We revisit debates on the regulation of IPOs by analyzing failure rates of IPOs carried out between 1900 and 1913 on the London and Berlin stock exchanges, two of the leading financial markets during the early 20th century. IPOs were regulated more heavily in Germany than in Britain and, as...

The main purpose of this paper is using a unique data set from IPO filings to study the IPO market as a screening device and the going public decision. We find that private firms that are less likely to have the option to access public equity markets receive 54 cents for each dollar they...

Slater & Gordon (S&G), a midsized Australian law firm with a high-growth consolidation strategy, had an initial public offering (IPO) scheduled for May 2007. Due to a series of regulatory changes in Australia in recent years, the IPO provided an opportunity for S&G to become the first...

A new innovation on the IPO landscape has emerged in the last two decades, allowing owner-founders to extract billions of dollars from newly-public companies. These IPOs — labeled supercharged IPOs — have been the subject of widespread debate and controversy: lawyers, financial experts,...

The unique characteristics of the U.S. initial public offer (IPO) process, particularly the strict quiet period regulations, allow us to explore the effects of media coverage when the coverage does not contain genuine news (i.e., hard information that was previously unknown). We show that a...

Public capital markets play an important role in financing the activities of non-financial companies in the United Kingdom, providing them with the main alternative to bank loans and private sources of finance. Although a small number of UK companies issue public bonds and equity, those that do...

The changing nature of initial public offering (IPO) underpricing is examined using a sample of 513 IPOs launched in the UK from 1993 to 2001. It is found that the mean UK underpricing is initially less than that in the USA, reverses itself in the mid-1990s, returns to a lower level during the...

This study examines the relative importance of financial structure, advisers' reputations, and managerial experience on the market value achieved by an initial public offering (IPO). A sample of 172 UK IPOs on the Official list of the London Stock Exchange during the period 1992–1996 indicates...

This chapter documents the evolution of ownership and control of firms around the world over a hundred year period from the beginning of the 20th century to today. It records the substantial changes that have taken place in the nature of stock markets and contrasts these with the persistent...