary-market dog”.
然而,更多温和无害的拉票活动仍进行得如火如荼。中国按收入计的第三大券商国泰君安证券(Guotai Junan Securities)的研究所所长黄燕铭为带领宏观研究团队的经济学家花长春赋词一首,题为《沁园春?国泰宏观之雁鸣长春》。国金证券(Sinolink Securities)社服团队则录制了名为《一首简单的二级狗之歌》的原创歌曲。
Buy-side investors say China’s brokerage industry, which is more crowded and less concentrated than in the west, forces analysts to seek ways to stand out.
买方投资者表示,中国券商业比西方更拥挤、集中度更低,分析师们为了脱颖而出不得不想尽各种办法。
“There are a lot of sellside research securities houses and the viewpoints tend to be fairly homogenous, so the competition to distinguish themselves is intense,” said Xu Xiaoqing, managing director at Preston Asset Management, a Shanghai-based quant fund.
“卖方研究证券机构有很多,而观点往往基本一致,因此让自己显得与众不同的竞争很激烈,”上海量化基金易善资产管理有限公司(Preston Asset Management)的董事总经理徐宵青说。