Looking Attractive until You Sell: Earnings Management,Lockup Expiration,and Venture Capitalists

Earnings management occurs when managerial discretion allows managers to influence reported earnings and thus mislead some investors about the underlying economic performance and quality of the firm. This study considers how potential investors may guard against earnings management by observing negative stock price reaction at the lockup expiration period of initial public offering (IPO) firms as a negative signal. Findings from a sample of 160 newly public firms show that earnings management behaviour is stronger in IPO firms backed by venture capitalists (VCs). Moreover, VC reputation negatively moderates this relationship such that IPO firms backed by reputable VCs are less likely to manage earnings, suggesting that reputable VCs serve an auditing function following an IPO. Overall, we provide insights into signalling theory by examining negative signals arising from the behaviour of multiple agents in an IPO firm.     

Venture Capital Investments in Europe and Portfolio Firms' Economic Performance: Independent Versus Corporate Investors

Using a new European Commission‐sponsored longitudinal dataset—the VICO dataset—we assess the impact of independent (IVC) and corporate venture capital (CVC) investments on the economic performance of European high‐tech entrepreneurial firms during the period 1992–2010. After controlling for potential sources of endogeneity and selection bias, our results indicate that both IVC and CVC investments boost portfolio firms' economic performance. These effects are mostly due to an increase in real sales value. Moreover, the dynamics of the impact of VC investments on firms’ overall economic performance and its components—real sales value, real fixed assets, and real labor costs—differs depending on the type of investor. Finally, we do not detect any impact related to the syndication of investments by both IVC and CVC investors.     

Founders' Characteristics,Venture Capital Syndication and Governance in Entrepreneurial IPOs

Using a unique sample of 444 entrepreneurial IPOs in the UK and France this paper examines links between founders' characteristics, venture capital (VC) syndication and the development of effective boards in entrepreneurial firms. It argues that VC-backed IPOs suffer from two sets of agency problems which are related to principal-agent and principal-principal relationships between the founders and members of the VC syndicate. The empirical evidence shows that there is a curvilinear relationship between the intensity of founders' external ties and VC syndication. Founders' retained share ownership is negatively associated with VC syndication. We also find that in syndicated IPOs there is a higher involvement of passive private equity firms and “business angels” investing alongside VC firms, both in terms of their number and equity presence. VC-syndicated IPOs have more independent boards than IPOs with no VC involvement. Board independence is negatively associated with founders' retained equity. These results are consistent with the assumption that board independence is used to mitigate agency costs associated with VC involvement in IPO firms. Our findings also identify significant differences in governance characteristics between the UK and France. While French IPOs have less independent boards, they involve more VC backing in general and syndicated VC funding in particular, than UK IPOs.     

Informal investors in the Ottawa-Carleton region: experiences and expectations

This research reports on the investment experience of a sample of informal investors in the Ottawa-Carleton area who have made 156 investments involving $16 million between 1981 and 1986. In addition, the expectations and requirements of these investors with respect to future investments are presented. It is found that investors surveyed seemed to hold realistic expectations regarding the outcome of their risk capital investments. It is also found that the informal marketplace for risk capital is both a local and a personal marketplace. Whereas our knowledge of the characteristics and motivations of informal investors remains incomplete, questions are raised regarding the impact of various public policy incentives that seem to have been targeted at informal investors. An agenda for future research is specified.     

The influence of private equity and venture capital on the post-IPO performance of newly-public acquirers

This paper examines the influence of private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) ownership on the post-initial public offering (IPO) performance of newly-public acquirers. Our results show that acquirers with PE- or VC-backing at the time of the IPO perform better long-term than acquirers without such backing. More importantly, while acquirers without financial backing experience negative long-run returns from first-year acquisitions, acquirers with continued PE- and VC-backing perform significantly better when making acquisitions within the first year after going public. However, acquiring firms and investors should be aware that for mergers in the second and third year post-IPO, continued VC ownership has a detrimental long-term impact. In contrast, higher levels of continued PE ownership tend to have a positive relationship with long-run performance.     

Industry clustering of initial public offerings

Extant empirical evidence has documented both a temporal variation in the number of initial public offerings (IPOs) and an industry clustering effect in these offerings. This article attempts to provide insights into this phenomenon by: (i) identifying industry conditions that influence IPO clustering, (ii) analyzing differences in characteristics of clustered versus non‐clustered IPOs, and (iii) studying the impact of IPO clustering on long‐run operating performance. We find that IPO clustering is more likely to occur in high‐growth fragmented industries that are characterized by strong investment opportunities, favorable investor sentiment, and which require high levels of investments in R&D. Further, we document a negative relation between post‐IPO operating performance and whether the IPO firm goes public in its industry cluster period. We conclude that the relatively poor post‐IPO operating performance of firms that go public in industry cluster periods likely reflects industry overinvestment arising from too many firms within that industry chasing the same investment opportunities. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Accounting Scandals in IPO Firms: Do Underwriters and VCs Help?

We examine whether underwriter reputation, venture capitalist (VC) backing, and VC reputation are related to the probability that a newly public firm has serious accounting problems. Using a novel data set, we find that the probability of restatement by an initial public offering (IPO) firm is positively related to underwriter reputation and negatively related to VC backing, VC reputation, and VC maturity. Our results do not appear to be driven by the endogeneity of underwriter reputation or VC backing. Our findings suggest that while VCs positively influence the financial reporting quality of IPO firms, underwriters’ concerns about revenue generation outweigh their concerns about reputation.     

Venture capitalist monitoring: Evidence from governance structures

We examine the impact of venture capitalist (VC) involvement, quality and exit on corporate governance structures at the time of and subsequent to an initial public offering (IPO). Venture capital backed firms utilize governance structures with greater levels of monitoring at the time of an IPO compared to non-backed firms, but this difference begins to dissipate over time. While short-lived, IPOs backed by high quality VCs have greater overall monitoring levels than those IPOs backed by low quality VCs. IPOs backed by high quality VCs use significantly more equity-based compensation than their low quality counterparts. Finally, the exit of a VC materially alters the governance structure of firms. Measures of governance decline following the departure of a venture capital firm. Overall, the presence of a venture capitalist affects governance structures of firms both at the IPO and through the early years as public firms.     

CEO Experiences: Effects on the Choice of FDI Entry Mode*

abstract Drawing on the strategic management and international business literatures, this study examines the relationships between the experiences of newly selected CEOs and their choice of foreign direct investment (FDI) entry modes. Based on a sample
of 380 foreign market entry events involving acquisitions, greenfield investments, and joint ventures, our findings indicate that CEOs with less firm experience preferred acquisitions and greenfield investments to joint ventures and, older CEOs were more likely to opt for joint ventures over greenfield investments. In addition, CEOs with throughput functional experience favoured acquisitions over joint ventures and greenfield investments. Finally, CEO international experience was associated with a greater propensity to choose greenfield investments and acquisitions over joint ventures and also greenfield investments over acquisitions. The implications of the findings from the perspective of theory and managerial practice are discussed, along with possible directions for future research.     

Patents, Thickets and the Financing of Early-Stage Firms: Evidence from the Software Industry

Legal changes in the patentability of software since the mid 1990s have resulted in a substantial increase in the number of patents on software inventions. We focus here on the impact of transactions costs associated with patent "thickets" on new entrants' interactions with the capital markets. Using data on the financing of entrants into 27 narrowly defined software markets, we show that start-up software companies operating in markets characterized by denser patent thickets saw their initial acquisition of VC funding delayed relative to firms in markets less affected by patents after the mid 1990s. The relationship between patent thickets and subsequent financing activity such as IPO or acquisition is more complex, but there is weak evidence that firms without patents became less likely to go public if they operated in a market characterized by patent thickets. Firms with patents are more likely to be funded or experience a liquidity event. However, the application for a patent appears to matter more than its grant.     

Venture capital firms’ lead orientation,network position,and selection of familiar syndicate partners

This study explores how a venture capital (VC) firm’s lead orientation (i.e., acting more as a lead investor rather than a follower investor in past syndication investments) influences its selection of familiar syndicate partners. By conducting empirical research that uses detailed information of 11,219 investment deals in China from January 1999 to June 2016, we find that a VC firm’s lead orientation has an inverted U-shaped relationship with its propensity to select familiar syndicate partners. In other words, as a VC firm’s lead orientation increases, its familiarity degree with the partners in the subsequent syndicated investment will first increase and then decrease. In addition, a VC firm’s network centrality and network constraint imposed by the VC network structure both weakens the inverted U-shaped relationship between its lead orientation and the selection of familiar partners. Robustness checks with different measures and samples, together with the instrumental variable approach and the Heckman selection model that address potential endogeneity problems, show the reliability of our findings.     

Influence of institutional investors' participation on flipping activity of Malaysian IPOs

This paper examines the influence of institutional investors’ participation on flipping activity of Malaysian IPOs. Measured as the percentage of trading volume on the first trading day against the total number of shares offered, flipping is the quickest way to gain huge profits from IPOs. However, excessive flipping activity has significant potential to create artificial downward pressure on the price of IPOs. One way to reduce such an adverse effect is by strategically allocating a larger proportion of new shares to institutional investors. This is because institutional investors are normally assumed to be long-term investors. As such, they are less likely to flip their allocated IPOs in the immediate aftermarket. The long-term investment argument is consistent with institutional investors’ preference for a steady income stream in the form of dividends. Drawing upon this argument, the greater participation of institutional investors during an IPO is expected to be an effective strategy to control aggressive flipping activity. The Malaysian IPO market offers an excellent opportunity to examine this hypothesis because data regarding the allocation of new shares to institutional investors can be traced conveniently through a type of IPO referred to as “private placement”. Based upon an examination of 248 IPOs listed on Bursa Malaysia between January 2000 and December 2012, this study finds a negative relationship between institutional investors’ participation and flipping activity. This result lends strong support to the argument concerning the effectiveness of institutional investors’ participation in controlling flipping activity in the Malaysian IPO market.     

Private benefits extraction by the initial owner and the dynamic of ownership and control post‐initial public offering

We investigate the relation between the private benefits' extraction by the initial controlling shareholder and the likelihood of the change of control post‐initial public offering (IPO) in France. We find that (a) in a weak investor protection context, the initial controlling shareholder with high private benefits of control is less likely to relinquish control 5‐years post‐IPO. (b) The initial controlling shareholder extracts private benefits of control through high voting rights and when the founder is involved in control at IPO. (c) Family controlling shareholders are less likely to end up with change of control post‐IPO than nonfamily ones. Such behavior is more pronounced with substantial voting rights, when the founder is in control and when the founder or his heir is an executive director. High private benefits of control contribute therefore to foster the survival of the initial controlling shareholder post‐IPO. Our findings are robust even after using alternative proxies of private benefits of control and also after running a survival analysis.     

The Relationship between Slack Resources and the Performance of Entrepreneurial Firms: The Role of Venture Capital and Angel Investors

In this study, we seek to further delineate factors that condition the relationship between slack resources and firm performance. To do so, we develop and test a model that establishes the role of venture capital (VC) and angel investors as powerful external stakeholders who positively moderate the slack–performance relationship. In addition, we provide more insight into this relationship by examining differences between these two types of private investors and by examining the role of their ownership stakes. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 1215 private firms, including VC‐backed firms, angel‐backed firms, and similar firms without such investors. We find that the presence of VC investors positively moderates the relationship between both financial and human slack resources and firm performance, while angel investors only positively moderate the effect of human resource slack. Further, VC investors are only marginally better at helping entrepreneurs to extract value from human resource slack than angel investors and they are no better when it comes to financial slack. Finally, we find that the impact of financial and human resource slack on firm performance is more positive in VC‐backed firms when investors hold high ownership stakes, an effect which is significantly stronger than when angel investors hold high ownership stakes.     

Growth opportunities,corporate governance and the market value of multinational joint ventures

This paper examines whether differences in investment opportunities and corporate ownership structure can explain the disparate findings of other researchers with regard to the market's price reaction to the announcement of international joint ventures. We study a sample of 320 joint ventures announced during the period 1987–92. The sample joint ventures involve at least one US partner and one or more international partners from emerging economies (former communist countries in Eastern Europe and China), as well as industrialized G7 countries. We find that international joint ventures are on average wealth creating when the foreign partner comes from an emerging economy but are wealth neutral when the partner is from an industrialized country. This finding supports the investment opportunity set hypothesis. However, we do not find support for the shareholder-management alignment hypothesis in that higher insider holdings or a greater level of outsiders on the board for the US partner will lead to joint venture investments that are more highly valued by investors, other things remaining the same. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Different Problem,Same Solution: Contract‐Specialization in Venture Capital

Real‐world financial contracts vary greatly in the combinations of cash flow contingency terms and control rights used. Extant theoretical work explains such variation by arguing that each investor finely tailors contracts to mitigate investment‐specific incentive problems. We provide overwhelming evidence from 4,561 venture capital (VC) contracts that this tailoring is overstated: even though there is broad variation in contracting across VCs, each individual VC tends to specialize, recycling familiar terms. In fact, a VC typically restricts contracting choices to a small set of alternatives: 46% of the time, a VC uses the same exact cash flow contingencies as in one of her previous five contracts. We document specialization in both aggregated downside protection, and in each individual cash flow contingency term. Such specialization remains economically and statistically significant even after controlling for VC and company characteristics. We also find that VCs learn to use new contractual solutions from other VCs in her syndication network. Our findings challenge the traditional premise that each investor selects from the universe of combinations of terms to match an investment's unique contracting problem. Rather, the cumulative evidence indicates that contract‐specialization arises because investors better understand payoff consequences of familiar terms, and are reluctant to experiment with unknown combinations.     

Early internet IPOs versus subsequent entrants

This paper examines whether investors in early Internet IPOs earned superior returns to those who invested in later entrants. We document three differences between early public firms in a new Internet technology and their followers: underpricing, operating characteristics at the IPO, and stock price performance after the IPO. We find that there is value in going public relatively early in a new Internet technology. Specifically, long-term returns are significantly higher for the early entrants. We also find evidence, consistent with previous studies that examine hot IPO markets, that the early public firms have better operating characteristics at the IPO than later entrants.     

Examining the behavior of renewable‐energy fund investors

Mutual fund investors could contribute to sustainable development by encouraging fund managers to channel their savings into the funding of sustainable energy projects adopted by firms. This study examines whether renewable‐energy investors take into account financial and/or nonfinancial factors when making the decision to invest in a specific fund, comparing their investment behavior with that of black‐energy and conventional investors. To this end, we have gathered information about 4,368 mutual funds (76 renewable‐energy funds, 109 black‐energy funds, and 4,183 conventional mutual funds) from January 2007 to December 2017. For this sample, we adopt a panel‐data approach with Petersen's standard errors clustered by fund and year. Our results indicate that renewable‐energy fund investors are less sensitive to past financial performance than are black‐energy and conventional fund investors, indicating that the former derive their utility from nonfinancial attributes whereas black‐energy investors derive their utility from a conditional multiattribute and conventional fund investors derive their utility from financial attributes.     

Hedge funds in portfolios of risk-averse investors

We find that adding a hedge fund to an optimally weighted portfolio of stocks and T-bills generally increases the utility of an investor. From a sample of hedge funds with returns from 1996 to 2005, the certainty equivalent was an average of five basis points (monthly) higher with a ten percent allocation into a hedge fund. Funds from different style categories require different allocations into the stock market, but nearly all funds improved performance. Contrary to popular opinion, we find that highly risk-averse investors gain even more than less risk-averse investors by adding a hedge fund into their portfolio.     

Credit ratings and long-term IPO performance

We examine the impact of credit ratings on long-term IPO pricing. Our findings suggest that the provision of credit ratings prior to IPO reduces information asymmetry and improves market efficiency. The increase in disclosure through credit ratings can reduce information risk and price discounts. IPOs with (without) credit ratings are less (more) underpriced and more positively (negatively) perceived by outside investors. The market reactions for rated IPOs are more immediate and more complete (as the result of improved transparency), while long-term performance is insignificant when information asymmetry is reduced.