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| Business Words in the News
Friday 12 April 2002
Vocabulary from the business news. Listen to and read the report then find explanations of difficult words below.
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Merrill Lynch investment troubles
Summary: The Attorney General of New York is accusing leading investment banks of advising investors to buy stocks in companies which they privately thought were not worth keeping. This report from Stephen Evans:
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| | The News | |
| | | The firms being investigated read like a who's who of Wall Street and the City of London. Merrill Lynch, for example, is accused of telling those it advised to buy shares in a company that its internal emails show it was privately describing as 'a heap of junk' - not to mention much cruder terms.
Merrill Lynch says its emails have been taken out of context by New York's attorney general Eliot Spitzer. He, though, defended his investigation, saying the problem was that analysts had to keep companies sweet by keeping their share price high in order to get their business for the bank they worked for:
(Eliot Spitzer) “Look, analysts themselves say repeatedly - and in hundreds of e-mails that we do not even bother to include in the report - the analysts say 'we are subservient to investment banking.' We are told that we have to give affirmative ratings because these are investment banking clients.”
Stephen Evans, BBC
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| | The Words
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| | | investigated
looking carefully at all the details in order to find out what has happened
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| | | a who's who
a list of the most famous and important people or businesses in a particular field
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| | | a heap of junk
something that is useless and has no value (very informal US English)
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| | | cruder terms
ruder, offensive language
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| | | out of context
if something you say or write is taken out of context, it is only considered on its own and any background information of when or why it was written or said is ignored
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| | | analysts
experts who carefully study the facts about something and then give their opinions
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| | | to keep companies sweet
to do something to please the companies so that they will not be dissatisfied with you
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| | | we do not even bother
if you don’t bother to do something, then you don’t do it because you don’t think it is necessary
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| | | subservient
if you are subservient, you do whatever someone wants you to do without question. It is as if you are their servant
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| | | affirmative ratings
a positive opinion which financial experts give about shares, to say that they are valuable and worth buying
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