We document the frequent use of lockup agreements in seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), and examine the determinants of their use, duration, and early release. From 1996 through 2006, 93.8% of all SEOs included lockups, which is comparable to the 96.6% lockup rate for IPOs during the same period....

We propose and test an efficiency explanation for why firms deploy takeover defenses using initial public offering (IPO) firm data. We hypothesize that takeover defenses bond the firm's commitments by reducing the likelihood that an outside takeover will change the firm's operating strategy and...