The changes require firms doing business with it to eliminate links between analysts' compensation and investment banking, and to create a review committee to monitor research recommendations.
A judge's swift and entertaining dismissal this week of lawsuits over bullish research recommendations by Morgan Stanley's "Internet queen", Mary Meeker, is more likely to be the norm.
The firm remains vulnerable to numerous and potentially costly lawsuits from individuals seeking to recover losses they incurred buying stocks based on Merrill's research, recommendations the firm held out as independent of any biases.
Mr. O'Neal, who barely spoke during the meeting, dismissed speculation that the costs of resolving litigation over its research recommendations could cripple the firm or drive it to sell itself to another bank.
A BNP Paribas spokeswoman said the bank's personal issues with Mr. Scotto "resulted from longstanding deficiencies in his performance as a manager and were unrelated to any research recommendations he made".
Mr. Grubman remains the focus of Mr. Spitzer's inquiry into whether he issued positive research recommendations to investors to attract or keep lucrative investment banking relationships with the companies.
"The concerns have been that research recommendations are biased, analyst conflicts undisclosed, their language confusing and their compensation skewed to investment banking," said Marc E. Lackritz, president of the Securities Industry Association, which announced the rules.
Under a cooperative research and development accord signed today, the agency will provide research recommendations and oversight and the cellular group will finance research into the health effects of radio frequency emissions from wireless phones.
Finally, the main policy and research recommendations are presented.
In addition, some new research recommendations for speech enhancement motivated by error concealment are sketched.
Be sure to read the research recommendations with a wary eye.
