Couple key quotes:<p>"As one of the largest payers of trading commissions to Wall Street, BlackRock is a client that brokerage firms want to please to keep those commissions flowing. For a period during 2008 and 2009, the firms participating in an expanded survey received cash based on their results.<p>...One of the company’s survey questions, titled “earnings surprise direction,” asks analysts whether a company’s coming profits “are more likely to surprise on the upside or downside.” Another asks: “Do you think the current consensus earnings forecast” for a specified period “will likely move upwards or downwards?”<p>A more recent question involves takeovers: “How likely is it that the company will be taken over in the next 6 months?”<p>... A 2009 document on the firm’s analyst surveys is even more explicit. “We are trying to front-run recs,” it said, referring to trading ahead of analysts’ recommendations."