Not stating an opinion either way, but describing what the lawsuit is actually about here. Morgan Stanley's analyst, Scott Devitt, adjusted their estimates and they then gave that information to high-end MS customers, but not to the public. The question is whether or not MS has a responsibility as an underwriter to disclose that information to an audience broader than its own clients as material information about the company, or if they had any additional material information about the company that led them to cut that estimate.
"The question is whether or not MS has a responsibility as an underwriter to disclose that information to an audience broader than its own clients"
That is an interesting question and will be a good suit to watch. If the finding is that there was a responsibility to broadly disseminate such information, it will also be interesting to see what the impact is to the financial advisory industry.
What concerns me more than public dissemination of analysis would be the instance of them only disseminating negative information to a select group of their own clients, while leaving their other mom and pop clients in the dark.
That would seem to be a clear violation of fiduciary duty, and if it turns out that's what they did, I hope they get the book thrown at them.
They don't, there are chinese walls in between the analysis and trading groups. Research is a product most banks sell, if you don't purchase it, you don't get it.
More: http://dealbreaker.com/2012/05/even-the-underwriters-were-si...