The topic of IPO spinning is one that has not received much attention in the recent past. Amidst the recent financial crisis we have experienced the IPO market became relatively quiet. However, there is a large consensus that the IPO market may become much more active in the near future and it seems like an appropriate time to look at an issue that may again surface. We examined the article “A New Look at an Old Trick: IPO Spinning” from The Wall Street Journal. This article gives a brief outline of what IPO spinning is, a look at one of the more high profile cases of Frank Quattrone, and provides some evidence of the effects it has from a study by Xiaoding Liu and Jay Ritter.
First, we will look at what IPO spinning actually entails. Very simply, IPO spinning is the selling of shares in an initial public offering at a price lower than the demand would imply. At first glance it may appear to just be an error in the pricing, however the motives for IPO spinning run deeper. If IPO spinning is occurring, the investment bank involved in under-pricing the shares will set aside a number of shares for favored executives in hopes of garnering their future business. The idea of efficient markets implies that the shares will not remain undervalued for long, and in fact those individuals holding the under-priced shares will reap large benefits when the market restores them to their fair value. Thus IPO spinning results in very happy executives looking very favorably towards an investment bank when selecting one for their own company. However, another result is a smaller amount of capital raised by the now public company.
The study by Xiaoding Liu and Jay Ritter sheds further light on why an investment banker may engage in spinning. Their...
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...ines and/or jail time could be effective, as they are presently unclear. Finally, as this essentially presents a principal-agent problem more active involvement of boards of directors in selecting an investment bank or requiring multiple underwrites would help to ensure that the company and shareholders well-being is at the forefront of decision making.
It is important that people are aware of this issue and its consequences now before it becomes a prevalent practice again in the issuance of initial public offerings. IPO spinning is a practice that is detrimental to both corporations and their shareholders, all for the benefit of investment banks and certain executives. Hopefully, the IPO market will indeed become much more active again, and when it does companies receive the proceeds they are due and shareholders can realize the full value of their investments.
Jordan Belfort is famous for his crooked way of earning his millions as a stockbroker on Wall Street. Even Belfort started at the bottom, on his first day in Wall Street he was told he was “lower than pond scum”(Belfort 1). After writing a book about his happenings on Wall Street, we’ve seen the
Ponzi schemes are a continuing problem in the investment world and can only be stopped if the Securities and Exchange Commission does better safe guarding investors’ money. This paper will address Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme and how he was able to steal billions of dollars from investors. The reasons why the SEC responded so slowly to Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and what can be done in the future to make sure another Ponzi scheme of this magnitude does not happen again. Also included in this paper will be examples of good and bad leadership theories.
Weiner, Eric J. “What Goes Up: The Uncensored History of Modern Wall Street as Told by the Bankers, Brokers, CEOs, and Scoundrels who Made it Happen”. Little, Brown and Company. pp. 188–192. Print.
In 1919, Charles “Get Rich Quick” Ponzi began redeeming coupons obtained overseas for between 100 to 300 percent profit. The investors in his plan were promised 40 percent profit on their investment within 3 months (Hagan, 2011). Word quickly spread about the money-making opportunity and Ponzi found himself with more investors than he could handle. He paid the early investors with money obtained from later investors, creating a situation that simply couldn’t be sustained.
Treynor, Jack L and Dean LeBaron. "Insider Trading: Two Comments." Financial Analysts Journal May/June 2004: 10-12.
The Goldman Sachs Inc is a Wall Street’s titan that was able to survive during a financial crisis as a result of deceiving its clients. During the financial crisis it was charged for deceiving its clients for having sold to them mortgage securities that had been designed secretly by John Paulson’s hedge-fund firm. After designing the securities John made a killing betting for the collapse of the housing market. But Goldman denied the securities and Drexel Burnham who was carrying out investigations succumbed as a result of criminal insider trading. Due to that the charges the firm was to undergo were unfounded and Goldman fought to defend its reputation. Civil charges against Goldman and Fabrice Tourre which was one of Goldman’s star traders marked one of the major attacks that the government made on Wall Street. According to Roben & Paula (2010) the deals that the company had made are believed to have caused the financial crisis that was experienced by the nation as well as the whole world.
The economy is always changing, and new ideas continue to be created, tested, and integrated into the financial world. Before World War II, wealthy families owned most companies and businesses. The families, or select wealthy individuals, dominated the economy and the rest of the population had little to no involvement in it. Takeovers, or buyouts of other companies were done in small scales, because the families lacked the funding to takeover larger companies. However, after the War the opportunities to participate in the economy slowly expanded. As the American communities began to recover, the economy slowly began to prosper once again. People began to invest more in companies, and buy shares in larger corporations, which allowed them to have some control over the management’s decisions. The old notion that companies were mostly family owned began to fade out; the owners were growing old and wanted to “avoid estate taxes and retain family control”. This left two options for them: either to make their family corporation in an initial public offering (IPO), or to have a larger company takeover. Neither of these options allowed the family to maintain complete control over their business. When Henry Kravis, Jerome Kohlberg, and George Roberts, began their careers in economics, they slowly began to utilize their own ideas and strategies, and eventually formed their own company. They reintroduced something called the leveraged buyout (LBO), a practice sparsely utilized by investors in the 1950’s, which later became the most popular form of takeover during the time. This buyout became the “third option” for the previously family owned companies to continue owning the business, but there were many other aspects included. These three...
In previous years the big financial institutions that are “too big to fail” have come to realize that they can “cheat” the system and make big money on it by making poor decisions and knowing that they will be bailed out without having any responsibly for their actions. And when they do it they also escape jail time for such action because of the fear that if a criminal case was filed against any one of the so called “too big to fail” financial institutions it...
Having a low P/E ratio with respect to the rest of the market, and the replacement cost of the firm being greater than its book value (argument 3), there is a good chance that the current stock price and the proposed offering price are too low. Although long-term debt is a better financing choice, a few of the drawbacks are pointed out. Debt holders claim profit before equity. holders, so the chances that profits may be lower than expected. increases risk to equity, may reduce or impede stock value. However, the snares are still a bit snare.
Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) are common ways for small companies to grow and expand by increasing their availability of capital. The Initial Public Offering started seeing a strong increase in popularity in the late 1990's. As a result of the growing popularity resulting in the dot com explosion, the term "IPO" became a household name. In order to understand how IPOs work, its best to first know how IPOs are created.
In particular, startups conform to a set of formalized, ritualistic practices in order to obtain venture capital (VC) funding during the “seed” phase. Almost paradoxically, new companies are regarded as a kernel of innovation and invention in the economy and yet they seem to emulate each others’ routines in the pursuit of early investment, decoupled from the actual products or services they plan to sell to the
With the help of Madoff’s father, a retired accountant, the company attracted investors and scored an amazing client list. "Madoff Investment Securities” grew famous for its reliable annual returns of ten p...
This particular kind of scheme has been around for a long time dating back the 1920's. They are fraudulent investment operations , operated by a person or an organization, they promise significantly high return rates to investors to draw them in. They are able to pays returns to investors from new capital paid to the operators by new investors, rather than from proceeds obtained by the operator. The scheme was named after Charles Ponzi , who became notorious for using the technique in 1920's. Ponzi's became the first scheme to be widely known across America despite other schemes being done before, because the staggering number of money and people he defrauded. Ponzi's original scheme was based on the arbitrage of international reply coupon however, he soon redirected investors' money to make payments to initial investors and himself. A wide variety of investment vehicles or strategies, usually legitimate, have become the basis of Ponzi schemes.For example, Hedge funds which can degenerate into ponzi schemes if they unexpectedly lose money or fail to properly earn the returns promised or expected by investors. The promoter might decide to fabricate fals...
The essentials of IPOing in Japan are the same as they in the U.S. A company must select an underwriter to take charge of their IPO, that underwriter will then oversee the pricing, quantity, and actual sale of the stock. Once the sale is complete the proceeds will be transferred to the issuer. Stock listed on Japanese exchanges are divided into sections. The first two sections make up what are called the “Main Markets”, this is where the leading large and second tier Japanese and foreign companies are listed. The first of the two sections is especially view as top market for its size, liquidity, and the volume of foreign investors (Japan Exchange Group), while the second is for medium sized companies. The third section is called the Market of The High-growth and Emerging Stocks or (MOTHERS), a trading market for companies with high growth potential. What
Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex, he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in restitution to any swindled stock buyers of his brokerage firm. Though his lavish spending and berserk party lifestyle was consumed by excessive greed, he displayed both positive and negative aspects of business communications.