Although the choice of an IPO offer price level would seem to have little economic significance, firms do not decide this arbitrarily. Our findings suggest that firms select their IPO offer prices to target a desired ownership structure, which in turn has implications for underpricing and...

This paper discusses evidence on the initial underpricing of Initial Public Offerings in the Athens Stock Exchange, during the period 1990-2003. Differences in average initial returns are analyzed in terms of differential IPO characteristics. The findings suggest that in the Athens Stock...

When firms go public in an IPO, they must choose a number of shares to offer and a price level for those shares. Given an estimated total value, this division would seem to have little economic significance. Casual empiricism and the evidence from stock splits, however, suggest that firms do not...

I use a survey methodology to obtain consensus ratings of 64 Swiss company names. The survey evidence suggests that simple cognitive company name characteristics do affect the buy and sell decision of respondents. Furthermore, I find that respondents attribute positive stock performance rather...

We analyze the primary market characteristics and the secondary market trading frictions of new stocks. IPOs issued in hot markets, with low offer price, low-reputation underwriters or no VC backing face higher liquidity frictions, higher information constraints, and worse short-sale...

When-issued trading concerns transactions in securities that have not yet been issued. This type of trade often takes place in a so-called ‘grey market’, in which all contracts are conditional on the issuance of the security. In this paper, we investigate the Dutch grey market for...

We estimate the underpricing and long-run performance of Swiss initial public offerings (IPOs) from 1983 to 2000. The average market adjusted initial return is 34.97%. To examine the long-run performance of Swiss IPOs, we compute buy-and-hold abnormal returns, skew-ness-adjusted wealth ratios,...

This paper provides micro-econometric evidence on the relevance of non-market interaction for the timing of initial public offerings (IPOs) in the French and German primary equity markets. The surge of IPO volume in the late 1990s appears to be consistent with rational expectations, not with...

This paper sets out to analyze the influence of different types of venture capitalists on the performance of their portfolio firms around and after IPO. We investigate the hypothesis that different governance structures, objectives, and track records of different types of VCs have a significant...

Our study examines the existence and the nature of private benefits of control in Germany. We do this by analyzing initial public offerings of founding-family owned firms and tracking their fate up to ten years following the IPO. Our sample includes a uniquely rich data set of 105 IPOs of...