Leslie Chadwick

The Appraisal of Ordinary Shares by Investment Analysts in the UK and Germany

Abstract This paper reports the findings of a two-country survey of the approaches to and information used by investment analysts. It examines the changes in the ordinary share appraisal approaches adopted by UK analysts over the past decade, and investigates the differences between British and German analysts in share appraisal methods, goals and information sources. The principal findings are that (i) deregulation and the introduction of new technology to the UK market has had little impact on the equity appraisal approach employed by analysts other than the greater reliance placed on personal contact with companies, and (ii) UK analysts are no more ‘short-termist’ than their German counterparts in assessing ordinary shares.