Conflicts of Interest
The owner of Buysiders.com is affiliated with an investment firm that invests in securities and other investments on behalf of its clients. Accordingly, there may be conflicts involved in posting information on this site that may be relevant to the investment portfolios managed our affiliate. We have put in place a number of policies and procedures to minimize the conflicts between postings on Buysiders.com and the investment management activities of our affiliate. In general, any such conflicts will be resolved in favour of our affiliate’s clients. Highlights of our policies and procedures include:
- If we change our mind about a company, we will not necessarily post an item which says so. While we systematically review our cases internally and are very keen on learning from the mistakes we inevitably make, we may not always share this with readers. This will generally be due to time constraints and lack of resources to revisit previous postings. You should note however that like all other investors, we change our minds about companies from time to time.
- Positive stories and views may be posted on Buysiders.com about a particular company at the same time as our affiliated investment manager is selling or recommending the sale of the company’s securities. The views we post on Buysiders.com will reflect our views at the time of the relevant posting. However there are many factors besides a company’s fundamental outlook that determine whether our affiliated manager may buy or sell a particular security, including, for example, concentration limits and other investment guidelines agreed with clients which may require the sale of a particular security to prevent a client’s portfolio being exposed to that security in excess of a certain amount, or the cash requirements of a client, which may require a sale of a security to generate cash, notwithstanding that the security is viewed as a good investment by our affiliated manager. These and other considerations may cause our affiliated manager to sell a security at a time when a positive posting about the same security appears on Buysiders.com.
Stories and articles may be posted on this site that relate to companies which are not invested in by our affiliated manager. There are a number of reasons why this may be the case, including because of the investment strategy that has been agreed with its clients, which may not contemplate all the investments we discuss on this site. Alternatively, because of concentration limits and other investment guidelines like the ones we describe above and because of its clients’ cash constraints, our affiliated investment manager may not be in a position to invest on behalf of its clients in investments that are positively reviewed in this site.
What all users of this site need to be aware of is that there may be times where the investment activities of our affiliated investment manager may be completely the opposite to what we say on this site.
Some of the companies we write about or their owners and managers may be investors in funds managed by our affiliated manager. Investors in these funds may be banks, bank holding companies, and non-bank financial services companies. There may be an occasion where we post an article about a fund investor—and not disclose that fact.
At Buysiders.com, we know we have a responsibility to our readers, just as our investment manager has responsibilities to its clients. We work hard to manage those responsibilities carefully. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us.
