IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pep/journl/v9y2004i3p1-14.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Optimality of Multi-stage Venture Capital Financing: An Option-Theoretic Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Dubil

    (University of Connecticut)

Abstract

For venture capital firms, facing undiversifiable risks, multi-staged financing is an optimal contract which offers significant risk reduction at a cost of only slightly lower potential return. The optimality does not depend on the presence of moral hazard and agency problems. Our theoretical model of multi-stage financing, largely based on Asian option pricing theory, allows us to compute the risk reduction ratio due to multi-staging. The return on a staged financing plan is equivalent to an exchange of a straight equity stake for that acquired through stochastic averaging over time. We compare standard deviation ratios for staged vs. up-front financings as well as across asset classes. We find that risk mitigation due to multi-staging is significant in and of itself and enough to markedly improve venture capital’s risk-reward ratios relative to alternatives.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Dubil, 2004. "The Optimality of Multi-stage Venture Capital Financing: An Option-Theoretic Approach," Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance, Pepperdine University, Graziadio School of Business and Management, vol. 9(3), pages 1-14, Fall.
    • Handle: RePEc:pep:journl:v:9:y:2004:i:3:p:1-14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jefsite.org/RePEc/pep/journl/jef-2004-09-3-b-dubil.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Ewens & Charles M. Jones & Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, 2013. "The Price of Diversifiable Risk in Venture Capital and Private Equity," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(8), pages 1854-1889.
    2. Turnbull, Stuart M. & Wakeman, Lee Macdonald, 1991. "A Quick Algorithm for Pricing European Average Options," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(3), pages 377-389, September.
    3. Geske, Robert, 1979. "The valuation of compound options," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 63-81, March.
    4. Kemna, A. G. Z. & Vorst, A. C. F., 1990. "A pricing method for options based on average asset values," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 113-129, March.
    5. Wang, Susheng & Zhou, Hailan, 2004. "Staged financing in venture capital: moral hazard and risks," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 131-155, January.
    6. Black, Fischer & Scholes, Myron S, 1973. "The Pricing of Options and Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 637-654, May-June.
    7. Margrabe, William, 1978. "The Value of an Option to Exchange One Asset for Another," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 33(1), pages 177-186, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    2. Asbjørn T. Hansen & Peter Løchte Jørgensen, 2000. "Analytical Valuation of American-Style Asian Options," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(8), pages 1116-1136, August.
    3. Yijuan Liang & Xiuchuan Xu, 2019. "Variance and Dimension Reduction Monte Carlo Method for Pricing European Multi-Asset Options with Stochastic Volatilities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-21, February.
    4. Kwangil Bae, 2019. "Valuation and applications of compound basket options," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(6), pages 704-720, June.
    5. Takahiko Fujita & Masahiro Ishii, 2010. "Valuation of a Repriceable Executive Stock Option," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 17(1), pages 1-18, March.
    6. Mondher Bellalah, 2009. "Derivatives, Risk Management & Value," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 7175, December.
    7. Suresh M. Sundaresan, 2000. "Continuous‐Time Methods in Finance: A Review and an Assessment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1569-1622, August.
    8. Bjork, Tomas, 2009. "Arbitrage Theory in Continuous Time," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 3, number 9780199574742, Decembrie.
    9. Dominique Guegan & Jing Zhang, 2009. "Pricing bivariate option under GARCH-GH model with dynamic copula: application for Chinese market," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-00368336, HAL.
    10. Xueping Wu & Jin Zhang, 1999. "Options on the minimum or the maximum of two average prices," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 3(2), pages 183-204, May.
    11. Dominique Guegan & Jing Zang, 2009. "Pricing bivariate option under GARCH-GH model with dynamic copula: application for Chinese market," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(7-8), pages 777-795.
    12. P. Pellizzari, 1998. "Efficient Monte Carlo Pricing of Basket Options," Finance 9801001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Benhamou, Eric & Duguet, Alexandre, 2003. "Small dimension PDE for discrete Asian options," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 27(11), pages 2095-2114.
    14. Zhang, Jinqing & He, Liang & An, Yunbi, 2020. "Measuring banks’ liquidity risk: An option-pricing approach," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    15. Kung, James J. & Lee, Lung-Sheng, 2009. "Option pricing under the Merton model of the short rate," Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (MATCOM), Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 378-386.
    16. Scholes, Myron S, 1998. "Derivatives in a Dynamic Environment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 350-370, June.
    17. Minqiang Li & Kyuseok Lee, 2011. "An adaptive successive over-relaxation method for computing the Black-Scholes implied volatility," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(8), pages 1245-1269.
    18. Hideharu Funahashi & Masaaki Kijima, 2013. "An Extension of the Chaos Expansion Approximation for the Pricing of Exotic Basket Options　," KIER Working Papers 857, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    19. Hatem Ben-Ameur & Michèle Breton & Pierre L'Ecuyer, 2002. "A Dynamic Programming Procedure for Pricing American-Style Asian Options," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(5), pages 625-643, May.
    20. Rojas-Bernal, Alejandro & Villamizar-Villegas, Mauricio, 2021. "Pricing the exotic: Path-dependent American options with stochastic barriers," Latin American Journal of Central Banking (previously Monetaria), Elsevier, vol. 2(1).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Venture Capital; Options;

    JEL classification:

    • G24 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Investment Banking; Venture Capital; Brokerage
    • M13 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - New Firms; Startups
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing

    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:pep:journl:v:9:y:2004:i:3:p:1-14. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Craig Everett (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bapepus.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.