Primary Market Design: Direct Mechanisms and Markets

We develop a model that allows for the coexistence of bookbuilding and when-issued trading. We show that, due to interactions between these two processes, allowing for when-issued trading is for the most part beneficial for issuers. When-issued trading may interfere with information gathering thorough bookbuilding, in the case that informative bookbuilding is not needed. However, informative bookbuilding may be a prerequisite for the when-issued market to function. In this case the existence of a liquid when-issued market will not interfere with information gathering through bookbuilding, and will strictly benefit the issuer.Initial public offerings, Information gathering mechanisms, When-issued trading

Investor Sentiment and Pre-Issue Markets

What role do sentiment investors play in the pricing of newly listed stocks? We derive conditions under which we can distinguish between sentiment and rational pricing behavior and test for the rationality of small investors’ demand for new stock issues using data from pre-issue (or ‘grey’) markets in Europe. Under sentiment, the model predicts asymmetric relations between the prices at which small investors trade new stock issues in the grey market and i) the subsequent issue price set by the investment bank, ii) prices in the early after-market, and iii) the degree of stock price reversal in the long run. Our empirical results suggest that sentiment demand is present and influences the pricing of newly listed firms

Who benefits from IPO underpricing? Evidence form hybrid bookbuilding offerings

This paper uses a unique sample of 175 Spanish equity offerings from 1985 to 2002 to test who benefits from IPO underpricing and why. Institutions receive nearly 75% of the profits in underpriced issues, while they have to bear only 56% of the losses in overpriced offerings. Superior information regarding first day underpricing cannot completely explain the institutional abnormal profits. Underwriters are better informed about the companies they take public, and use that information to favor their long term clients. The preferential treatment of institutional investors, however, does not come at the expense of retail investors. Retail investors earn positive profits from participating in the new issues market. The driving factor behind the relative retail large allocation in overpriced issues when compared to underpriced offerings is not the underwriter allocation bias in favor of institutional investors. Retail investors subscribe more heavily to underpriced issues, consistent with individuals being partially informed. JEL Classification: G32, G24Allocations, Initial Public Offerings, Retail Investors, Winner's Curse

The Underpricing of Initial Public Offerings in Imperial Germany, 1870-1896

In this article, we evaluate underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) at the Berlin Stock Exchange between 1870 and 1896. In contrast to modern data, first day returns were extraordinary low and averaged less than five percent, even during the speculative period of the early 1870s. Moreover, standard underpricing theories based on asymmetric information, signalling mechanisms, or litigation risk cannot explain underpricing. In contrast to modern markets, the past market return had a negative influence on initial returns. Finally, we show that cash-flow relevant information contained in the corporate charter were readily factored in the first market price. Thus, the historical capital market differed from today’s market, but seems to have been efficient.Initial public offerings, Financial history, Germany pre-1913

ON THE JOURNEY OF OVERSEAS LISTING: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS ON CHINESE ENTERPRISES TO LIST ON THE HONG KONG STOCK EXCHANGE

The thesis, empirically investigates issues pertinent to the partial privatization of Chinese initial public offerings at home and abroad, especially on issues relating to Chinese enterprises‘ seeking overseas listings. Based on the asymmetric information hypotheses on initial public offerings (IPOs) and cross-border flotation literature, the proposed research includes both short-run and long-run methods, and covers the entire offering process of Chinese firms‘ going public in overseas markets. The investigation begins with an overview of Hong Kong‘s and China mainland‘s financial markets in Chapter II. The limitation of development in the domestic capital market, the desire of bringing Chinese SOEs into the international market, and the appropriate conditions in Hong Kong encourage Chinese companies to issue new shares in Hong Kong. Chapter III provides a comparative analysis on underpricing of Chinese and non-Chinese firms in Hong Kong, in order to discover the influence of asymmetric information on overseas listing and the correspondent offering strategies of Chinese companies and their underwriters. They are normally underwritten by highly reputable bankers, and the overwhelming majority of Chinese firms went public via bookbuilding when the market is on an optimal evaluation base. The average price range seems to be relatively conservative for promoting subscription demands. The potential loss can be partially mitigated by a positive price revision and carefully market timing. Chapter IV focuses on information disclosure and earnings forecasting accuracy in IPO prospectuses with their subsequent effects on aftermarket performance, since the accuracy of information becomes important in influencing IPOs offerings and after-market performance. The IPO profit forecasts errors represent a pessimistic bias on average, but it can be a crucial information resource for their investment decisions. The magnitude of forecasting errors is higher for China-related companies than local shares, indicating a higher asymmetric information level. The forecasts are not rational in the sense that managers correctly incorporate all available information, especially historical profits, in their forecasting. Also, the magnitude of forecasting errors can systematically affect the one-year trading performance. Due to the initial overvaluation, firms with higher initial returns actually underperform in the long run. And Chapter V, in order to discover the ultimate meanings and motives of such overseas listing, directly questions why and how the Chinese government takes so many many state-owned enterprises (SOEs) public in the international market. It concludes Chinese SOEs‘ overseas primary listing takes on the formidable tasks of macroeconomic partial privatization, home market protection, and domestic infantile market development. Large and ‗healthy‘ state-owned enterprises (SOEs) within the government‘s supporting industries are more likely to issue their shares on foreign, open, and well-developed stock exchanges when the target market is in good time of pricing and offering, in order to raise more capital, to operate under international standards, to send a positive signal of Chinese economic reform, and to indirectly protect the development of domestic financial market. Consequently, the partial privatization through an overseas primary listing approach is indeed a feasible way to facilitate domestic financial market growth, particularly for countries with a large economy but lack of a well-developed home capital market and a mature trading platform

Asymmetric Price Adjustment: Are IPO Prices too "Sticky"?

The study of IPO mispricing is salient because it raises important questions concerning market efficiency and the existence of systematic stock patterns that can be employed by investors to generate excess market returns. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the informational efficiency of IPO market prices with respect to the first 3 trading day’s return and to examine the effect of varying investor sentiment on this information efficiency.  Under traditional definitions of market efficiency, asset prices, including IPO prices should fully reflect all available and relevant information (Fama 1970).  An increasing body of empirical evidence, however, suggests that IPO prices are not efficient as evidenced both in the short run and the long run.  The speed of incorporation of new information into stock prices is critical to many central issues in financial research, such as market efficiency, arbitrage, and market structure. This paper analyzes the speed of price adjustment to information events for IPOs. The setting of the immediate aftermarket presents an opportunity to investigate the issue when little or no trading history exists. In such a setting, investors are more exposed to new information because they cannot observe the stock price behavior or the reactions to previous information signals

A Fully-Rational Liquidity-Based Theory of IPO Underpricing and Underperformance

I present a fully-rational symmetric-information model of an IPO, as well as a dynamic imperfectly competitive model of the aftermarket trading that follows. The model helps explain why IPO share allocations favor large institutional investors. It also helps to explain IPO underpricing, and underperformance, and the large fees charged by underwriters. The critical assumption in the model is that underwriters need to sell a fixed number of shares at the IPO or soon thereafter in the aftermarket, but they want to avoid selling in the aftermarket because there are some aftermarket investors who have market power and can affect the prices received by the underwriter. To maximize revenue and avoid unnecessary aftermarket sales, the underwriter distorts share allocations toward those those investors who have market power, and he sets the offer price at the IPO below the aftermarket price that will prevail shortly after the IPO. In the aftermarket model, I show that there are share allocations that can generate arbitrarily high levels of return underperformance for very long periods of time. In some simulations, the distorted share allocations at the IPO generate return underperformance that persists for more than one year. The underwriter can dilute investor's market power by participating for longer periods of time in the aftermarket. By doing so, he sometimes substantially increase the revenue that is raised by the IPO issuerIPO, Asset Pricing, Market Microstructure, Liquidity

Institutional Allocation In Initial Public Offerings: Empirical Evidence

We analyze institutional allocation in initial public offerings (IPOs) using a new dataset of US offerings between 1997 and 1998. We document a positive relationship between institutional allocation and day one IPO returns. This is partly explained by the practice of giving institutions more shares in IPOs with strong pre-market demand, consistent with book-building theories. However, institutional allocation also contains private information about first-day IPO returns not reflected in pre-market demand and other public information. Our evidence supports book-building theories of IPO underpricing, but suggests that institutional allocation in underpriced issues is in excess of that explained by book-building alone.

A Review of IPO Activity, Pricing, and Allocations

We review the theory and evidence on IPO activity: why firms go public, why they reward first-day investors with considerable underpricing, and how IPOs perform in the long run. Our perspective on the literature is three-fold: First, we believe that many IPO phenomena are not stationary. Second, we believe research into share allocation issues is the most promising area of research in IPOs at the moment. Third, we argue that asymmetric information is not the primary driver of many IPO phenomena. Instead, we believe future progress in the literature will come from non-rational and agency conflict explanations. We describe some promising such alternatives.

The Dutch Auction Myth

The initial public offering process is under assault. Critics of this process have woven a complex set of interconnected objections to the orthodox method for conducting IPOs, pricing of shares, and allocating them to preferred investors. These critics instead point to online auctions as an alternative IPO method that can provide more equitable access, efficient prices, and egalitarian allocations. These claims rest on Google’s recent IPO and W.R. Hambrecht + Co.’s OpenIPO mechanism, conventionally regarded as impure variants of what is known as a descending-bid or Dutch auction (Dutch IPO). This article assesses the empirical and theoretical case for Dutch IPOs. Google’s IPO featured peculiarities that delimit its utility as a case study. Instead this article novelly presents underpricing data on all OpenIPOs, as well as data about a French variant known as the Mise en Vente. The results fail to vindicate Dutch IPO supporters’ primary claims, which perilously rely upon observations from the anomalous two-year internet bubble period. Moreover, economic and financial analyses of Dutch IPOs reveal ways in which they may be susceptible to fraud that bookbuilding is not. Ultimately, claims of the Dutch IPO\u27s superiority over bookbuilding at best are unproven and at worst fail to appreciate certain risks