Shannon Cowherd, bank analyst at Citigroup [1], raised eyebrows last week when she put out a note to clients estimating that the Royal Bank of Canada faced a whopping $10.2 billion in writedowns. Whew! The Globe and Mail noted that no other analysts was expecting more than $800 million. The bank issued a release saying the analyst had her facts wrong. The next note to clients had a revised estimate, $1.8 billion, based in part on "incremental information." Still high, but in the ballpark. Analysts are still influential, even in this post-Spitzer era. These sorts of gaffes are rare, but they do happen. The sad part is that some IR employee likely took the blame internally.  

For more:
- here's the Globe and Mail article [2]

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