Prior researches find that advertising is the most common marketing strategy and also one of the most effective way to influence consumers¡¦ purchasing decisions. On the other hand, innovation plays an important role to enhance competitiveness of firms. However, little attention has been paid to the relationship among advertising, innovation and firm values in the existing literature. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of pre-IPO advertising and innovation on the level of IPO underpricing. Furthermore, this study examines whether market states influence the impact of pre-IPO marketing expenditures and innovation on IPO underpricing levels. The empirical results show: (1) without considering market states, pre-IPO advertising expenditures significantly reduce IPO underpricing levels; (2) without considering market states, pre-IPO innovation activities significantly increase IPO underpricing levels; (2) pre-IPO innovation activities significantly increase IPO underpricing levels; (3) pre-IPO advertising expenditures cannot significantly reduce IPO underpricing levels in bull markets; and (4) pre-IPO advertising expenditures can significantly reduce IPO underpricing levels in bear and correction markets; and (5) pre-IPO innovation activities significantly increase IPO underpricing levels in bull, bear and correction markets.

ABSTRACT Ibbotson and Ritter (1995) indicate that there are three anomalies in IPO markets: IPO underpricing, IPO long-run underperformance, and hot-issue market. Contrary to most of the previous studies which focus on IPO underpricing or IPO long-run performance, this dissertation examines the existence of hot-issue phenomenon in Taiwan IPO markets. ¡§Hot-Issue anomaly¡¨ means that cycle exists in both the IPO volume and IPO underpricing. Consequently, issuers tend to issue new equity to the public when faced with high average initial returns of IPOs. Ritter (1984) argues that IPOs in hot markets experience higher initial returns. Moreover, young IPOs experience more underpricing in hot markets. A possible explanation for hot-issue phenomenon is the positive feedback hypothesis: market investors positively react to IPO underpricing. When investors earn initial returns from IPOs, they are more likely to subscribe to future IPOs leading to the fact that issuers tend to issue when previous IPOs are more underpriced. Hot-issue is considered as an anomaly because underpricing or initial return is referred as an indirect cost of issuance. Issuers should try to reduce the extent of underpricing to raise IPO proceeds. From the point of view of maximizing proceeds, previous studies fail to explain the hot-issue anomaly in IPO markets. Ibbotson, Sindelar, and Ritter (1994) show that IPO hot-issue phenomenon exists not only in U.S. market but also in Germany, South Korea, and U.K. markets. To make up this gap, this dissertation first tests if there exists hot-issue anomaly in Taiwan and then examines why hot-issue anomaly exists to provide an explanation to the anomaly. I find that IPO initial return leads IPO issuance. However, issuance of IPOs does not reduce the extent of underpricing of the followed up IPOs. I further show that IPO initial return is not related to the initial return of the followed up ones. The issuance of IPOs cannot be attributed to the information of initial returns of preceding IPOs. Rather, the market information between IPO filing date and IPO issuance date is the cause for the lead-lag relation between IPO initial return and IPO issuance. IPO offer price will fully reflect to the negative recent market return but simply partially to the recent positive market return. Most of the IPO initial return can be explained by the information revealed after offer price has been set implying that the offer price is set efficiently. The large amount of IPO volume following high IPO initial return can be attributed to the positive market reaction to the preceding IPOs instead of the filed IPO pricing of preceding IPOs. Our findings explain the hot-issue anomaly. During hot markets, investors¡¦ excess demand on IPOs leads to high initial returns of IPOs. Faced with investors¡¦ excess demand, issuers attempt to issue IPOs to take advantage of investors¡¦ sentiments to maximize IPO proceeds.

Along with the growth of Taiwan¡¦s capital markets, the public tend to serve stocks as the main investment tool. Underwriting markets are also monitored by investors. Generally, Taiwanese firms¡¦ stocks possess ¡§honeymoon periods¡¨ after they went public, in which the stocks kept gaining prices for consecutive days. Due to the phenomenon, companies tend to went public once the requirements are satisfied. On the other hand, investors are willing to purchase such stocks, thus let the underwriting market prosper. The aspect of initial public offerings (IPOs) is also gaining attention of researchers. This research aims at examining the relation between Taiwanese firms¡¦ IPOs¡¦ initial return and the Monday effect and Intra-month effect. This thesis also tried to discover that whether Taiwanese IPOs possess differences between size and industry groups. The results indicate that Taiwanese IPOs have lower return if issued in Mondays, which is the Monday effect. The reason may be that the closed market in weekends allowed investors to spend more time to search and to analyze information and to hinder themselves from overreaction. In addition, when issuing companies are determining underwriting prices, they tend to serve discount as a risk compensation for the uninformed investors, thus when investors have more time to analyze their investment decisions, the issuing companies need not to discount to induce investors.

Recently, there has been considerable concern with determining underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs). This study utilizes both OLS and quantile regression model to examine whether pre-listing marketing expenditure reduce IPO underpricing using China A-share IPOs data. Our OLS result shows that firm¡¥s marketing expenditure could reduce IPO underpricing significantly that was consist with Luo¡¥s (2008) finding who investigate US IPOs market. With regard to quantile regression results, we find that pre-listing IPO marketing expenditures are significantly associated with lower underpricing for lower-underpricing stocks but with no significant effects for median-, and higher-underpricing stocks. We infer that: for lower-underpricing stocks, the risk premium investors require would be lowered because pre-listing marketing expenditures can help for raising transparency of the firm.

No description available.

There are two opposing views on the role of regulation of financial markets examined in the academic literature. There is a large body of evidence that suggests that the efficiency of capital markets in North America is in large part due to investors’ confidence in the regulatory system. However, the optimal level of regulation is debatable. We investigate several aspects of the regulation of capital markets by exploring effects of changes in listing requirements on exchanges on the quality of firms undertaking initial public offerings and the quality of firms that choose to go public via a reverse merger mechanism. In addition, we show that additional regulation and/or disclosure of trading activies of informed investors in tender offers may be warranted. We show that a gradual increase in listing requirements fails to prevent low quality firms from gaining access to public capital markets. Yet, differences in listing rules on uppers and lower tiers of exchanges create a dual listing regime, which allows higher quality firms to differentiate themselves. We observe migration of most of the reverse merger transactions to the over-the-counter market due to changes in the regulatory environment in 2001. We conclude that regulatory changes had broad negative effects on the reverse mergers market as these pushed reverse merger firms to a less regulated and more opaque marketplace. Separately, we examine the timing of reverse mergers. Our results suggest that two types of reverse mergers follow different timing patterns: private firms go public through merger with financially distressed firms when IPO windows are closed, whereas reverse takeovers in which the participating public company is a going concern are pro-cyclical to aggregate merger waves. Finally, we analyze tender offers over the period from 1993 through 2006 and establish a link between non-public information and informed investors’ strategic behaviour. Our findings call in question the effectiveness of disclosure mechanisms of trading by informed investors. We also note that uninformed traders can use market microstructure tools to expand their information set, thus increasing the speed of incorporation of new information into stock prices and increasing market efficiency. / Finance

Since the burst of the internet bubble there is a great deal of interest in the way investment bank prices and allocates initial public offerings (IPOs). The additional scrutiny and spotlight is also because of the dominance of bookbuilding mechanism, which gives complete discretion in terms of allocation and pricing to underwriters, and the huge amount of money left on the table by the issuers, especially during the internet bubble period. Numerous press stories and law suit by investors and issuers alleged conflicts of interest by investment banks at the expense of issuers and investors. On the basis of scoping study we identified five areas to examine conflicts of interest: laddering, spinning, relationship banking, profit sharing allocation and allocation to affiliated funds. The findings of the systematic review show that very limited research has been done on the areas identified. Moreover, there is almost no evidence available to examine the behaviour of investment banks post internet bubble burst. Likewise, very limited evidence is available from countries other than United States. From whatever limited research has been done in these areas there does seem to be enough evidence to suggest that investment banks have been involved in activities that is in conflict with their responsibilities and duties. There is clear evidence of wrong doing by investment banks in US during the internet bubble period by being involved in spinning, laddering and profit sharing allocations. There is not much evidence available at the moment to charge the underwriters of exploiting issuers and investors through the use of affiliated banks, venture capitalists and mutual funds. There is a great need to examine the behaviour of investment banks not only for the sake of the stability of the financial markets but also for the financial intermediaries themselves as unnecessary regulations undermine the efficient operations of financial markets.

No description available.

The pricing of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) is an area of interest to practitioners and academics alike given the empirical regularity of investors in IPOs making very large first day returns. These first day returns are as a result of share underpricing. Academics have explained the underpricing phenomenon in terms of ex ante uncertainty, namely the risk of pricing, off take and issuing of such shares. In an attempt to predict the degree of the phenomenon much work has been done in linking underpricing to company, issue and market related factors that are known prior to the listing (ex ante as opposed to ex post information). In the case of junior mining companies, underpricing is exacerbated by a lack of financial information making these issues difficult to value since such unseasoned companies have no past earnings history on which to base predictions of future earnings. Given this context, this study identified relevant factors from secondary sources which could be used to proxy the level of ex ante uncertainty and therefore correlate with the degree of underpricing. The analysis firstly sought to ensure that underpricing exists for the issues, market and time period of interest. Secondly the presence of a “hot issue” period (Ritter, 1984), which is exclusive to the natural resources sector, was investigated. Finally the relationship between underpricing and the relevant factors was explored using hypothesis testing about means and regression analysis. It was found that underpricing does indeed exist for junior mining listings on the Toronto Venture Exchange (TSX-V) between 2005-2007. This said no evidence of the “hot issue” period could be found. In terms of linking company, issue and market related factors to the degree of underpricing this study failed to identify any significant predictors. It is argued that junior mining listings on the TSX-V may be a special case since some of these factors have successfully been used, by other researchers, to predict the degree of underpricing of mining IPOs. The fact that junior mining IPO’s listed on the TSX-V show a constant degree of underpricing over time implies that investors do not build market specific factors (market sentiment and commodity price) into the listing price. Rather investors seem to demand a constant degree of underpricing regardless of the market situation to compensate them for the “unknown” exploration risk. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This study investigated the long-run investment performance of 411 South African IPOs during the period 1992 to 2007. Consistent with historical studies, no evidence of abnormal performance was found on a calendar-time approach using the Fama- French (1993) three-factor model. While the long-run performance did not differ materially, factors such as financial and industrial industry classifications were found to impact after-market performance of IPO portfolios. It was found that large new company issuances within the Financials and Industrials categories produced abnormal returns, but on a collective basis there was no evidence of abnormal performance. In particular, a positive relationship was found to exist between book-tomarket ratios and IPO performance in the financial and industrial sectors, but there was scant evidence on a collective basis. Market conditions were found to have an impact on IPO performance. In periods of market buoyancy, IPOs performed well and in periods of market distress, IPOs‟ performance suffered. The implications of this study are that investors, in making decisions on whether or not to invest in new issues, should not expect to make superior returns to the market over a five-year period by investing in IPOs. IPO performance after the five-year period was not part of the scope for this study and may form the basis for future studies. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted