Evidence of Early-Mover Advantages in Underwriting Spreads

I use a sample of 2370 public security offerings, comprising 64 financial security innovations and 4 traditional securities, to examine how investment banks are compensated for bearing underwriting risks related to new product development. I find strong evidence that underwriting fees decline as the innovation is widely adopted and competition enters the market, suggesting that underwriters be compensated for the additional risk associated with innovative securities. The data also reveal that underwriters seek greater compensation for security features that increase price volatility, which is consistent with the notion that underwriters value their position as a put option on the security. Finally, the inverse relationship between underwriting spreads and underwriter prestige suggests that larger, more reputable underwriters experience economies of scale.     

Versicherungszyklen in der deutschen KFZ-Versicherung

In this paper we analyze underwriting cycles in the German motor insurance industries for the last 50 years. A special emphasis is laid on the so-called aggregation bias that arises when data from different lines of business is merged in a total market statistic. In literature, underwriting cycles were found for many international markets and for numerous lines of business. We find underwriting cycles for the German motor insurance with lengths between six and ten years, which have been increasing for the last years. Our empirical evidence on cycle lengths in German motor insurance fits well into the context of international comparative studies on underwriting cycles.     

Is Underwriter Retention of IPO Shares a Good Substitute for Underwriting Spreads?

In Taiwan, underwriters are required to retain at least 10 percent but no more than 25 percent of underwritten initial public offering (IPO) shares and sell the remainder to the public. We find that IPO underpricing causes underwriters to retain more shares to earn capital gains on retained shares and that underwriter retention is a signal of IPO underpricing. If underwriter retention is cancelled, underwriters need to be compensated through lottery draw processing fees or underwriting spreads. We show that issuers should compensate underwriters through underwriting spreads directly, rather than indirectly through underwriter retention or lottery draw processing fees.     

Determinants of Underwriting Fees by New Entrant Banks: Evidence from the Japanese IPO Underwriting Market

This research investigates how banks expand market share after entering the underwriting market by examining the relation between commercial bank equity investments and underwriting fees. First, we find that not only bank underwriters with private information about issuers but also those without private information discount their fees, especially for smaller and riskier firms. This result is robust when using multiple firm‐bank relationship measures or when changing the investing stage. This is consistent with the strategic discount view that predicts that bank underwriters discount fees to expand bank market shares in underwriting markets.     

Foreign Entry into Underwriting Services: Evidence from Japan's “Big Bang” Deregulation

We examined the effect of foreign entry into bond market underwriting activity using issue‐level data from the Japanese “Samurai” and euro–yen bond markets. We found that the fees charged by Japanese underwriters were higher on average than those of foreign underwriters, but the difference could be explained by conditioning on issue characteristics. Our results also suggest that bond issuers sorted properly across underwriters, as switching across underwriter nationalities would be expected to result in higher fees. However, the savings enjoyed by firms issuing with foreign underwriters were modest and statistically insignificant, while those of firms issuing with Japanese underwriters were substantial and statistically significant. This result suggests that Japanese underwriters priced their services aggressively over the sample period, perhaps in an effort to retain or gain market share. This conjecture is supported by a matching exercise that examined the liberalization of foreign underwriter access to the Samurai bond market, using euro–yen bond issues as a control. Foreign entry led to a statistically and economically significant decrease of 16 basis points on average in underwriting fees in the Samurai bond market. Overall, our results suggest that the international market for Japanese bond underwriting services was partially segmented by nationality as issuers appear to have preferred habitats, but that liberalization increased overall market competition.     

Do the equity holding and soundness of bank underwriters affect issue costs of SEOs?

This paper examines the effects of characteristics of bank underwriters on issue costs in seasoned equity offerings in Japan following deregulation in 1999. I find that banks’ holding loans have a negative effect on price discounts and no effect on underwriting fees. However, banks’ equity holdings have no effect on discount rates and a positive effect on underwriting fees. Furthermore, issuers with unhealthy banks pay higher discount rates, are more likely to be weak in their ex-post operating performance, and are less willing to switch underwriters. I conclude that the characteristics of banks have different effects on issue costs.     

How to prepare a life expectancy report for an attorney in a tort case

The purpose of this methodology article is to describe a suitable format for a legally acceptable report on the life expectancy of the principal in a tort case that is being advocated or defended by an attorney. Life insurance medical directors and underwriters are clearly skilled and experienced in mortality risk classification for life insurance. However, the judicial system is accustomed to measuring excess mortality only in terms of reduced life expectancy. The analyst preparing the report must convert the excess mortality into a figure for reduced life expectancy and compare this with the life expectancy of persons matched by age, sex and race in the latest Decennial US Life Tables. This process is different from the life insurance underwriting process. A life table projected to age 109 must be constructed as an essential part of the report, and the entire process must be presented clearly and convincingly. There are good reasons why the excess death rate (EDR) should be used as the index of excess mortality in constructing the life table, in preference to the mortality ratio (MR), which is used most of the time in life insurance risk classification. All of these considerations are discussed in this article, which is based on a sample of 40 cases handled by the author, a retired life insurance medical director.     

REGULATORY AND PROCEDURAL EFFECTS ON THE UNDERPRICING OF INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERINGS

In this paper, the pricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) is examined from the underwriter's point of view. It is shown that because of the regulations and procedures governing the underwriting and pricing of IPOs, underwriters can maximize expected income by underpricing IPOs. Thus, it is argued that in addition to other feasible explanations of the underpricing phenomenon (e.g., compensation to uninformed investors, insurance against legal liability, etc.), regulatory and procedural factors contribute to the underpricing of IPOs. This is shown to be true both when uninformed investors are present and absent from the market for IPOs.     

The Theory of Optimal Stochastic Control as Applied to Insurance Underwriting Cycles

We use the theories of optimal stochastic control and engineering process control to analyze the well-known phenomenon of insurance underwriting cycles in continuous time. We show in a continuous time framework that underwriting cycles can be explained with a model where premiums are set rationally, but where there are various reporting and regulatory lags. We find that the observed cycle length depends on the length of these underlying lags. Our result can be seen as consistent with previous empirical work showing underwriting cycles varying across countries and lines of insurance. In the event that no lags exist, our result is also consistent with more recent literature suggesting that insurance cycles may not exist.     

UNDERWRITING SPREADS AND REPUTATIONAL CAPITAL: AN ANALYSIS OF NEW CORPORATE SECURITIES

When entering a new security market, investment banks must establish their reputation. This is done through direct experience in the security market or through reputational capital established in existing security markets. I examine the effects of underwriters' market reputation in publicly underwritten offerings in forty-three financial innovations and find more significant entry barriers for less prestigious underwriters. An analysis of underwriting spreads reveals first-issue pricing advantages due to reputational capital. Unlike the more prestigious underwriters, the less prestigious underwriters reduce spreads upon first entry into each new security market to overcome their lack of market reputation.     

Breaking down the barriers: Competition,syndicate structure,and underwriting incentives

We argue that the entry of commercial banks into bond underwriting led to the evolution of co-led underwriting arrangements and lowered the screening incentives of underwriters. Lead underwriters in co-led syndicates faced weaker incentives to screen issuer quality. In boom markets, issues underwritten by co-led syndicates were more likely to be involved in financial misrepresentation events. Underwriter incentives in co-led syndicates were particularly weak in industries where commercial banks stole substantial market share. Similar patterns do not hold in bust markets where investors are likely to engage in their own information collection efforts. Our results suggest that competition may have an adverse effect on the incentives of financial intermediaries in market environments where their information production is more valuable to investors.     

Competing for underwriting market share: The case of commercial banks and securities firms

This study analyzes changes in the underwriting market share of securities firms and commercial banks over a 20-year period that encompasses the deregulation period of 1989–1999. The study finds that, after controlling for firm combination effects, there is no evidence that commercial banks gained share at the expense of ranked traditional underwriters. There is strong evidence that market breadth helps both securities firms and commercial banks to gain market share, whereas greater share in the underwriting of a specific security has the opposite effect on next year's market share. There is supportive but limited evidence that high-volume years favor commercial banks, whereas low-volume years favor prestigious underwriters. The influence of firm-specific factors is limited to a few markets, which may explain the stickiness of underwriting market share of ranked firms over time.     

The Effect of Private-Debt-Underwriting Reputation on Bank Public-Debt Underwriting

We provide evidence that commercial banks extend their reputationin underwriting syndicated loans and private placements (privatedebt) to their bond-underwriting activities. In the absenceof bond market reputation, private-debt-market reputation enablescommercial banks to win underwriting mandates from their loanclients. Furthermore, it allows them to credibly commit to investorsagainst opportunistically using lending information and therebydeliver superior certification benefits in the form of higherissue prices relative to investment-bank underwriters. Thispricing benefit is not offset by higher underwriting fees andthus results in lower total issuance costs for borrowers.(JELG21, G28, L14, L15)     

Pre-IPO券商股权投资:鉴证功能还是独立受损?

Pre-IPO券商股权投资的经济后果是财务研究领域热点话题,具体到中国,Pre-IP券商股权投资是否损害承销商的独立性引起社会公众极大的关注,本文选取2009~2011年中国IPO的样本进行了初步研究。研究发现,整体上,有券商股权投资的公司其上市前盈余管理程度显著高于其他公司,券商早期入股的公司其盈余管理程度更为明显,有券商股权投资的公司其上市之后会计业绩下滑幅度更大。进一步研究发现,有券商股权投资的公司其承销费显著更高,发行折价的幅度明显更大。这意味着作为金融创新的券商股权投资一定程度上损害了承销商的独立性,进而导致IPO市场融资效率的损害。     

Liver function tests: what is the risk?

Five laboratory assays are commonly called liver function tests (LFTs), although these tests are neither specific to the liver nor true measures of liver function. As a result, alanine aminotransferase (ALT or SGPT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST or SGOT), gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and bilirubin have proven problematic for clinicians and risk selection professionals alike. Further, underwriters and insurance medical directors find these tests difficult to assess because of the lack of data directly relating LFT elevations to mortality outcome. Nonetheless, the tests are frequently encountered, so a strategy for evaluating abnormal results is critical to ensure accurate and fair pricing. This paper reviews basic information on LFTs, available mortality data and the application of this knowledge to the underwriting process.     

Adverse Selection and the Opaqueness of Insurers

While adverse selection problems between insureds and insurers are well known to insurance researchers, few explore adverse selection in the insurance industry from a capital markets perspective. This study examines adverse selection in the quoted prices of insurers' common stocks with a particular focus on the opacity of both asset portfolios and underwriting liabilities. We find that more opaque underwriting lines result in greater adverse selection costs for property-casualty (P-C) insurers. A similar effect is not apparent for life-health (L-H) insurers and we find no effect of asset opaqueness on adverse selection for either L-H or P-C insurers.     

Bought deals: The value of underwriter certification in seasoned equity offerings

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 the certification hypothesis, this study finds a significantly smaller negative stock price reaction around the announcement of bought deals compared to firm commitment issues. Bought deals are further shown to have smaller offer price discounts and smaller underwriting fees, implying superior pricing and thus, higher quality offerings. These findings suggest that investment banks’ underwriting method of choice is informative of issue quality.     

Wanna Dance? How Firms and Underwriters Choose Each Other

We develop and test a theory explaining the equilibrium matching of issuers and underwriters. We assume that issuers and underwriters associate by mutual choice, and that underwriter ability and issuer quality are complementary. Our model implies that matching is positive assortative, and that matches are based on firms' and underwriters' relative characteristics at the time of issuance. The model predicts that the market share of top underwriters and their average issue quality varies inversely with issuance volume. Various cross‐sectional patterns in underwriting spreads are consistent with equilibrium matching. We find strong empirical confirmation of our theory.     

Investment Bank Reputation and the Price and Quality of Underwriting Services

The relation between investment bank reputation and the price and quality of bond underwriting services is studied here. After controlling for endogeneity in issuer–underwriter matching, I find that reputable banks obtain lower yields and charge higher fees, but issuers' net proceeds are higher. These relations are pronounced in the junk‐bond category, in which reputable banks' underwriting criteria are most stringent. These findings suggest that banks' underwriting decisions reflect reputation concerns, and are thus informative of issue quality. They also suggest that economic rents are earned on reputation, and thereby provide continued incentives for underwriters to maintain reputation.     

Underwriting Fees and Shareholder Rights

Do firms’ governance provisions affect their terms of obtaining external financing? We hypothesize that it is more difficult for firms with more restrictions on shareholder rights to raise external equity, and that since analyst coverage is an important part of underwriting services, underwriters would use analyst recommendations to promote issuing firms with weaker shareholder rights more strongly and charge them higher underwriting fees. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that analyst recommendations on issuing firms with weak shareholder rights increase more than those with strong shareholder rights prior to SEOs, and that underwriting spreads are positively related to issuing firms’ shareholder rights as proxied by the G‐index. Furthermore, the effect of shareholder rights on underwriting fees is largely contained in the six provisions in the E‐index.