Investment bank results are notoriously difficult to predict. One bank analyst comments: “The sales force dealing with investment banks relies on market gossip as much as they do on output from the analysts in a way they would not need to in other sectors.”
For all the fuss there has been about how investment banks operate – in creating risky structures and in failing to separate research for investors from corporate finance work – and about the need for transparency, the fact remains that they are highly secretive about how they earn profits.
