After 35 years, a career change — free at last!
Jerry Epperson -- Furniture Today, February 5, 2007
After 35 years as an investment analyst, I am proud to announce that I am making a career change. For the first time, I will not be making investment recommendations on individual companies. This will allow me to join my partners Jim, Howard, Mike and David in doing more corporate advisory work, while continuing to upgrade our research on the huge issues facing our industry, including import strategies, consolidation, emerging retail trends and the economy.
After the brokerage scandals and abuses of the early 2000s, the Sarbanes-Oxley law put severe restrictions on investment analysts, severely limiting my ability to work with our publicly owned clients.
Mann, Armistead & Epperson works closely with public and private companies on strategic issues. It was not unusual for me to be an "insider" on an upcoming event. It is not illegal to be an "insider," but it is illegal to profit from being an "insider." Over the past 35 years, we have never violated a confidence nor profited from the trust that companies have put in us. It is a cornerstone of our business.
Unfortunately, the abuses of a few have resulted in all analysts being given the same limited information through press releases, conference calls, Web sites and investor meetings. The conference calls often are a rehash of the press release, and the analysts' questions, for the most part, are redundant. Most questions are asked so that others on the call will hear the analysts' name. I find this depressing.
The result is that the investment community gets a superficial glance at our industry, with little attempt to understand how it really works. Many investors will not consider investing in an industry often portrayed as "moving overseas with deflating prices." They miss the opportunities and the complex strategies.
Using our proprietary industry research, we have attempted to educate investors, but it has become self-defeating in a way. Much of the research we do is the only source of this type of information. Furniture companies of all sizes have visited us for years to study the industry and look for opportunities. As an analyst, I could not do this with the public companies, nor could I assist them with mergers, acquisitions, valuations or other transactions.
Today, I am free to work with all our clients, public and private, on these issues.
I am most excited about the ability to do more furniture and bedding research and to work with the great research being done by Furniture/Today, demographers and economists.
The industry today needs the best information possible as it deals with important issues. I hope we can continue to help our industry in new and better ways.
