Underwriting and Underpricing Essay Example

Underwriting and Underpricing Essay Underwriting spread represents the net proceeds that the underwriter will realize from the investment. It is the difference between the price per share that is paid to an issuing corporation by an underwriter or underwriting group, and the public offering price that the underwriter offers to the public. While traditionally the underwriting spread was viewed as compensation for underwriting the issue, it now has been introduced as an incentive fee where it act as bonus for investment bank when they performance better than expected.There has been evidence of clustering of spreads internationally, in the US spread is clustered at 7%( Chen+Ritter 2000), in Hong Kong 95% of fees are clustered at 2. 5%( torstia 2003) and in Europe fees range from 3-4%. In general, the more clustering presented in a country, the smaller the spread, vice versa. Furthermore, Esho et al (2004) analyzed the underwriting spread in Euro market found out that there is a positive and direct relationship between the fee charged by the investment banks and the reputation of the investment bank. (link to underpricing Underpricing refers to the first trading day closing price typically exceeds price at which the shares were offered to the public. Over 20 years, researchers investigated the underpricing puzzle associated with initial public offerings (IPOs). Ibboston1975, Ibbostson and Jaffe 1975 and Ritter 1984, among others, all document convincing evidence that initial public offerings are, on average underpriced. There are sufficient evidence of underpricing in UK (increase over time, from 3. 8% to 19%, Chambers and Dimson 2009), USA (40% between 1999-2003) and internationally(gt;15%).Visas offering in March 2008 is a good example of how IPOs are strategically underpriced. Although the IPO of Visa was an almost certain success, the price was kept at a low $44. As buyers ran in, the stock jumped to $69 and, although it fell back to $56. 40 by the close, there was a 28. 4% underpricing, thus lea ving a huge amount of the issuer’s money on the table. However, compared to the overpricing Facebook 2012 which made investors unhappy and damage the bank’s reputation, it can contribute to the reason why underwriters underprice the shares. Therefor it is clear that both underpricing and underwriting spread are costs for the issuer.Chen and Ritter (2000) explained the cost, by stating that underwriting spread was the direct compensation for IBs underwriting the issue and the level of underpricing was an indirect compensation. Smith (1986) also argued that the issuer seeks to maximize the issuer proceeds when it sells securities in an underwritten issue, and is not separately concerned about the underwriting spread or the offer price. Although underpricing and spread are both costs to issuers, issuers still consider the underwriting spread and underpricing together in an IPO based on the following reasons.The issuer’s objective is to minimize the underpricing and spread costs associated with its IPO of its common equity. More concerted effort by the underwriter or the choice of underwriters could reuce the underpricing costs associated with the offering. For instance, banks that specialize in underwriting firms from certain industries, or reputational investment banks may provide greater certification value for firm’s IPO and hence reduce its underwriting costs. In return, such banks could be expected to demand a higher spread as compensation.The spread could also be a function of the risk associated with the security and the size of the offering among other factors. If we consider the spread and underpricing from the underwriter’s view, according to the principal-agent theory, underwriter faces a trade off between the level of underpricing and the fee. This is because if they underprice they face less risk of not being able to sell the issue, but the fee can be dependent on the value of the issue. This shows there is a trade off between spread and underpricing.And the theory suggests the issuer should delegate the decision of deciding the fee and the level of underpricing to the underwriter so they can balance the costs. Because the issuers do not have enough information, do not actually decide. This view can be supported by early studies focus on asymmetric information, which is one of the reasons of underpricing. Baron (1982) argues that asymmetric information exists between underwriters(better informed) and the issuers(less informed), therefore, underwriters are able to price new issues below the market equilbrium to reduce the probability that they will absorb losses due to unsold shares.Another theory which is the efficient contract hypothesis, whereby banks do not compete on the fee/spread, this is fixed, but compete on other quality variables such as underpricing certification and reputation. This once again highlights there is a relationship between spread and underpricing, as if spread is fixed , underpricing is a means for competing against other underwriters. Evidence of this was found by Honsen (2001) where____ issues where spread was fixed at 7%, there was a higher variation of underpricing, suggesting underwriters were competing on underpricing as they were not on the spread charged.Both principal-agent theory and efficient contract hypothesis showed evidence that there is negative correlation between spread and underpricing. However, Kim et al. found out that there is strong evidence that over the long term, underpricing and underwriting spreads are positively related. In particular, low-quality issuers are charged both higher underwriting spread and initial returns as compared to high-quality issuers. This was specifically prominent in low quality issuers who were charged fee of 7. 3% and underpricing of 45. 21%, whilist high quality issuers were charged fees of 7. 39% and underpricing of 18. 92%. This suggests a complementary relationship between spread and underpr icing particularly for low quality issuers. However, Yeoman(2001) suggested net proceeds maximisation theory, whereby the spread and underpricing are substitutes and negatively related. The found evidence of this in his research of IPOs from 1988 to 1933, where there are trade offs that the underwriter must decide between.This was further supported by Ljungquist(2003) who also found a negative relationship between spread and underpricing and therefore as initial returns increased the spread decrease and vice versa. Therefore, there is mixed evidence on ____initial returns and underwriting spreads in IPOs are complements or substitutes, ___evidence found of both a positive and negative effect. However, it is clear that there is a strong relationship returns, that must be managed by both issuers and underwriters.