SLI private meeting notes and fund records (restricted access)

Confidential single-counterparty data: not exercised here

This is confidential internal data from a single asset manager (Standard Life Investments / abrdn). It is not for sale, not publicly downloadable, and not re-obtainable without the same agreement: it carries no provenance badge because there is no access path we can run here. Researchers obtained it under a confidential agreement with the firm. The page documents what the data is and the gotchas; treat it as unverified. This is the honest grade under the institute’s Verified discipline.

The SLI data is the internal record of one large asset manager: notes from private meetings between the manager’s analysts and the companies it invests in, internal analyst ratings and Buy/Hold/Sell recommendations, fund holdings, and daily trades. The meeting notes are the distinguishing asset, because they capture private-access information flow that is otherwise unobservable. A paper we distill uses it: Becht, Franks & Wagner use 4,700 SLI meeting notes (with attendee info and analyst ratings), daily fund holdings and trades across roughly 40 to 50 funds covering FTSE All-Share stocks (2007 to 2015), and internal recommendations to study the value of private access to portfolio firms.

• Cost: not for sale. Confidential single-counterparty data.
• Source: Standard Life Investments / abrdn (one asset manager).
• Coverage: this manager’s own meetings, ratings, holdings, and trades over the sample window, focused on its UK (FTSE All-Share) investment universe.

Access (restricted)

• No public download and no resale. The records are the firm’s confidential internal documents; they cannot be purchased or redistributed.
• Through a confidential agreement with the firm. Access required a research agreement. There is no standing way for a third party to reach the same data.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

These are the failure modes to expect; they are documented, not verified here.

• One manager is not the industry. The notes, ratings, and trades reflect a single firm’s process, universe, and house style; external validity to other managers is limited. Do not generalize the value of access from one firm.
• Meeting notes are unstructured and analyst-written. Notes vary in length, detail, and candor by author and over time; text measures (tone, content) inherit that heterogeneity. Validate any text classification against the raw notes.
• Which meetings are recorded is selective. A note exists when the analyst held and logged a meeting; absence is not evidence of no contact, and meeting selection is endogenous to interest in the stock. Treat note presence as a choice.
• Holdings and trades need careful alignment to notes. Linking a meeting to subsequent trades requires precise timestamps and a position panel; the 10-million-plus fund-stock-day structure demands clustering. Align timing deliberately.
• MNPI and disclosure constraints. The notes can contain material non-public information; the firm’s sharing is bounded and results are constrained accordingly. Respect the disclosure limits in what is reported.
• Not redistributable. Results can be reported but the microdata cannot be shared and cannot be re-pulled by others. Plan for non-reproducibility of the raw inputs.

Citation

Cite the source and arrangement, e.g.: SLI private-meeting notes and fund records (Standard Life Investments / abrdn), confidential; used under agreement, YYYY-MM-DD. State the sample window, the note count, and the fund universe.