Offer price, target ownership structure and post-listing liquidity of newly listed firms

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Purpose – Initial public offerings (IPOs) underpricing is a world-wide phenomenon in the stock market. It is generally explained with asymmetric information and risk. The purpose of this paper is to complement these traditional explanations with a theory where investors also worry about the after-market illiquidity that may result from asymmetric information after the IPO. Design/methodology/approach – The model blends such liquidity concerns with adverse selection and risk as motives for underpricing and liquidity. The model's predictions are supported by evidence for 798 French IPOs realized between 1995 and 2008. Using various measures of liquidity, the author finds that expected after-market liquidity and liquidity risk are important determinants of IPO underpricing. Findings – The author finds evidence that less liquid the aftermarket is expected to be, and the less predictable its liquidity, the larger will be the IPO underpricing. Practical implications – The study provides empirical evidence that shares outstanding and author IPO characteristics play a vital role on post-IPO liquidity. According to the results obtained, three IPO characteristics, that is, relative size, blockholder and underpricing of offering have an explanatory for the liquidity and trading activity of the shares outstanding. It should be noted that this explanatory power is much greater before isolating the market effect. Nevertheless, given the evidence to show that these operations are executed during upmarket periods when trading volume is high, the non-exclusion of the market effect may attribute these variables with more explanatory power than they actually possess. Be that as it may, even after eliminating the market effect, their explanatory capacity is still considerable. Originality/value – The author has found that underpricing is negatively related to the breadth of shareholders but positively related to institutional shareholders after the IPO. When a company is underpriced, it is likely, on average, to have a higher breadth of shareholder base and lower concentration of large outside investors.