Non-US firms frequently pay a substantial premium to have a US bank lead their initial public offering of equity, even when the issuing firm is not seeking a listing on a US exchange. We provide evidence that this decision reflects an expectation that US banks deliver a higher quality bundle of...

We develop the implications of the observation that entrepreneurs can affect, to some extent at least, the level of underpricing in their firms’ Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) by, for example, choosing highly reputable investment bankers as underwriters. We argue that entrepreneurs can, and...

We examine the relation between firm value and managerial incentives in a sample of 1487 US firms in 1992-1997, for which the separation of ownership and control is complete. Unlike previous studies, we employ a measure of relative performance which compares a firm’s actual Tobin’s Q to the...

We study the role of underwriter compensation in mitigating conflicts of interest between companies going public and their investment bankers. Making the bank’s compensation more sensitive to the issuer’s valuation should reduce agency conflicts and thus underpricing (Baron (1982); Biais,...

By 1999, close to 80% of non-US IPOs were marketed using bookbuilding methods. We study whether the recent introduction of this technology by US banks and their inclusion in non-US IPO syndicates has promoted efficiency in primary equity markets. We analyse both direct and indirect costs...

This paper uses clinical evidence to show how the German system of corporate control and governance is both more active and more hostile than has previously been suggested. It provides a complete breakdown of ownership and takeover defence patterns in German listed companies and finds highly...

We examine the costs and benefits of the global integration of initial public offering (IPO) markets associated with the diffusion of U.S. underwriting methods in the 1990s. Bookbuilding is becoming increasingly popular outside the United States and typically costs twice as much as a fixed-price...

We present evidence that firms attempting IPOs learn from the experience of their contemporaries. These information spillovers affect revisions in offer terms and the decision whether to carry through with an offering. The evidence also supports the argument that IPOs are implicitly bundled as a...

Theoretical asset pricing models routinely assume that investors have heterogeneous information. We provide direct evidence of the importance of information asymmetry for asset prices and investor demands using plausibly exogenous variation in the supply of information caused by the closure or...

We test under what circumstances boards discipline managers and whether such interventions improve performance. We exploit exogenous variation due to the staggered adoption of corporate governance laws in formerly Communist countries coupled with detailed ‘hard’ information about the...