Selling state-owned enterprises to the private sector has become a popular policy for governments all around the world. Chapter 1 provides an historical perspective on privatization, and it describes the objectives and the privatization techniques that have been adopted by many governments since the late 70s. The chapter then focuses on two important issues in the privatization debate, the underpricing of shares and the effect of ownership on performance. It reviews the most significant theoretical and empirical contributions to the analysis of these two issues, and it introduces the questions addressed in the remaining chapters of this dissertation. In Chapter 2 I consider a government that first privatizes a company and then competes for votes against a political opponent. The government's objective is to choose the price of shares and the level of promotional effort to maximize its total net revenues. After the sale of the company to the public there is an election and the two parties announce what expropriation rate they would implement if they win the political competition. I show that in this context it is optimal for the party in power in the first period to actively promote the sale and to underprice the stock with respect to its true value, in order to increase the size of the shareholders' interest group that will vote for the party announcing a low expropriation rate. In Chapter 3 I estimate the long-term impact of the British privatization program of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, on the government's finances. For a large sample of British companies that were privatized in the years 1979 to 1994, regression analysis shows no effect of change in ownership on company's gross profitability. This information is then combined with estimates of all relevant costs (implicit and explicit) and revenues for each sale, to assess the long-term effect of the privatization policies on the government's net worth. The results show that "Selling the State" generated considerable losses for the British Government. / Ph. D.

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

When a company decides to sell their shares to the public for the first time it is called an initial public offering. For quite some time, the literature on the subject has come to the conclusion that the companies going public often undervalue their share price prior to the initial public offering resulting in an abnormal positive return on the first trading day, also known as initial public offering underpricing.  This thesis aims to study whether initial public offering underpricing occurred in the Swedish markets during the selected time period of 2000-2022. The thesis also seeked to find whether there was a significant difference in underpricing depending if the company was listed on OMX Stockholm or First north growth market. Further, with the help of previous research on the topic, a few independent variables were retrieved and later regressed against the initial return on the first trading day and thus seeing if these variables explains if a company will see an increase in the share price on the first trading day or not. The independent variables collected were age of the company at the time of the initial public offering, deal size, the market the company was listed on and lastly the year the company was listed on the stock exchange. The study concluded that there was a significant underpricing in Swedish initial public offerings during the studied time period with an average first day initial return of 12.56%. However, the thesis further concluded that neither of the independent variables studied had a significant effect on the initial return on the first trading day. Neither could the thesis conclude that there was a significant difference in underpricing between the two studied markets, although, the sample from OMX Stockholm saw an average underpricing of 11.09% whilst first north saw an average underpricing of 13.79%.

The IPO market in Sweden has been on the rise and has had years of record in number of companies that has gone public. The phenomenon of underpricing has been analyzed for years in different markets as well as in different time periods. This thesis analyzes the factors affecting underpricing during the years 2017 to 2022 on the markets: Nasdaq Stockholm, First North Stockholm and Spotlight. Additionally, an investigation of the underpricing between the industries have been done by using several control variables to determine the differences in underpricing between the industries. Various tests use a sample size of 366 companies to determine if the variables have a statistical significance. The results show that the average IPO during the time period is underpriced by approximately 9%.

The closing price first day of trading has historically been found to exceed the offer price set in IPOs, implying that many issuing firms tend to leave money on the table in their IPO. This thesis examines the level of IPO underpricing in Sweden using unique data of IPO transactions on the largest Swedish stock exchanges during 2010-2016. It further discusses the valuation difficulties using the most common valuation methods for firms exhibiting characteristics commonly shared by technological firms. Univariate and multivariate tests confirm the existence of underpricing on Swedish stock exchanges during the period of study. Firms in the technological sector are found to experience both high average levels of underpricing and great variance in initial returns, suggesting potential difficulties valuing technological firms. Robust univariate tests do however not yield a significant result of greater variance in initial returns compared to rest of the sample. By using regression analysis, I find capital raised relative to market capitalization to have significant negative effect on initial returns.

The paper examines the determinants of stabilization and its impact on the aftermarket prices. We use a unique dataset to relax several assumptions in the stabilization literature. We find that underwriters support IPO prices shortly after listing, particularly in cold markets and when demand is weak. We also show that stabilized IPOs are more common amongst reputable underwriters. This finding suggests that stabilization may be used as a mechanism to protect the underwriter’s reputation. It also implies that reputable underwriters may possess private information and price IPOs closer to their true values (i.e., higher than those indicated by the weak premarket demand). Consistent with the latter view, we show that stabilized IPOs are offered at higher prices and suffer less underpricing than those indicated by the premarket demand, firm characteristics and market-wide conditions. The post-IPO performance results indicate that stabilized IPOs are unlikely to be mispriced as their prices do not exhibit any significant reversal after the initial stabilization period. We conclude that stabilization may be superior to underpricing as it protects investors from purchasing overpriced IPOs, benefits issuers by reducing the total money “left on the table” and enhances the overall profitability of underwriters.

[pt] O objetivo deste trabalho é verificar a ocorrência do underpricing no mercado brasileiro e analisar sua relação com fatores internos, externos da empresa e da oferta. O underpricing é considerado uma anomalia de mercado, pois proporciona para os investidores ganhos elevados com a mesma composição de risco. Para as empresas, a ocorrência do underpricing no IPO compromete a eficiência da oferta, uma vez que reduz o montante arrecadado. Este fenômeno foi estudado nas décadas de 80 e 90, porém somente na última década estudos começaram a ser realizados com foco no mercado brasileiro. Desta forma, foi observada a ocorrência do underpricing no mercado brasileiro em uma amostra composta por 30 IPO entre os anos de 2010 a 2016, e para analisar a relação dos fatores foi aplicado a análise de cluster aliada ao teste não paramétrico de Wilcoxon. / [en] The objective of this paper is to verify the occurrence of underpricing in the Brazilian market and to analyze its relationship with internal, external factors of the company and the offer. Underpricing is considered a market anomaly as it provides investors with high returns with the same risk composition. For companies, the occurrence of underpricing in the IPO compromises the efficiency of the offer, since it reduces the amount collected. This phenomenon was studied in the 80 s and 90 s, but only in the last decade studies began to be carried out focusing on the Brazilian market. Thus, underpricing in the Brazilian market was observed in a sample composed of 30 IPO between the years 2010 and 2016, and to analyze the relationship of factors was applied to the cluster analysis allied to the Wilcoxon nonparametric test.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:32:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ligia Ferraci.pdf: 1333034 bytes, checksum: 7872150631d4eb40ece4b912f3149334 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-08-11 / Fundo Mackenzie de Pesquisa / The capital market in Brazil has experienced, especially from the year 2003 to 2009,several changes and significant growth due to the global economic and financial environment as well as internal factors highlighting the regulatory improvements, development and credibility. As a result of this growth, we have observed a large number of companies that became public especially from 2006 on. The stock price behavior during this period has showed significant short-term positive returns, even when compared to Ibovespa index rates (Sao Paulo s Stock Exchange).Some potential explanations for such events may be the stock issue below the correct price (underpricing), informational asymmetry, the winner's curse (Rock ,1986) or other market anomalies discussed in the financial theory. This research focused the study in two possible factors: (1) issue below the correct price, known in financial literature for underpricing, and (2) the risk and return function as explanatory for stock returns in IPO issued from 1st, 30.th, 60.th, 90.th and 180.th days considering the sample of companies which registered initial public offerings (IPO) from 2003 until December 2009 listed on the Bovespa and the Securities Commission (CVM) and which had daily close available prices. The objective for this study was to verify the existence of underpricing in the IPO process and whether the observed abnormal returns can be explained by the risk and return function. As for the conclusion, in line with results of other recent researches for Brazilian stock market, were observed positive returns in the short term and negative returns for long term concluding that underpricing is a practice adopted in IPO s in Brazil as well as in other developed capital markets. / O mercado de capitais no Brasil experimentou,especialmente entre os anos de 2003 a 2009,muitas mudanças e crescimento acentuado em razão do ambiente econômico-financeiro mundial, bem como de fatores internos de ordem regulatória que propiciaram seu amadurecimento, desenvolvimento e credibilidade.Como consequência deste crescimento,observou-se um grande número de empresas que abriram seu capital mais acentuadamente a partir do ano de 2006.O retorno das ações durante esta periodo mostrou valores significativos a curto prazo, mesmo se comparados aos índices médios de mercado da Bolsa de Valores de São Paulo-Bovespa. Algumas explicações possíveis para tais eventos podem ser o lançamento abaixo do preço correto (underpricing), assimetria informacional, maldição do vencedor (winner s curse), anomalias de mercado, etc. Esta pesquisa centralizou o foco de estudo em dois possíveis fatores: (1) lançamento abaixo do preço correto, denominado na literatura financeira de underpricing, e (2) a relação entre risco e retorno como explicativa para retornos das ações lançadas em IPO a partir do 1.º, 30.º, 60.º, 90.º e 180.º dias da emissão considerando a amostra das empresas que registraram ofertas iniciais (IPO) a partir de 2003 até dezembro de 2009 listadas na Bovespa e na Comissão de Valores Mobiliários (CVM) que possuíam cotações diárias de fechamento disponíveis.O objetivo do trabalho foi verificar a existência underpricing no processo de abertura de capital e se os retornos anormais verificados podem ser explicados pela relação risco e retorno.A título de conclusão e em consonância com resultados de outras pesquisas recentes para o mercado brasileiro, foram encontrados retornos positivos no curto prazo e negativos no longo prazo concluindo-se que o underpricing é uma prática adotada nos processos de IPO no Brasil assim como ocorre em outros mercados de capitais desenvolvidos.

The initial public offering (IPO) underpricing phenomenon has frequently been noticed and generally is accepted as a puzzle in financial economics. Some of the new theories, such as behavioural finance, take the underpricing puzzle as one important form of evidence. However, some aspects of IPO underpricing have not yet been fully documented and discussed in the existing literature. This thesis tries to contribute in the following three specific areas. First, we focus on the time series properties of the level of underpricing of IPO shares and document the IPO market in the Hong Kong market from 1999 to 2005. In the data sample, strong autocorrelation within the level of underpricing has been discovered. Evidence suggests the initial selling volume plays an important role in the relationship. The links between underpricing and clustering of IPOs within different industries are weak, suggesting the reasons for underpricing are related to the market liquidity rather than to the industry-specific risk characteristics. Second, we investigate the underwriting networks to explore the relationship between underwriting business and IPO related puzzles. We find that in repeated IPOs, underwriters build up reputation and accumulate knowledge of their underwriting services. One of the great advantages of the top ranked underwriters is their relationship networks with other underwriters and institutional investors. We perform a careful examination of the underwriter syndicate and investigate the relationship of the structure of the syndicate in respect of IPO performance. Moreover, the pattern of distribution in the size of syndicates is identified and is found to be significantly related to the IPO performance. The research shows that the perspective from the underwriter syndicate is not only interesting, also necessary to understand IPOs. Third, we analyse the coordination problem in the IPO. In the research, we consider the auction method as a one-stage selling and the bookbuilding method as a two-stage selling method. The model suggests that the relationship between the underpricing level and the quality of IPO shares is non-monotone. This implication is consistent with empirical observations. In addition, regarding the issuers' proceeds in the IPOs, the auction method is better than the bookbuilding method in both noisy and noisy vanishing equilibria. The bookbuilding method may be helpful in other ways, such as maintaining liquidity or price support in secondary market. By studying liquidity, business networks and the coordination problem, the thesis does not only complement the existing research by providing unique explanations for the IPO underpricing and other related puzzles, but also opens some interesting venues for future research.

Bakgrund och problem: Underprissättning har länge studerats, och fenomenet har konstaterats förekomma i en absolut majoritet av de studerade länderna. Trots detta råder ingen konsensus kring vilka teorier som förklarar underprissättning. Teorier för underprissättning är i huvudsak indelade i teorier baserade på symmetrisk eller asymmetrisk information, och de empiriska resultat som presenterats målar en spretig bild med resultat som går både emot och ger stöd för flera teorier. Mot bakgrund av den motstridighet som föreligger för teoretiska förklaringar till underprissättning har vi valt att studera ämnet noggrannare. Syfte: Studiens syfte är att, med utgångspunkt i motsägande empiriska resultat, utreda vilka olika teoretiska incitament som kan förklara underprissättning för att skapa en bättre förståelse för den komplexitet som föreligger inom teoribildningen för underprissättning. Metod: Vi applicerar i studien en kvantitativ forskningsmetodik där vi, i linje med internationella referensstudier, väljer att använda en multipel regressionsanalys med minstakvadrat-metoden för att kunna testa vilka teorier som är applicerbara för att förklara underprissättning. Vi approximerar teorierna via variabler med tillhörande hypoteser för att mäta dess individuella och ackumulerade effekt på underprissättning. Via hypotesprövning möjliggör vi en koppling mellan det statistiska resultatet och respektive teori. Slutsats: Studiens resultat stödjer såväl teorier baserade på symmetrisk som asymmetrisk information vilket illustrerar komplexiteten i fenomenet underprissättning. Med utgångspunkt i resultaten av den statistiska modellen förs en analys där teorier frikopplats från symmetri respektive asymmetri, och istället analyserats simultant. Denna analys presenterar en alternativ syn på teori kring underprissättning, där teorier tillhörande symmetrisk respektive asymmetrisk information inte är ömsesidigt uteslutande, vilket introducerar ett nytt sätt att se på teoretiska förklaringar för underprissättning. / Background and problem: Underpricing has been subject to studies for many years, and the phenomena have been observed on a vast majority of studied countries. Despite the fact that studies have been conducted, there is no consensus as to which theories might best explain underpricing. Theories explaining underpricing are mainly divided into either symmetric or asymmetric information, and the empirical results presented testifies to the theoretical discrepancy, with support for and against several theories. The theoretical discrepancy is the main reason as to why we choose to closer examine the phenomena. Purpose: The purpose of this study is, based upon contradictory empirical results, to investigate as to which different theoretical incentives can explain IPO underpricing in order to create a better understanding of the complexity regarding theory for IPO underpricing. Methodology: In the study we apply a quantitative research method in which we, similar to international reference studies, use a multiple regression analysis with an ordinary least squares approach in order to test which theories are applicable in order to explain underpricing. We approximate the theories using variables with belonging hypotheses to quantify the variables individual and accumulated effect on underpricing. Using hypothesis testing we enable a connection between the statistical results and theories explaining underpricing. Conclusions: The study’s result support both theories based upon symmetric and asymmetric information which illustrates the complexity of the phenomenon of underpricing. Based on the statistical results the authors conduct an analysis in which theories are discarded from the context of symmetric and asymmetric information and are instead analyzed simultaneously. This analysis presents an alternative view of underpricing theories, in which theories belonging to symmetric as well as asymmetric information no longer are mutually excluding, which introduces a new approach to theoretical explanations for IPO underpricing.