Do institutional investors reinforce or reduce agency problems? Earnings management and the post-IPO performance

This study investigates the dual roles of institutional investors in earnings management during initial public offerings (IPOs). Research suggests that institutional investors play a monitoring role in the corporate governance of firms by mitigating earnings management to reduce agency problems. However, institutional investors have incentives to opportunistically maximize their wealth by manipulating earnings when firms engage in IPOs. Results suggest that institutional investors facilitate accrual-based earnings management before IPOs but restrain earnings management after their issuance. We also find that firms with high institutional ownership experience superior post-IPO stock returns and operating performance, thereby suggesting that the capital market positively prices the monitoring function of institutional investors after IPOs, and the performance of these firms is improved. Our results are robust to controlling the endogeneity problem of institutional investors and further identifying active institutional investors.     

The Benefit of Excluding Institutional Investors from Fixed-Price IPOs: Evidence from Taiwan

A simple way to mitigate the winner's curse in initial public offerings (IPOs) is to reduce the number of informed investors in IPO markets. In Taiwan, institutional investors are not permitted to subscribe to fixed-price IPOs. Excluding institutional investors raises uninformed investors' allocation rates. We show that the winner's curse is still present in Taiwan's fixed-price IPO markets even without the participation of institutional investors, but that IPO underpricing is reduced by at least 4 percent due to alleviating the winner's curse, as institutional investors are excluded from the fixed-price offerings.     

Share allocations and performance of KLSE second board IPOs

We analyze share allocations in the Malaysian IPO market, which provide a unique instrument of economic policy for wealth redistribution amongst different ethnic groups. For a sample of Second Board IPOs, we find that Bumiputera investors and the Malaysian public receive almost an equal allocation and make similar profits per issue. However, institutional Bumiputera investors are allocated a significantly smaller proportion of the most underpriced issues and a significantly higher proportion of overpriced issues. IPOs with a higher share allocation to retail Bumiputera investors perform best in both the short and long run.     

Retail Trading and IPO Returns in the Aftermarket

Using trade size from the Trade and Quote (TAQ) data set as a proxy for individual versus institutional trading, this paper finds that the effects of trading of these two types of investors on initial public offering (IPO) returns on the first trading day depend on the hotness of the IPO. My regression results reveal that IPOs’ open-to-close returns are positively related to small trade participation, small trade purchases, and small trade order imbalance in the hot IPO sample, but not in the cold and neutral IPO samples. In addition, the aftermarket prices of cold and neutral IPOs are primarily driven by the trading of institutional investors, who are less likely to be driven by sentiment.     

Auctioned IPOs: The US evidence

Between 1999 and 2007, WR Hambrecht completed 19 initial public offerings (IPOs) in the US using an auction mechanism. We analyze investor behavior and mechanism performance in these auctioned IPOs using detailed bidding data. The existence of some bids posted at high prices suggests that some investors (mostly retail) try to free-ride on the mechanism. But institutional demand in these auctions is very elastic, suggesting that institutional investors reveal information in the bidding process. Investor participation is largely predictable based on deal size, and demand is dominated by institutions. Flipping is at most as prevalent in auctions as in bookbuilt deals. But, unlike in bookbuilding, investors in auctions do not flip their shares more in “hot” deals. Finally, we find that institutional investors, who provide more information, are rewarded by obtaining a larger share of the deals that have higher 10-day underpricing. Our results therefore suggest that auctioned IPOs can be an effective alternative to traditional bookbuilding.     

A theory of the transition to secondary market trading of IPOs

We develop a model in which investment banks and institutional investors collaborate in smoothing an initial public offering's (IPOs) transition to secondary market trading. Their intervention promotes welfare under the assumption that significant new information arrives in the market in the immediate aftermath of the IPO. Under this assumption, it is optimal to stage the offering and suboptimal to commit to selling shares at a uniform price. The optimal strategy yields an economic rationale for secondary market price stabilization for IPOs carried out via a well-coordinated network of repeat institutional investors.     

Allocation to Anchor Investors,Underpricing, and the After‐Market Performance of IPOs

We study bidding by anchor investors in a two‐stage initial public offering (IPO) process and document a negative, causal relation between allocation to anchor investors and underpricing. We find that anchor investors are likely to invest in hard‐to‐place offerings characterized by valuation uncertainty. We also document a positive relation between allocation to reputed anchor investors and returns up to lock‐up expiration. Our evidence provides support for information revelation and targeting specific investors’ theories of book building. Anchor‐backed IPOs earn superior returns mainly due to monitoring. Who bids in an IPO seems to matter just as particular types of bids do.     

IPO flipping in Australia: cross-sectional explanations

We access electronic share settlement records for each subscriber and aftermarket investor in 419 Australian IPOs to investigate whether initial subscribers flip their allocations, and we relate this flipping behaviour to issuer, shareholder, underwriter and market characteristics. We find that the main determinants are underpricing (consistent with the disposition effect, i.e., a tendency to realise gains before losses), whether the IPO market is “hot” (a proxy for the representativeness heuristic) and ex ante risk characteristics. When flipping is analysed separately for underpriced and overpriced IPOs we find that the most overpriced IPOs are flipped more than the less overpriced ones, a result which contrasts the disposition effect. This result is due to the action of institutional, rather than individual, investors. We also relate flipping activity to the firm's long-run return, and find that the flipping behaviour of large (informed) investors is unrelated to long-run returns, while uninformed investors consistently flip more of the IPOs that have better long-run returns.     

Allocation of shares to foreign and domestic investors: Firm and ownership characteristics in Swedish IPOs

In this article, we analyze underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) and holdings following offerings in Sweden. By exploiting a unique hand-collected data set with information on the ultimate holdings by institutional and individual investors, as well as boards of directors, we find, as most prior studies, that IPOs on average are underpriced. IPOs with low (high) initial return have higher (lower) holdings by individual investors. Institutional investors are, to a greater extent than individual investors, also able to identify underpriced firms.     

Europe's Second Markets for Small Companies

European stock exchanges have repeatedly opened second markets to list small companies. We explain the motivation for the creation of these second markets, and the reasons why many of them have failed. We find that the average long‐run performance of initial public offerings (IPOs) on second markets is dramatically worse than for main market IPOs. However, the second markets have provided firms with the opportunity to raise funds at the IPO and in follow‐on offerings. The relative success of London's AIM, which is an exchange‐regulated market with minimal regulations, has led other European stock exchanges to establish similar non‐EU regulated second markets. Most of the IPOs on these exchange‐regulated markets are offered exclusively to institutional investors, and are equivalent to private placements. These IPOs, which frequently raise only a few million euros, rarely develop liquid trading.     

The role of institutional investors in corporate and entrepreneurial finance

Institutional investors, collectively the majority shareholders of most publicly traded corporations, play important roles in almost all aspects of corporate finance. This special issue puts together sixteen papers covering a wide range of topics, such as M&As, capital structure, bonds and loans, corporate governance, IPOs, VCs, SEOs, broker/underwriter relationships, behavioral finance, corporate disclosure, and regulation. These special issue papers demonstrate that institutional investors, a traditional focus of investments research, are worthy of continued and further academic inquiry in many corporate finance topics. In terms of directions for future research, we believe that the availability of new datasets (or existing datasets not yet widely used in corporate finance) and the application of new or unique research methodologies could bear fruit for researchers, as demonstrated by some papers in this special issue. In terms of datasets, the success of Abel Noser institutional trading data serves as a good example.     

中国机构投资者的学习机制研究——理性贝叶斯还是简单强化式学习

理论文献通常假设机构投资者遵循理性贝叶斯法则更新其信念,在此学习模式下,盈亏经验本身并不能直接影响机构行为。但该假设的合理性尚未得到实证研究的充分支持。中国新股发行中的抽签分配制度为检验上述命题提供了比较理想的随机实验机会。本文基于新股抽签分配数据,系统检验了随机的盈亏经验对机构投资行为的影响,结果发现:(1)机构投资者显著受制于幼稚的强化式学习机制的影响,即通过随机抽签在前期获得新股分配的机构(处置组)相对未获配机构(控制组),其下期参与新股申购的概率显著提高,并且前期收益率能够有效地强化这种盈利经历与参与概率之间的正向关系。(2)盈亏经验能够显著改变专业机构的估值信念,即前期通过随机抽签获得高收益体验的机构相对未获配机构,在后续新股询价过程中给出了显著更高的报价上调水平。(3)盈亏经验对机构行为产生影响的一种可能渠道是借助机构投资管理人的强化式学习过程,基于基金经理个人特征变量的调节机制研究表明,丰富的长期从业经验、高学历的教育水平以及多位基金经理的相互竞争都能在一定程度上缓解盈亏经历对基金行为的影响。本文基于随机实验的设计为经验与行为之间的因果关系提供了可信证据,证实了即使是被奉为理性投资者代表的专业机构也会受制于简单强化式学习的显著影响。     

The Post-Issue Market Performance of Initial Public Offerings in China's New Stock Markets

In this paper, we investigate the post-issue market performance of initial public offerings (IPOs) in China's new stock markets. Our analysis focuses on whether and how institutional features unique to China differentially affect IPO performance. These features include the existence of dual-class shares for the same underlying firms (A-shares issued to domestic investors and B-shares issued to foreign investors) and the unusually long time lag between the offering and listing dates. Our sample consists of 277 A-share and 65 B-share IPOs that were listed on China's new stock markets during the 1992–1995 period. Our study has a number of interesting results. First, A-share IPOs are much more severely underpriced during the initial return period than B-share IPOs. Second, B-share IPOs underperform A-share IPOs (and the market) during the post-issue periods for up to three years. Third, the results of multivariate regression analyses strongly suggest that economic factors determining the post-issue performance of IPOs differ across the A-share and B-share samples.     

Bookbuidling, Auctions, and the Future of the IPO Process

Auction theorists predict that bookbuilding, long the standard process for selling equity IPOs in the U.S., is about to give way to an Internet‐based IPO auction process that is both more efficient and more fair. The promise of auctions is that, by using an electronic platform that gives all investors the opportunity to bid on IPOs, the underpricing of IPOs and commissions to underwriters will be reduced, leading to an increase in net proceeds to issuers. Largely missing from such arguments, however, is an appreciation of why bookbuilding has dominated U.S. practice (and continues to supplant auctions in IPOs in most countries outside the U.S) and the role of undepricing in the IPO process. Rather than canvassing all investors, bookbuilding involves eliciting expressions of interest from institutional investors, and then allocating shares mainly according to the strength of their professed interest. In contrast to auctions, which allocate shares according to a set of explicit rules, bookbuilding involves a set of implicit “rules” that provide considerable room for judgment by the underwriter. This does not mean that the rules are arbitrary or not well understood by participants, particularly after thousands of IPOs conducted over the better part of two centuries. But to manage the exchange of information between issuers and investors, and the potential conflicts of interest in representing both groups, such rules must be administered by an intermediary with a considerable stake in protecting its reputation for fair dealing. Investment banks that deal with both issuers and the investment community on a regular basis are well positioned to perform this function. The underpricing of IPOs is best viewed not as a transfer of wealth from issuers to favored investors but rather as compensation to the large influential investors that play a major role in the price discovery process. By opening the process to all comers, auctions will discourage these large investors from bidding aggressively because less sophisticated investors will be able to “free ride” on their research and due diligence. To the extent this happens, auctions may suc ceed in reducing underpricing (in fact, they may even lead to over pricing), but they will also reduce the net proceeds for issuers. Nevertheless, recent advances in communications technology and auction theory will undoubtedly reshape current securities underwriting practices. In particular, Internet auctions are likely to replace bookbuilding in debt IPOs and less risky equity issues (say, IPOs of LBOs). But the argument that Bookbuilding will be completely cast aside in favor of largely untested alternatives fails to appreciate a successful institutional response to major market imperfections, some of which can never be wholly eliminated. Especially in the case of risky (first‐time) equity IPOs, there will continue to be an important role for managing the information exchange between issuers and investors that is critical to the IPO process.     

REVISITING BOOKBUILDING VERSUS AUCTION IPOS: A PERSPECTIVE OF INFORMATIONALLY EFFICIENT PRICES IN THE AFTERMARKET

We compare price efficiency between auction and bookbuilding initial public offerings (IPOs). Our empirical results fail to support the prevailing conjecture that bookbuilding IPOs are more price efficient than auction IPOs. We find statistical insignificance between two IPO samples or weak evidence for the opposite hypothesis. We add to the evidence that auctions yield aftermarket price efficiency equal to that of bookbuilding or are statistically indifferent when measured by market microstructure and Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) data. We also examine whether underlying price efficiency forces reflect the relative presence of informed institutional and retail investors, aftermarket price support, and divergence of investor expectations.     

Management Quality and Equity Issue Characteristics: A Comparison of SEOs and IPOs

We use hand-collected data on the management quality of firms making seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) or initial public offerings (IPOs) to analyze the relationship between management quality and equity issue characteristics, and to compare the effect of management quality on SEOs versus IPOs. We hypothesize that higher quality managers are more credible to equity market investors, thereby reducing the information asymmetry they face in the market and outsiders’ information production costs. Therefore, the equity issues of higher management quality firms will have more reputable underwriters, smaller underwriting spreads, and other expenses, and smaller SEO discounts. Further, since better managers will be able to select better projects, higher management quality firms will have larger offer sizes. Finally, since SEO firms are likely to suffer from less information asymmetry compared to IPO firms, these effects will be smaller for SEOs than for IPOs. Our findings support the above hypotheses. Our direct tests of the relationship between management quality and information asymmetry, and our comparison of information asymmetry in SEOs versus IPOs provide further support for these hypotheses.     

A friend in need is a friend indeed: Allocation and demand in IPO bookbuilding

This paper uses proprietary data on European IPOs with detailed information on the demand at different points of time and allocation for institutional and retail investors. The nature of the data allows us to analyze the reason of why institutional investors as a group get more allocations of underpriced issues than retail investors. By explicitly examining institutional and retail demand for different kinds of stocks, we find that this is due to institutional investors' superior ability to detect underpriced stocks rather than the underwriter's preferential treatment. At the same time, the subset of domestic institutional investors supports the underwriter in issues with weak demand and receives in turn favorable allocations in underpriced issues.     

Transparency in IPO mechanism: Retail investors’ participation,IPO pricing and returns

Using data from the transparent Indian IPO setting, the paper examines retail investors’ participation, their influence on IPO pricing and the returns they make on IPO investment. The transparency in the mechanism, which allows investors to observe prior investors’ participation, leads to demand which is concentrated at either one or two points of the offer price range. Analysis of investors’ demand during the offer period shows that the participation of retail investors is significantly influenced by the participation of institutional investors. We examine IPO pricing and find that favourable demand by retail investors is positively associated with a high IPO price even after controlling for demand by institutional investors. Further, we find that due to aggressive bidding by overconfident investors, retail investors are, on average, unlikely to make positive allocation weighted initial returns even in a setting where they do not have to compete with institutional investors. Retail investors, however, can earn significant positive allocation weighted initial returns if they limit their participation in IPOs with above average institutional investors’ demand.     

Venture capital‐backed and commitments test entity initial public offerings on the ASX

This paper examines initial returns to venture capital (VC) backed and non‐VC‐backed IPO companies on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). We find support for the theoretical predictions of Rossetto (2008), by providing empirical evidence that VC‐backed CTE IPOs exhibit greater wealth losses to pre‐IPO investors compared to non‐VC‐backed CTE IPOs during hot issue markets. We also find that greater retained ownership increases IPO underpricing. In the subsample of IPOs with below the median level of retained ownership IPOs, VC‐backed CTE IPOs and VC‐backed, non‐CTE IPOs have significantly higher levels of underpricing and wealth loss compared to non‐VC‐backed, non‐CTE IPOs.