Physical/procedural barriers erected to prevent the flow of information within a firm, e.g. corporate finance and investment management. Under SFA rules it is not obligatory to establish Chinese Walls.
Taken to mean organisational barriers between different operations in the same organisation to avoid conflicts of interest, e.g. a professional firm advising two competitors in the same market place.
Procedures enforced within firms to restrict access to certain information and so avoid any awkward conflicts of interest.
Invisible barriers which are meant to keep confident ional information known to one section of an organization from other sections and thus to avoid problems relating to breaches of confidence, insider trading and conflicts of interest.
Communication thresholds built into a large financial institution to avoid conflicts of interest between divisions during the completion of a deal.
A metaphor for the protocol that exists in financial institutions to insulate analysts from pressures from the deal-makers. In theory, equity analysts are supposed to provide impartial information on the companies they analyse. But there is always subtle pressure on analysts to make favourable comments so firms do not take their mergers and acquisitions business to a rival investment bank. The notion of impartial advice to investors took a huge knock in the Wall Street scandals of recent years. Some analysts privately rubbished the internet stocks they covered, but said the opposite in reports for public consumption.
(n.) -- an allusion to the Great Wall of China; this was Marx's generic term for old traditional or feudal barriers to the spread of the market.
Artificial barriers to the flow of information set up in large firms to prevent the movement of sensitive information between departments.