For years, sell-side brokerage firms have arranged, for compensation, meetings between managers of publicly-traded corporations and institutional investors. This practice is commonly referred to as "corporate access." Recently, however, corporate access has attracted an increasing amount of attention. According to media reports, as part of its ongoing insider trading crackdown, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has warned investment banks about the need to ensure that such meetings do not result in the improper exchange of privileged information.1 And earlier this year, the Financial Times ran a series of articles on corporate access,2 which reported that many chief executives were unaware that their brokers charged investors, such as hedge fund and mutual fund managers, up to $20,000 for such meetings.3 Shortly thereafter, the FT revealed that the United Kingdom's Financial Services Authority would review whether the practice violates U.K. rules prescribing the acceptable uses of client commissions.4

Given the prohibitions on selective disclosure of material information in the United States and other jurisdictions, regulators are likely to inquire increasingly into what makes these meetings so valuable. Company management, if they are truly unaware that their time is being allocated on the basis of payments to their bankers, might also ask whether the practice is consistent with their bankers' fiduciary duties.

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