IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/acctfi/v43y2003i1p63-85.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unit initial public offerings: Staged equity or signaling mechanism?

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Lee
  • Philip Lee
  • Stephen Taylor

Abstract

We investigate the use of unit (i.e., package) initial public offerings by Australian industrial firms and conclude that their use reflects their role as a signaling mechanism (Chemmanur and Fulghieri, 1997), as distinct from the agency–cost explanation offered by Schultz (1993). From a sample of 394 IPOs between 1976 and 1994, the 66 firms making unit offerings are typically riskier, use less prestigious underwriters and have a lower level of retained ownership than other IPO firms. While these results are also consistent with Schultz's agency cost explanation, other results we report are not. We find no difference in underpricing etween unit IPOs and other IPO firms, nor are there any significant differences in the planned uses of proceeds reported in the prospectus, post–listing failure rates or secondary equity offerings of the type predicted by Schultz. We do however, report evidence consistent with a prediction unique to the signaling explanation. After controlling for the level of ownership retained by insiders, the proportion of firm value sold as warrants is increasing in IPO firms’ riskiness.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Lee & Philip Lee & Stephen Taylor, 2003. "Unit initial public offerings: Staged equity or signaling mechanism?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 43(1), pages 63-85, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:acctfi:v:43:y:2003:i:1:p:63-85
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-629X.00083
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-629X.00083
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-629X.00083?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mazouz, Khelifa & Saadouni, Brahim & Yin, Shuxing, 2008. "The long-term performance of Hong Kong share-only and unit initial public offerings (IPOs)," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 209-228, July.
    2. Jamaani, Fouad & Ahmed, Abdullahi D., 2021. "Modifier effects of country-level transparency on global underpricing difference: New hierarchical evidence," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    3. repec:dau:papers:123456789/2917 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Mazouz, Khelifa & Saadouni, Brahim & Yin, Shuxing, 2008. "Warrants in IPOs: Evidence from Hong Kong," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 539-554, November.
    5. James R. Barth & Min Gu & Jiachen Liu, 2023. "SPACs: An overview and assessment of returns," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 82(2), pages 129-139, March.
    6. Balasingham Balachandran & Sutharson Kanapathippillai & Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti & Michael Theobald & Eswaran Velayutham, 2017. "The issuance of warrants in rights offerings: Agency costs and signaling effects," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 42(4), pages 608-636, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:acctfi:v:43:y:2003:i:1:p:63-85. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aaanzea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.