Recently, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reduced resale restrictions on Rule 144 private placements from 12 months to 6 months with the intention of lowering the cost of equity capital for issuing firms. In Canada, similar regulatory changes were adopted several years ago, providing...

The bought deal is the predominant method of underwriting SEOs in Canada. Offer prices are set and underwriters commit to purchase offerings several days earlier for bought deals than for firm commitment issues, implying stronger underwriter certification for bought deal issues. Consistent with...

IPOs with underwriters that retain an elite law firm exhibit a lower average first-day return. This empirical pattern remains after controlling for an extensive set of proxies associated with existing explanations of IPO initial returns. We rationalize this finding with a pre-IPO pricing model,...

Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in the world's most important financial markets have been falling for the past decade. This has not been a gentle decline, but a collapse that preceded the 2008 financial crisis and shows no sign of abating. Public companies have been an integral part of developed...

It is the best of times for Canada’s public markets, it is the worst of times for Canada’s public markets. It is an age when markets have been rewarding public companies with the highest valuations seen in generations. It is an age of a rapid decline in Canadian companies opting to go...

This paper shows that analysts' herding forecasts are accompanied by significant return reversals of 116 basis points per month, while anti-herding forecasts render reversals insignificant. These results are magnified among illiquid stocks and during high VIX months. Since analyst herding is...

In this paper we examine for the first time the role of agents in private-market entrepreneurial financings. After controlling for the endogenous issuer-agent matching and a whole host of other potential determinants, the empirical findings in this paper indicate that agents attract more...