WALL STREET RESEARCH PROVIDER
Financial firm chases cannabis’s pot of gold
Cowen & Co races to feed the large appetite for ways to wager on the marijuana boom
New York — Cowen & Company, the nearly century-old firm founded as a bond brokerage, is racing to become Wall Street’s leading provider of cannabis research, staking a claim to an industry avoided by financial institutions. Analysts at the New York-based company have assembled a trove of data on the burgeoning field of semilegal marijuana. And on Thursday, Cowen was due to host its first investor conference on the controversial topic. The firm is betting it is worth the risk to explore an industry that could generate tens of billions of dollars a year — and intersect with many established sectors. Marijuana is federally illegal in the US, so most institutions and large corporations keep their distance. But eight states and the District of Columbia have voted to allow the drug for recreational use. That means one in five people in the US will live in an area in which it is legal to get high. "Anyone who’s interested in figuring out the future of the consumer needs to be here," said L...
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