Banks play a critical role in corporate governance in many economies around the world. This paper empirically compares the activities of security analysts (i.e., analyst coverage, forecast accuracy and forecast agreement) between firms with and without close working relationships with their banks in order to gain insights into how bank-firm relationships affect the information environments for capital market investors. Close bank-firm relationships signal the banks' positive evaluation of the firms because the banks screen the firms before entering or extending the relationships. Further, during the relationships, the banks monitor these firms. Thus, capital market investors are less motivated to scrutinize the firms, thereby demand less information. Investigating Japanese firms, we document that security analysts' forecasts are less accurate and less agreed (i.e., more dispersed) for the firms with long-established relationships with banks. Likewise, analyst coverage, forecast accuracy and forecast agreement are all lower for the firms with a larger amount of loans (i.e., private debt). The associations between bank-firm relationships and security analyst activities hold after controlling for the potential correlated variables (i.e., capital market financing, performance volatility, financial distress, cross-holding). JEL Classification: M41; G21; G32

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Résumé. Cet article a pour objet de décrire le rôle du patron de composition pour l'organisation catégorielle des composés binominaux relationnel. Parmi ce type de composés, nous nous intéressons en particulier aux [espace + N2], [rayon + N2] et [coin + N2], où chaque N1 donne lieu à une segmentation spatiale. L'analyse est basée sur un échantillon de 1 083 composés différents collectés par l'auteur. Après un bref aperçu des travaux antérieurs sur la composition binominale relationnelle, nous analyserons la tendance et la relation sémantique entre les constituants des composés. Nous examinerons ensuite la fonction souscatégorisante des patrons comme [espace + N2], ainsi que la différence de niveau de référence entre le N1 et le N2.Abstract. Is espace papeterie not an (ordinary) stationery shop ? This article aims to describe the role of the pattern of compounding for a categorical organization of relational binominal compounds. We will focus on the following patterns in particular : [espace + N2], [rayon + N2] and [coin + N2], in which each N1 may concern a spatial segmentation. The analysis is based on 1 083 compounds collected by the author. After a brief overview of the literature on relational binominal compounds, we investigate the combination and the internal semantic relation of the constituents of this type of compounds. In the next part, we argue the function of the compound pattern such as [espace + N2], with respect to the construction of a categorical network.

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