We study earnings per share (EPS) forecast revision and accuracy of banking analysts around operational risk event announcements in U.S. banks. We find that first announcements of operational risk events are more informative than their settlement announcements. Optimistic banking analysts revise their forecasts downward more aggressively around operational risk disclosures, thereby improving forecast accuracy. Career concerns of banking analysts cause an upward bias in forecast revision and deterioration in forecast accuracy only if the potential employer is a systemically important bank (SIB). We find consistent evidence linking competition among banking analysts with optimistic and inaccurate forecasts, which is consistent with analysts seeking to use inflated forecasts to curry favour and attract businesses to their brokerage house around the time of operational risk disclosures. Global settlement has no favourable impact on analyst forecast accuracy around operational risk event announcements. We find evidence supporting a materiality threshold of $10 million for the informativeness of operational risk event announcements in SIBs. Overall, our results shed light on optimism bias in banking analyst behaviour upon the arrival of unanticipated news.

我们研究了银行分析师围绕美国银行操作风险事件公告的每股收益 (EPS) 预测修订和准确性。我们发现操作风险事件的首次公告比其结算公告提供更多信息。乐观的银行业分析师围绕操作风险披露更积极地下调他们的预测，从而提高预测的准确性。仅当潜在雇主是具有系统重要性的银行 (SIB) 时，银行分析师的职业担忧才会导致预测修订的向上偏差和预测准确性的恶化。我们发现一致的证据将银行分析师之间的竞争与乐观和不准确的预测联系起来，这与分析师试图在操作风险披露时使用夸大的预测来讨好和吸引企业到他们的经纪公司。全球结算对围绕操作风险事件公告的分析师预测准确性没有有利影响。我们发现证据支持 1000 万美元的重要性阈值，用于 SIB 中操作风险事件公告的信息量。总体而言，我们的结果揭示了银行分析师在意外消息到来时的乐观偏见。