Competition between investment banks for lead underwriter mandates in IPOs is fierce, but having committed to a particular bank, the power of the issuer is greatly reduced. Although information revelation theories justify giving the underwriters influence over pricing and allocation, this...

Despite the central importance of investors to all initial public offering (IPO) theories, relatively little is known about their role in practice. This article is based on a survey of how institutional investors assess IPOs, what information they provide to the investment banking syndicate, and...

Stabilisation is the bidding for and purchase of securities by an underwriter immediately after an offering for the purpose of preventing or retarding a fall in price. Stabilisation is price manipulation, but regulators allow it within strict limits – notably that stabilisation may not occur...

This paper uses evidence from a data set of 27 European IPOs to analyze how investors bid and the factors that influence their allocations. We also make use of a unique ranking of investor quality, associated with the likelihood of flipping the IPO. We find that investors perceived to be...

The UK has pioneered the introduction of competition into previously monopolistic utility industries. Competition has been introduced progressively, starting with BT, and continuing with the gas and electricity industries, where it is to be completed during 1998. In water, competition has so far...

We compare fees charged by investment banks for conducting IPOs in the U.S. and Europe. In recent years the “7% solution”, as documented by Chen and Ritter (2000), has become even more prevalent in the U.S., and is now the norm for IPOs raising up to $250m. The same banks dominate both...

Special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) have raised around $22bn from investors since 2003, and comprised 20% of total funds raised in US IPOs in 2007. SPACs are interesting structures - allowing investors a risk-free option to invest in a future acquisition. However, we show that more...

Unlike in the U.S., the initial price range for European IPOs is seldom revised, although issues are often priced at the upper bound. We develop a model that explains this seemingly inefficient pricing behavior. As in Europe, but not in the U.S., underwriters in the model obtain information from...

Corporate governance is one of the most topical and controversial areas of business and finance. This article provides an overview of the questions that it raises and proposed policy responses. It points to the diversity in systems of corporate governance around the world, the apparently...