Empirical Evidence on IPO-Underpricing

Diploma Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,3, European Business School - International University Schloß Reichartshausen Oestrich-Winkel, language: English, abstract: This paper aims at establishing a link between the average level of initial return of IPO shares, existing underpricing explanations and the dot-com bubble. In years prior to the boom of the new economy, underpricing was explained by various theories, which have extensively been developed since decades. However, in the years 1998 to 2001 IPOs were overly underpriced, leading to assumptions about behavioural aspects and investor irrationality. Analysing a comprehensive dataset of 371 IPOs on the Frankfurter Börse between 1997 and 2007, this paper aims at providing evidence that the observed lower levels of initial returns in recent years can indeed be aligned with existing theories on the basis of rational behaviour of market participants.

Firstly, the IPO process and its major participants will be presented followed by a review of relevant studies on the IPO phenomenon. In the next step, established underpricing theories are recapitulated. A descriptive analysis of the data sample points out the particularities concerning the company and transaction characteristics of the sample firms. In a last step, a regression analysis relates various proxies for information asymmetry to established underpricing theories. It gives reason to believe that the irrationality at the turn of the century has vanished and that underpricing can again be explained by established theories.