Politically Connected Venture Capitalists in China

We examine how venture capitalists and the firms they back utilize network-based strategies in China. Analyzing a manually collected data set of venture capitalists with political ties, we find that firms backed by politically connected venture capitalists are more likely to obtain approval for initial public offerings (IPOs), their time from venture capital investment to IPO approval is shorter. They also exhibit higher IPO offering prices and lower underpricing, and consequently deteriorating long-term post-IPO stock performance. By exploiting a unique regulatory change, we show that venture capitalists’ political connections had less IPO applications withdrawn during the 2013 financial inspection period. We also find that firms backed by politically connected venture capitalists have higher levels of earnings management, are more often mentioned in newspaper articles concerning substantial operating performance declines and are more often accused of illegal information disclosures quickly after the IPO. Finally, politically connected venture capitalists can obtain higher investment returns and attract more fund flows after successful IPOs. Our findings are robust to several robustness tests and suggest that political relationships are valuable for this important group of financial intermediaries in transitional China.