Does Investors’ Information‐acquisition Ability Affect IPO Underpricing? Evidence from a Quasi‐natural Experiment

Initial public offering (IPO) underpricing, driven by information asymmetry, is a prevalent and serious global phenomenon. In addition to the influence of information providers such as IPO firms, investors’ ability to acquire information may also significantly affect IPO underpricing. We investigate the impact of investors’ information‐acquisition ability on IPO underpricing, using Google's withdrawal as an exogenous shock. On 23 March 2010, Google unexpectedly announced the withdrawal of its search business from mainland China. As Google was the primary search engine used by investors in mainland China to access foreign information, its withdrawal significantly impaired investors’ ability to search for and acquire such information. Our findings show that firms engaged in foreign trade experience a significant increase in IPO underpricing following Google's withdrawal, compared to firms not engaged in foreign trade. This effect is more pronounced for firms with lower information‐disclosure quality in their IPO prospectuses, those exhibiting higher complexity, those hiring lower‐reputation intermediaries, those with lower institutional ownership, those with a greater need for investors to acquire foreign information, and those where investors have less alternative access to foreign information. Our findings suggest that investors’ information‐acquisition ability significantly affects IPO underpricing, thus contributing to the literature on the determinants of IPO underpricing and extending the literature on the economic consequences of internet information acquisition to the IPO field.