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Long-suffering shareholders of UBS can take comfort that JPMorgan's bank-stock analyst Kian Abouhossein feels their pain. Abouhossein, who is consistently at or near the top of industry rankings of bank analysts, has been an owner of UBS shares while he has touted UBS as his number-one bank-stock pick in recent years and produced price forecasts well above the prevailing market value.
This is not a cynical exercise in pumping a stock by an analyst with skin in the game, however. Instead Abouhossein has held on to stock he picked up while he was employed by UBS until 2000. His current employer, JPMorgan, like other banks, has detailed compliance rules for its analysts. They are not allowed to acquire stock in companies that they cover, or indeed in their specialist sector. If an analyst has an existing holding it can be maintained, but there are rules on when a sale can be executed. Disposal is only allowed when the analyst has a sell order on the stock and during blackout periods when the bank is not putting out coverage of the company.
If Abouhossein wanted to unload...