The advent of new stock markets (the German Neuer Markt, the French Nouveau Marche, the Italian Nuovo Mercato and Nasdaq Europe) has been one of the most important reforms of stock exchanges in Continental Europe in the 1990s. These stock markets aimed at attracting early stage, innovative and...

In this chapter we examine the determinants of the long-run stock price performance of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) on Europe’s new stock markets. We report that the average company that went public on these markets has been a very poor long-term investment. We find that the stock price...

In this chapter we investigate whether the pricing of IPOs on Europe’s new stock market differs from that of IPOs on main market segments. We report a 22.3 percentage point difference in the average first-day return of new market IPOs (34.3%) and the average first-day return of main market...

In this chapter we describe the development of venture capital and new stock markets in Europe. We argue that markets for high-growth stocks offer venture capitalists a valuable exit opportunity for their investments. This allows them to re-invest their money in other start-up companies and may...