Even if the competitiveness of the Canadian securities market is a central argument in the ongoing debate related to the proposal of a single securities commission, the exact level and the evolution of this market are largely undocumented. The numerous changes that modified the structure of the...

Private placements provided by institutional or individual accredited investors are becoming an important financing tool for small public firms worldwide. However, private placement issuers offer, on average, poor returns. We explain this puzzle using 2,987 traditional private placements by...

Small Canadian listed firms issue private offerings more often than public offerings. We analyze the way the firms discriminate between competing selling mechanisms to minimize their issuance costs. We examine a sample of 799 private placements (PPs) and 469 seasoned equity offerings (SEOs)...

We examine whether risk, timing or mispricing hypotheses can explain the underperformance of private and public equity issuers, in Canada, where both categories share several common characteristics. Adding an investment risk factor to the TFPM reduces, but does not eliminate, the...

In this paper, we empirically investigate Canadian initial public offerings (IPOs) to provide one case on the international evidence on the long-run performance of IPOs. Specifically, we examine whether the choice of a performance measurement methodology directly determines both the size and...

Several governments have designed tax incentive programs to promote small business finance, yet evidence of their efficiency is very scarce. This article analyzes the QBIC program, introduced in Quebec to help capitalize SME. Individual investors in holding companies that finance one or more...

Some analysts and policy makers consider that the growth of New Technology Based Firms (NTBF) is impeded by an insufficient supply of capital. In Canada, as in other jurisdictions, the public authorities have interceded to fill this equity gap by increasing the supply of funds. However, several...

Canadian listed firms issue private offerings more often than public offerings. Yet the issuing cost of private investments in public equity (PIPEs) has neither been analyzed nor compared with the cost of conventional seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). We examine a sample of 2,108 PIPEs and 1,990...

In Canada, a venture stock market lists micro-capitalization firms that are at a pre-revenue stage, and competes with both formal and informal venture capital (VC). This market provides a higher rate of return and is able to provide seven times more new listings to the main exchange than the VC...