(Bloomberg) -- As banks start showing their hands on the coming regime for research pricing, Credit Agricole SA's most expensive packages will cost at least 120,000 euros a year ($137,000) and the French firm will ration access to analysts.
The French bank is proposing two levels of service for various research topics -- basic and premium -- with the latter including direct and “ad hoc” access to analysts, according to a pricing document dated May 3 on its website. The top-end packages will be limited to just 20 clients. A press officer for the Paris-based bank said the document is still valid.
“Our client franchise is too large to guarantee senior analyst and strategist access to everyone,” said the document, which was signed by Jean-Francois Paren, head of global markets research. “We expect that after MiFID II, client enquiries will be addressed to a smaller number of research providers.”
The European Union's MiFID II regulations, which will be enforced from Jan. 3, aim to tackle conflicts of interest by requiring asset managers to separate the trading commissions they pay from investment-research fees. As banks work to find a model to sell their research, Credit Agricole's top price is equivalent to the most expensive proposal in an April document circulated by Japan's Nomura Holdings Inc., which quoted 120,000 euros a year.
At Credit Agricole, 120,000 euros or more per year would get clients the premium credit package, which includes macro-economic research; the basic offering costs 60,000 euros. Premium currency and rates packages both start at 100,000 euros. The emerging-market premium offer is quoted as starting at 80,000 euros.
The bank said it developed the fee structure after monitoring how its clients have consumed research since 2007. The pricing document says the first due date to pay for research will come on Feb. 28, after the first two months of the new service.
--With assistance from Tanvir Sandhu
To contact the reporter on this story: Stefania Spezzati in London at sspezzati@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ven Ram at vram1@bloomberg.net, Keith Campbell, Neil Callanan
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