Analysis of The Concept, Function and Effectiveness of Indirect Gatekeepers in Capital Market(A comparative study in Iranian and American law)

The flow of accurate and reliable information is critical to enhance market transparency and efficiency as well as investor protection. However, it is not possible to achieve this merely by requiring the executives to report financial information, and corporate governance should inevitably devise a mechanism to monitor the accuracy of the information contained in financial reports. Therefore, along with the internal control process, parties, known as gatekeepers, have been designed outside the issuer’s organizational structure to evaluate the accuracy of the information disclosed.. In the capital market, there are some gatekeepers who do not perform  gatekeepingfunctions, as a matter of principle, but implicitly verify the accuracy of the issuer’s financial information and provide the basis for investors to have confidence and make informed decisions only while performing their primary duty. These parties are therefore referred to as indirect gatekeepers. Securities analysts, equity underwriters, attorneys and legal advisors are among this group of gatekeepers. This article has attempted to examine the concept, function, and effectiveness of examples of these types of gatekeepers in Iranian and American law. For this purpose, information was collected in the Documentary and library form and then evaluated in a comparative method. The results of the analysis show that because these persons inherently are not gatekeepers, they naturally encounter conflicting situations when performing their primary duties and gatekeeping functions, which weakens their effectiveness in achieving gatekeeping objectives. As a result, requiring certification based on the explicit assurance of the accuracy of the information is one of the most important suggestions that have been made to improve their efficiency and effectiveness. However, in order to better ensure the quality of financial information, the capital market should use, in addition to indirect gatekeepers, other professional persons created in principle to perform gatekeeping functions in the market, known as direct gatekeepers.