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This is the first study examining the key role played by venture capital and private equity (VCPE) firms in the private debt market. Private debt funds invest in companies owned (sponsored) by VCPEs and in other companies without VCPE sponsors. Using novel data, we find that private debt without VCPE sponsors generates a premium. Further analysis shows that this sponsorless premium compensates for higher risk and costs of risk mitigation as sponsorless lenders adopt a more hands-on approach emulating VCPE sponsors’ roles. Our results are robust and provide important lessons for investors and investee firms in private debt, venture lending, and VCPE. This paper was accepted by Victoria Ivashina, finance. Supplemental Material: The data files and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4664 .

This paper examines the benefits of syndicating with foreign venture capital (VC) firms for domestic VC firms in emerging markets. We find that the VC firms that are domestic to their invested companies and previously syndicated with foreign partners invest proportionately more frequently in riskier ventures. After gaining syndication experience with foreign VC firms, a larger number of their portfolio companies are successfully exited, thereby suggesting improved performance. We hypothesize that this outcome is due to the organizational learning effects. While the previous research has shown benefits for foreign VC firms, our results show that domestic VC firms also benefit from international syndication through improved investments.

This study is set against the background of the growing internationalization of venture capital (VC) investing and is the first global comparison of the returns generated by individual domestic and cross-border deals. We examine investments worldwide during 1971 to 2009 and find that cross-border investments significantly underperform compared with equivalent domestic investments. Returns are negatively affected by geographic distances, cultural disparities, and institutional differences between the home and host countries. Returns on cross-border and domestic deals also decline after the late 1990s. International portfolio diversification and the saturation of domestic markets may explain why VC investors make cross-border investments despite poor expected returns.

Using data on the federal declaration of disasters in contiguous U.S. counties and the presence of brick and mortar bank branches in each county, we show that a greater presence of bank branches reduces the disasters’ impairment on the number of employees, total annual payroll, and the number of establishments in the local business sector. The presence of bank branches also mitigates the disastrous impact on overall local employment and personal wealth. Our findings demonstrate that the physical presence of banking service enhances the resilience of a local economy to disasters significantly, in line with the findings of the previous literature that banks respond to the up rise in credit demand in disaster-affected areas.

Recent U.S. policy encourages anchor investments to facilitate initial public offerings (IPOs) and increase companies' access to external finance. As access to external funds relies on stocks remaining listed, we study anchor investors' impact on how long IPOs stay listed. We examine two types of anchor investors in Hong Kong: strategic and cornerstone investors, that are similar to U.S. anchor investors, but show varying levels of commitment to the IPO. We find that IPOs backed by more committed investors, with longer post-IPO commitments (lockups), stay listed longer. This suggests that the success of U.S. policies may require investors' commitment.

We examine the use of warrants as a part of underwriter compensation in IPOs listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. Our results show that, though warrant-issuing IPO firms are riskier, they are usually underwritten by reputable underwriters. Firms that are cash constrained at the time of their IPO are more likely to use warrants. Both market volatility and hot issue markets increase the likelihood of firms issuing warrants. We also find that warrant issuers are able to minimise their total costs of going public, even under a very light regulatory setting with regards non-cash compensation. They incur actual costs of 29.1%, but would have incurred greater costs of 33.8% had they not issued warrants to their underwriters. Overall, our results support the cost minimisation explanation of the use of warrants by UK IPO firms.

We show that public suppliers extend more trade credit than their private counterparts. The impact of stock market listing on accounts receivable is more pronounced among firms that are financially more constrained or more reliant on external finance. Moreover, firms significantly increase their trade credit provision following equity issuances in stock exchanges. These results are consistent with the argument that stock market listing status improves firms' access to external sources of financing, especially equity capital, thus enhancing their ability to offer more trade credit to customers.

This paper examines the benefits to venture capital firms of their officers holding directorships in mature public companies in terms of fundraising and investment performance. Our empirical results show that venture capital firms raise more funds, set higher fund-raising targets, and are more likely to successfully exit their investments post-appointment of their officers to boards of directors of S&P 1500 companies. Directorship status in mature public firms provides venture capital firms with enhanced networks, visibility, and credibility, all of which facilitate their fundraising activities. In addition, the knowledge, expertise, and experience acquired through holding directorships in mature public firms are beneficial for their portfolio companies, as measured by the likelihood of successful exits.

We investigate loan price in mergers and acquisitions (M&As), using hand-matched loan information for a sample of 512 U.S. M&A transactions. We find the relative size of a deal constitutes a prominent determinant of the loan price measured by the all-in spread drawn (AISD). This result is robust to several specifications that address endogeneity concerns. Cross-sectional analyses show that aggravated credit risk and information uncertainty after M&A go some way towards explaining lenders' concerns over large relative deal size. Further analysis demonstrates higher AISD is associated with lower post-transaction performance, indicating loan price factors in the risk of poor post-transaction performance correctly.

The dimensions that comprise the sustainable well-being include a product market that is efficient and capable, on the one hand, to assign to the object exchanged a price representative of its actual value, determined by the encounter between supply and demand; and, second, to allocate the resources available to maximize the satisfaction of operators in the market. In essence, the attainment of sustainable well-being has to pass through the creation of a market for agricultural commodities as "sustainable" in the sense of place which would create the conditions to give satisfaction to those who work. Le dimensioni in cui si articola il benessere sostenibile includono un mercato dei prodotti efficiente e cioe capace, da un lato, di assegnare all’oggetto scambiato un prezzo rappresentativo del suo effettivo valore, determinato dall’incontro tra la domanda e l’offerta; e, dall’altro, di allocare le risorse disponibili in modo da massimizzare la soddisfazione degli operatori del mercato stesso. In sostanza, il raggiungimento di un benessere sostenibile deve necessariamente passare per la creazione di un mercato delle commodity agricole altrettanto "sostenibile", nel senso di luogo atto a creare le condizioni per dare soddisfazione a chi vi opera.

This paper analyses whether the extreme underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) in China has been alleviated by the split-share structure reform in 2005. As an external policy shock to IPO firms, this Reform was designed to convert non-tradable shares into tradable shares, with the potentials to restore the distorted supply–demand relationship of newly issued shares and reduce the information asymmetry in Chinese stock market. Analysing a sample of IPOs in China from 2000 to 2011, we find that the split-share structure reform significantly reduced the magnitude of IPO underpricing since 2005. It had different impacts on the IPO shares issued by state-owned enterprise (SOEs) and non-SOEs. While IPO shares issued by SOEs and non-SOEs had similar underpricing rates before the Reform, non-SOE IPOs show lower underpricing than those of SOEs after the Reform. Furthermore, compared with IPOs issued by SOEs controlled by the central government, those issued by local governments controlled SOEs are more un...

This paper examines differences in the use of trade credit by publicly listed firms and their privately held counterparts. We show that public firms maintain a significantly lower level of trade credit than private firms. This finding is consistent with the argument that public firms rely less on supplier financing because of their greater access to cheaper and less risky sources of external capital. We further find that while public and private firms actively seek to adjust toward their optimal trade credit levels, the former firms experience faster adjustment. The recent financial crisis had differential effects on the trade credit ratios of public and private firms.

This paper examines the benefits to local venture capital (VC) firms of syndicating with foreign partners. We find that post-syndication, local VC firms change their investment behavior from investing in low risky sectors to high risky sectors. Further, a larger number of their portfolio companies are successfully exited, suggesting improved performance. We conjecture that this outcome is due to learning effects between local and foreign VC firms. We find that the learning process for local VC firms is substantial when their foreign partner is either a North American or European VC firm. Our results show that the benefits of cross-border VC syndications between local and foreign VC firms are mutual.

We study how investors respond to ‘superficial’ mutual-fund name changes that occur for no fundamental reasons. We find that such name changes remain widespread even after regulation to curb potentially misleading name changes (SEC Rule 35d-1). Superficial changes are more widespread than previously studied ‘misleading’ changes that are not accompanied by corresponding portfolio adjustments reflecting the investment style suggested by the new name. Superficial changes appear to be driven by managerial incentives. Investors react to superficial changes with increased fund flows but appear to gain no benefit through improved performance or lower fees. On the contrary, name-change funds underperform as a group. Our findings highlight inefficiencies in the mutual-fund market and hold important implications for the stakeholders involved.

India has the unique distinction of being the only country that releases information on the IPO bookbuilding process live to investors. Against this backdrop, we investigate the role this mechanism plays in generating investor interest during the bookbuilding process and the subsequent performance of IPOs in the immediate aftermarket. We show that, to retail investors, institutional bids in the early days of the bookbuilding process offer a coherent signal about the quality of the IPO. IPOs with high levels of institutional demand in the early days of the book also see high levels of bids from retail investors in the later days of the book. Large subscriptions have a strong positive effect on initial returns. Known certification mechanisms, such as the reputation of the sponsor, VC affiliation and IPO grading, are of limited importance in the Indian IPO market.

Venture capital (VC) cross-border syndication has increased significantly in recent years. This study examines the risk and returns of investments of US–European cross-border syndicates in US portfolio companies. We use a large sample of investments across four financing stages, and highlight several noteworthy differences between cross-border syndicates and previous US-only evidence. By comparison, US–European syndicates are larger than US-only syndicates, involve younger VCs, and focus more on later financing stages. Controlling for sample selection bias caused by the endogenous choices of exit route and exit timing, we examine the risk and returns of investments backed by cross-border syndicates. Consistent with evidence from US-only syndicates, alpha and beta decrease monotonically from the earliest (start-up) stage to the later stages of financing.

This paper investigates the effect of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) on the relation between institutional ownership (IO) and firm innovation. We find that US firms investing in innovation attract more institutional capital post-SOX. Prior literature identifies two SOX effects on the average US firm that could drive this relation, that is, a decreased level of information asymmetry (direct effect) and the consequent increased market liquidity (indirect effect). Our findings overwhelmingly support the direct effect. In particular, we find that the positive relation between IO and innovation post-SOX is mainly driven by passive and dedicated institutional investors. These investors benefit greatly from a reduction in the firm's information asymmetry but receive little gain from improvements in market liquidity, given their long-term trading horizon. Our results are robust to different model specifications, including difference-in-differences tests, which alleviate concerns about the impact of confounding effe...

We investigate the effect of initial public offerings (IPOs) on the evolution of debt maturity by tracking a sample of US firms that went public over the period 1998–2011. Our findings reveal a significant and permanent increase in debt maturity post-IPO. The short-term debt ratio drops by nearly a fifth in the first 2 years after the IPO. These findings are economically significant and robust to controlling for the endogeneity in the listing decision. However, the lengthening of the post-IPO debt maturity is only evident in small, high-growth, and highly levered firms. This finding lends greater support to asymmetric information models than theories based on the agency costs of debt. There is some support for the argument based on the agency costs of equity as the IPO effect on debt maturity is only significant for firms with a high dilution ratio. Finally, the IPO effect varies with macroeconomic conditions as the increase in debt maturity post-IPO was most pronounced during the recent financial crisis of 2007–2008.

We use India's unique regulatory design to test sentiment-based models of IPO initial returns. Using a sample of 362 Indian offerings from 2003 to 2014, we find that the traditional measure of IPO underpricing averages 23%. We decompose the traditional underpricing measure into two components: one related to voluntary underpricing by the underwriter and the other component related to the IPO's first-day trading activity. We find minimal levels of voluntary underpricing. However, initial returns on the first day average 14% and are primarily driven by the unmet demand of non-institutional investor groups. Overall, our results support sentiment-based models of IPO initial returns.

We examine the determinants of an IPO firm's decision to trade on a when-issued market and find that better quality firms are more likely to trade on this market. Our ‘what-if’ analysis shows that for companies that choose to have when-issued trading, the actual offer price is almost 26% higher than it would have been had these firms chosen not to trade on this market. We interpret this higher offer price as a ‘rent’ that investors pay to acquire shares of such companies. We also show that the informational accuracy of the UK when-issued market is better than that of continental European when-issued markets.

Against the backdrop of a severe financial crisis and extensive restructuring of the financial sector, we investigate the evolution and determinants of connections between firms and banks, and the impact of bank connections on corporate investment. Our study examines Thai non-financial companies during 1995–2000, a period straddling the East Asian Financial Crisis of 1997–1998. Before the crisis, bank-connections are common and associated with significantly lower sensitivity of corporate investment to internal cash flow. After the crisis, and following substantial changes in bank ownership and governance due to financial-sector reforms and restructuring, far fewer firms are bank-connected, connections no longer affect investment–cash flow sensitivity, and investment decisions are more efficient in general.

We examine IPO survival in a ?reputational? market, the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), where principle-based regulation pivots on the role of a regulatory agent, the nominated advisor (Nomad) to the IPO company. We find that Nomad reputation has a significant impact on IPO survival. IPOs backed by reputable Nomads survive longer (by about two years) than those backed by other Nomads. We also find that survival rates of AIM IPOs are broadly comparable to those of North American IPOs. While these results are of obvious interest to various stakeholders of AIM firms, they also provide important lessons for market places modeled on AIM including the upper-tier of the U.S. over-the-counter market (OTCQX), Italy?s AIM Italia, and Japan?s Tokyo AIM.

PurposeThe aim of the paper is to study the long‐run under‐performance of UK initial public offerings (IPOs) by relating it to the pre‐IPO financial performance of the firm as well as the managerial decisions taken before the IPO.Design/methodology/approachThe three‐year share returns of UK IPOs is studied using various methodologies such as buy and hold returns, cumulative abnormal returns and Fama and French three‐factor returns.FindingsIt was found that the percentage of equity issued and the degree of multinationality of a firm are the key predictors of its performance after the IPO. It is also found that small firms behave differently from large firms and suffer from worse long‐run performance than large firms.Research limitations/implicationsThere is a great need for future research to focus on ownership structure and long‐run returns. Further, a focus on the level of debt and venture capital financing in the pre‐IPO period may also uncover important relationships with the long‐run performance of a firm.Practical implicationsThe results obtained from this study provide important information for the prospective long term investors in new issues. While pre‐IPO performance of a firm cannot predict the post‐IPO performance with certainty, nevertheless the results of this study suggest that long‐term investors should show caution while deciding on long term investment in IPO firms.Originality/valueThe paper explains the post‐IPO underperformance of firms by relating it to the pre‐IPO managerial decisions made in the firm. It also documents the role of multinationality in explaining long run underperformance.

This paper examines exits of UK venture capital backers (VCs) from portfolio companies around the world. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are the most frequently used exit route for all investments, both in the UK and abroad. Exit through M&A is particularly common for investments in the UK while the probability of an exit through an initial public offering (IPO) is substantially lower for investments made in the UK than abroad. We are able to explain these country differences in terms of variations in the characteristics of VCs, portfolio companies, legal systems and market conditions. Portfolio companies backed by experienced VCs have high probabilities of exits through M&A or IPO. A successful exit is more likely when a VC syndicate includes an experienced member. The likelihood of a successful exit through M&A, IPO or management buyouts is high in countries with, and at times of, high stock market liquidity. Legal systems that provide more investor protection facilitate exits through IPO or M&A.

We examine the determinants of an IPO firm’s choice to trade on a when-issued market and if the decision to trade on this market has any impact on the pricing of IPO shares. We find that companies that are larger, less risky, have higher future growth opportunities and are underwritten by reputable underwriters are more likely to choose to trade on the when-issued market. Our ‘what-if’ analysis shows that the decision to have a when-issued market affects the setting of the offer price. For companies that have when-issued trading, the actual offer price is 25% higher than it it would have been had these firms not had a when-issued market. We interpret this higher offer price as a ‘rent’ that investors pay to acquire shares of such companies. Interestingly this rent is paid mostly in those IPOs where retail investors are allowed to participate in the offer. When-issued market appears to be highly informative for investors and has a positive impact on the trading volume on the first day of unconditional trading.

We examine the impact of the allocation of initial public offerings (IPOs) to specific investor groups on post-IPO performance in terms of how long an IPO remains listed. We focus on the Hong Kong IPO market, where detailed data on share allocation are publicly available. In this context, we assess the roles of so-called cornerstone and strategic investors in IPOs, who agree with the issuers a specified investment in the IPO and enter into lock-up periods. We find that the presence, number and lock-up periods of strategic investors, and the prevalence of foreign strategic investors, significantly increase IPO survival (delay the time to delisting). By contrast, the impact of cornerstone investors is at best marginally significant. Our results are robust to using different measures of survival.

Abdioğlu, Nida, Do foreign institutional investors (FII) regard the introduction of rigorous disclosure requirements as a major incentive to invest in U.S. equities? We investigate the role of information asymmetry and the impact of firm-level disclosure on FII decisions. We use a unique context for analysis - the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), and find that foreign institutional investors increase their equity holdings in U.S. listed firms following the passage of SOX. The increase in U.S. equity holdings is largely accounted by passive, non-monitoring FII who have the most to gain from the SOX-led reduction in the value of private information

This paper examines how venture capital firms (VCs) in the U.S. respond to recent successful exits. We find that more money is allocated towards sectors that have experienced large exits within the last two months. This is achieved by increasing the amount invested per deal rather than investing in more companies. The additional investment appears to follow similar patterns in terms of the investment stage of portfolio companies. Furthermore, we document that such performance chasing behavior is most aggressively carried out by high-quality VCs rather than low-quality ones. We test the effectiveness of such a strategy and find that ‘hot sector’ companies are more likely to undertake a successful exit as opposed to their counterparts.

This paper investigates whether shareholder lockup agreements in France and Germany mitigate problems of agency and asymmetric information. Despite minimum requirements in terms of the length and percentage of shares locked up, lockup agreements are not only highly diverse across firms but also across the different shareholders of a single firm as most firms have different agreements in place for executives, non-executives and venture capitalists. The diversity across firms and types of shareholders can be explained by firm characteristics—such as the level of uncertainty—as well as the type and importance of each shareholder within the firm.

UK firms going public have a choice between public offers and placings. This choice has important implications in terms of who bears the risk of the issue failing and of its costs. We find that firms with higher ex ante uncertainty choose a placing contract. Highly reputable sponsors and creditor screening serve as signals of firm quality, enabling such firms to choose a public offer. Large and multinational firms usually choose a public offer whereas there is some evidence that very small issues choose a placing. Finally, the ‘hotness’ of the IPO market increases the probability of placings.

This study examines the survival rates of initial public offerings (IPOs) listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange between 1990 and 2010 and tracked until the end of 2013. The results show that the average survival rates on the Hong Kong market are high compared to other developed markets and the lowest is 78 percent over five years post listing. Furthermore, we find that the IPO firms are exposed to low failure risks even during and after financial crises. Investigating the determinants of survival rates, we find that the proportions of shares allocated to institutional investors and investor demand at the time of listing, along with initial investors’ retained ownership, significantly increase survival rates. In addition, the survival rates are high when the IPO is family controlled and investors have long term investment horizon.

We show that public firms use significantly less trade credit than private firms. The impact of listing status on the use of trade credit is more pronounced in young, high-growth, low-tangibility, and high-volatility firms, which is consistent with the argument that private firms with greater asymmetric information and credit constraints rely more on supplier financing. Public and private firms seek to adjust toward optimal trade credit levels, although public firms experience faster adjustment. During the recent financial crisis, public firms on average exhibited no significant change in their trade credit ratios, while private firms were granted significantly less trade credit.

We investigate the effect of initial public offerings (IPOs) on the evolution of debt maturity by tracking a sample of US firms that went public over the period 1998-2011. Our findings reveal a significant and permanent increase in debt maturity post-IPO. The short-term debt ratio drops by nearly a fifth in the first two years after the IPO. These findings are economically significant and robust to controlling for the endogeneity in the listing decision. However, the lengthening of the post-IPO debt maturity is only evident in small, high-growth, and highly levered firms. This finding lends greater support to asymmetric information models than theories based on the agency costs of debt. There is some support for the argument based on the agency costs of equity as the IPO effect on debt maturity is only significant for firms with a high dilution ratio. Finally, the IPO effect varies with macroeconomic conditions as the increase in debt maturity post-IPO was most pronounced during the recent financial crisis of 2007-08.

When a company offers shares in an initial public offering (IPO), existing owners often enter into lock-in agreements prohibiting them from selling shares for a specified period after the IPO. There is some recent US evidence of predictable share-price movements at the time of expiry of these lock-in agreements. Using a sample of 188 firms, 83 classified as high-tech and 105 others, that went public on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) during 1992–1998, we focus on the characteristics of lock-in agreements in the UK and on the behaviour of stocks returns around the lock-in expiry date. We find that the lock-in contracts of LSE-listed firms are much more complex, varied and diverse than US contracts, which usually standardise the lock-in period at 180 days after the IPO. We also find evidence of negative abnormal stock returns at and around lock-in expiry of similar magnitude to those reported in US studies. However, these abnormal returns are typically not statistically significant. While the deterioration in stock returns immediately around the expiry date appears to be particularly much more pronounced for high-tech stocks than for others, the differences in performance are not statistically significant.

We examine the IPO when-issued/conditional market of the London Stock Exchange which has a regulatory setting that is very different from that of other developed markets. Our results show that the decision to have a when-issued market affects the setting of the offer price. For companies that have a conditional trading the actual offer price is £3.4 but would have been £2.03 had these firms not had a when-issued market. So, investors actually pay a ‘rent’, through a higher offer price, in order to acquire shares of companies that will be traded in the when-issued market. In addition, companies that are larger, less risky, with higher future growth opportunities and underwritten by more reputable underwriters are more likely to have a when-issued market. Furthermore, the when issued market appears to be highly informative for investors and affects the volume in the first day of trading.

We examine the use of warrants as part of the brokers’ Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) compensation package in a regulatory environment that is very different from that of the United States (US). While, in the US, the use of warrants is constrained by regulatory requirements regarding the exercise price, the lock-in period and a minimum value for the warrant, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) carries none of these regulatory constraints. The LSE therefore, offers a perfect laboratory in which to study the unfettered use of non-cash compensation (i.e. warrants) to IPO brokers. Our results show that UK IPO firms that issue warrants to their brokers are riskier and are underwritten by reputable brokers. Interestingly, warrant issuers do not minimise their total costs of going public. They incur an underpricing and a total broker compensation of 23.3% and 5.6% respectively. These costs would have been 5.4% and 3.4% had warrants not been used. The results also show that, on average, brokers enhance their underwriting fees by about 75% as a result of the warrants being part of the compensation package. These findings contradict that of Dunbar (1995), who reports that riskier companies can minimise their costs of going public through the use of warrants. Dunbar (1995) argues that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (formerly known as National Association of Securities Dealers) in the US should relax the regulations underlying warrants compensation as they are unnecessarily restrictive. In contrast, our findings suggest that underwriters operating in an environment with no regulatory constraints regarding the use of warrants appear to misuse their monopoly power and overcharge IPO firms for their services.

We examine IPO survival in a “reputational” market, the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), where principle-based regulation pivots on the role of a regulatory agent, the nominated advisor (Nomad) to the IPO company. We find that Nomad reputation has a significant impact on IPO survival. IPOs backed by reputable Nomads survive longer (by about two years) than those backed by other Nomads. We also find that survival rates of AIM IPOs are broadly comparable to those of North American IPOs. While these results are of obvious interest to various stakeholders of AIM firms, they also provide important lessons for market places modeled on AIM including the upper-tier of the U.S. over-the-counter market (OTCQX), Italy’s AIM Italia, and Japan’s Tokyo AIM.

Can companies reduce the volatility and increase the liquidity of their stocks by trading them? In the context of the Italian stock market, where companies have far more leeway to sell as well as buy their own stocks than in the U.S., the answer is yes. We examine the effects of trading (open-market share repurchases and treasury shares sales) on liquidity (bid-ask spread) and volatility (return variance). Further, we examine the impact of shareholder approvals of repurchase programs on liquidity and volatility. We find clear evidence that trading increases liquidity and reduces volatility. These results are consistent with our analysis of the motives Italian companies give for making share repurchases. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

Does multinationality affect the initial public offering (IPO) performance of entrepreneurial firms? Theoretical arguments can be made for a positive effect of multinationality as well for a negative effect. We examine this question empirically by analyzing IPO data for 240 U.K. firms. We find that multinationality has significant and positive effects on long run IPO performance. This suggests that the market perceives entrepreneurial firms with multinational activities as possessing unique intangible assets that are indicative of future financial success. Factors affecting the IPO performance also differ systematically between firms with multinational operations and those without multinational operations. Stocks of intangible assets and the quality of the network significantly affect the performance of entrepreneurial IPO firms that “go global”. In contrast, domestic IPO firm performance is affected by offer size and underwriters’ perception of firm quality. The findings have important implications for entrepreneurial firms who are making decisions on “going global” and “going public”. This paper is forthcoming in Applied Financial Economics.

The distinct regulatory design of Indian IPOs permits an empirical evaluation of IPO underpricing models against those that model IPO initial returns as a consequence of overpricing. Characteristics of the Indian bookbuilding process allow us to study the timing and subscription patterns of different investor groups and to dissect IPO returns into two distinct components: one relating to pre-listing pricing by the underwriter and the other to the initial return from first day’s trade in the post-listing period. We find that a transparent bookbuilding process can alleviate the winner’s curse problem for retail investors but that does not eliminate IPO initial returns. Further, IPO initial returns persist but do not increase even if investment bankers are stripped of their discretionary allocation power. These results are not supportive of voluntary underpricing models. We find that the unmet demand of non-institutional investor groups is the primary driver of the IPO initial return. We consider these results to be supportive of the Derrien (2005) and Ljungqvist, Nanda and Singh (2006) models and consistent with the conclusions in Loffler, Panther and Theissen (2005) and Ljungqvist, Cornelli and Goldreich (2006).

This paper examines the investment preferences of foreign institutional investors investing in the U.S. market. We analyse both firm and country-level determinants that influence the foreign institutional investors’ allocation choices. At the country level, we find that the governance quality in a foreign institutional investor’s home country is a determinant of their decision to invest in the U.S. market. Our findings indicate that investors who come from countries with governance setups similar to that of the U.S. invest more in the United States. The investment levels though, are more pronounced for countries with governance setups just below that of the U.S. Our results are consistent with both the ‘flight to quality’ and ‘familiarity’ arguments, and help reconcile prior contradictory empirical evidence. At the firm level, we present unequivocal evidence in favour of the familiarity argument. Foreign institutional investors domiciled in countries with high governance quality prefer to invest in U.S. firms with high corporate governance quality. This effect is primarily driven by grey (non-monitoring) institutional investors.

We analyze detailed monthly data on U.S. open market stock repurchases (OMRs) that recently became available following stricter disclosure requirements. We find evidence that OMRs are timed to benefit non-selling shareholders. We present evidence that the profits to companies from timing repurchases are significantly related to ownership structure. Institutional ownership reduces companies' opportunities to repurchase stock at bargain prices. At low levels, insider ownership increases timing profits and at high levels it reduces them. Stock liquidity increases profits from timing OMRs.