Geelong region survey of business trends 2014

The Deakin Business School and the Geelong Chamber of Commerce undertook a survey of business confidence and industry activity in the Geelong region in 2014. The main objectives of the research were to measure current and future business confidence, activity, and profitability and to provide information relevant to the needs of businesses and industry for planning and other purposes. Information wascollected by an on-line survey of 1,571 businesses with 194 usable responses representing a 12.3% response rate. The findings are relevant to responses frombusinesses registered with the Geelong Chamber of Commerce and the Geelong Central Marketing group. The report contains information about business activity, perceptions about the future of business in Geelong and the barriers that have to be addressed to ensure success

Management earnings forecasts and IPO performance: evidence of a regime change

Companies undertaking initial public offerings (IPOs) in Greece were obliged to include next-year profit forecast in their prospectuses, until the regulation changed in 2001 to voluntary forecasting. Drawing evidence from IPOs issued in the period 1993–2015, this is the first study to investigate the effect of disclosure regime on management earnings forecasts and IPO long-term performance. The findings show mainly positive forecast errors (forecasts are lower than actual earnings) and higher long-term returns during the mandatory period, suggesting that the mandatory disclosure requirement causes issuers to systematically bias profit forecasts downwards as they opt for the safety of accounting conservatism. The mandatory disclosure requirement artificially improves IPO share performance. Overall, our results show that mandatory disclosure of earnings forecasts can impede capital market efficiency once it goes beyond historical financial information to involve compulsory projections of future performance

Do you really want to ask an underwriter how much money you should leave on the table?

This paper analyses whether the owners of companies seeking to list will leave less money on the table if underwriters are employed to price and market the issue. Our findings indicate that limited liability and Industrial company initial public offerings (IPOs) that have used underwriters have left more money on the table than those not employing underwriters. Not only is there a direct cost in employing an underwriter but this study suggests there might also be an indirect cost. We also find that a positive forecast earnings per share yield may be useful in reducing the amount of money left on the table