PCS Research Services, originally formed as Institutional Research Services, was founded in 1982 by Randy Hill with the idea of becoming the leading marketer of independent research on Wall Street. Prior to starting PCS Research Services, Randy Hill sold the Quality of Earnings Report to institutions from 1973 to 1982. Randy began his career at Lynch, Jones, & Ryan where he launched I/B/E/S to the institutional community.
In 1982, the vast majority of Wall Street research was generated by analysts at major investment banks. In the days before “chinese walls” were set up, this lead to inherent conflicts of interest. There always has been and always will be a strong motivation for these banks to produce favorable research reports to support their investment banking clients.

In addition to the bulge bracket investment banks, there were a small, pioneering group of independent analysts publishing investment research. While their research benefited from their independent status, these authors lacked the administrative and sales support of a traditional brokerage house. Randy Hill understood that these independent analysts preferred to focus their efforts on investment analysis, but were continually distracted by the need to market and sell their research services to money managers. These authors needed a central clearing house with an established buy-side client base that could be quickly leveraged to build a subscriber base for their services. In order to retain clients, a dedicated team of institutional salespeople were needed to support the client base. PCS Research Services was uniquely positioned to fill that niche.

As a third party marketer representing a limited number of research services, PCS took great care in selecting the research providers with whom they partnered. Given the overabundance of sell-side research, PCS sought to market only unique, specialized research services focused in specific, underserved corners of the financial markets. The firm now provides 16 unique research services to more than 800 institutional clients.

Today, PCS Research Services is staffed with a dedicated team of external salespeople and junior account executives, as well as a full accounting and administrative division.