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We find empirical evidence that pre-initial public offering (IPO) relationships with commercial banks through lending and investment via their venture capital subsidiaries significantly reduce IPO underpricing in Japan. This findings suggest that a pre-IPO banking relationship certifies the low risk of an IPO firm. Given the fact that institutional investors are a minority in the allocation of IPO stocks in Japan, this effect is expected to come mainly from reducing either the investors' winner's curse or the signaling incentive of IPO firms, rather than from the reduction in information rent for institutional investors participating in the book-building process.

We empirically examine the impact of bank consolidation on bankers' acquisition of soft information about borrowers. Using a dataset of small businesses, we find that bank mergers have a negative impact on soft information acquisition by small banks while those by large banks have no impact. We also find that large banks do not acquire substantial soft information irrespective of merger experiences. Detailed analyses of the post-merger organizational restructuring show that the measures of an increase in organizational complexity upon a merger have a negative and significant impact on soft information acquisition by small banks, while the measures of cost-cut do not have any significant impact. These results imply that the increase in organizational complexity by bank mergers hindered soft information acquisition, which is consistent with Stein's prediction [2002, J. Fin.] on the comparative advantage of simple and flat organizations in acquiring and processing soft information.

The purpose of the present study was to determine reliable parameters for the detection of apoptotic cells for use as a diagnostic marker during the early stage of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in forensic autopsy cases. Myocardial tissues taken from forensic autopsy cases were examined by immunohistochemical and molecular-biological methods using the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP biotin nick end-labelling (TUNEL) and the DNA laddering methods. In cases of AMI with a time period between 2 h from onset to death and 20 h post-mortem time, the nuclei of cardiomyocytes were stained positive with the TUNEL method and DNA fragmentation of myocardial cells was detected by agarose gel electrophoresis. Similar findings were obtained in cases of carbon monoxide (CO) intoxication. However, no apoptotic cells were found in other cases such as methamphetamine (MAP) intoxication, tetrodotoxin intoxication, alcohol intoxication, asphyxia, head injury, heart injury or myocarditis. These findings suggested that it would be possible to apply TUNEL-positive cells as a diagnostic marker during the early stages of AMI.