Until October 1997, firms wishing to go public in Japan were required to use a hybrid auction process where up to half of the issue (the "auction tranche") was offered to investors via a discriminatory auction. Remaining shares (the "public offer tranche") were sold a few days later by a firm...

We study the role of banking relationships in IPO underwriting. Among other issues, we consider whether banking relationships lead to increased access to public equity markets, especially for smaller, lesserknown firms. When a firm in Japan goes public, it can engage an investment bank that is...

Using a sample of 779 Japanese IPOs over the 2002-2012 period, we find a strong retail orientation in new share allocation. As for institutional allocation, the most complete universal banking form of underwriting neither advantages nor disadvantages investors in affiliated mutual funds, both...

This research investigates how banks expand after entering the underwriting market by examining the relationship between commercial bank equity investments and underwriting fees. First, we find that not only bank underwriters with private information about issuers, but also those without private...

We examine whether financial conglomeration enhances efficiency of capital allocation or conflicts of interest, focusing on pricing and allocation of IPO stocks in Japan. Regarding underwriting of IPO stocks, our results are consistent with the bank certification hypothesis. As for IPO...

This paper examines the effects of characteristics of bank underwriters on issue costs in seasoned equity offerings in Japan following deregulation in 1999. I find that banks' holding loans have a negative effect on price discounts and no effect on underwriting fees. However, banks' equity...

The price formation process of JASDAQ IPOs is more transparent than in the United States. The transparency facilitates analysis of important issues in the IPO literature — why offer prices only partially adjust to public information and adjust more fully to negative information, and why...

This paper presents evidence using Japanese data that shows that the principal–agent problem between underwriter and issuing firms is the cause of the underpricing of initial public offerings. We find that the initial return is lower when the venture capital is a subsidiary of the lead...

In the Japanese initial public offering (IPO) market, initial first-day and one-year aftermarket returns are unusual, with a mean (median) of 0.417 (0.314) and −0.322 (−0.316), respectively. Our study relates this result to a globally popular book building pricing system that is blended with...