In digital finance markets, investors can withdraw their non-binding bids within a cooling-off period. As the bids are visible online, we argue that this option can be used to manipulate the information available to investors. Previous research indeed shows that early bids attract later investors and trigger information cascades, thereby enhancing the chances of success of the offerings. Using a dataset of 3564 investment lines, we observe frequent (10.2%) investment withdrawals before the end of the offerings. Platform members invested in 64% and later withdrew from 30% of the offerings listed in their portal, being 1.85 times more likely to withdraw than the average crowdfunding investor. We document that their investments take place predominantly in low-quality offerings and influence the campaign dynamics, increasing the number of subsequent bids.

This paper investigates the increase in underwriting fees for UK SEOs since the beginning of the financial crisis in mid-2007. We develop and test a number of hypotheses related to the role of institutional shareholders and underwriters involved in the issuing process. We find that the rise in fees is related to the strengthening of the relative negotiating position of a specific underwriter in comparison to a specific issuer and to the growing influence of institutional shareholders with short-term investment horizons. Our evidence suggests that there may be reasonable grounds for considering potential conflicts of interest due to the dual role of institutional shareholders as investors and sub-underwriters. On the other hand, the ownership size of large shareholders and the reputation of underwriters have a moderating effect on fees, while the nationality of the institutional shareholders, the concentration of the investment bank industry and the experience of corporate issuers are not related to underwriting fees.

This paper studies the impact of regulation on IPO markets using historical data. Regulatory interventions have different effects on the development of public equity markets under different conditions. Studying the whole population of 879 Italian IPOs from the unification of Italy (1861) through the present, we find that tightening regulatory changes improve IPO survival rates. In contrast, easing of regulations tends to harm IPO survival rates, without increasing the number of IPOs.

We empirically evaluate how accounting and financial variables affect the level of systemic risk in traditional and shadow banks, and in real estate finance services in China over the period 2006–2019. We also conduct some stability analysis by evaluating the impact of crisis sub-periods. We find that systemic risk increases in the Size of large financial institutions, particularly shadow entities, while it is insensitive to the Size of real estate finance services. Real estate finance services are instead particularly sensitive to Maturity Mismatch and Leverage. Finally, systemic risk differs across state and non state owned banks.

We study how the characteristics of different financial institutions relate to systemic risk using the ΔCoVaR measure of Adrian and Brunnermeier (2016). We contrast traditional banks with shadow entities, such as Money Market Funds and Finance Services, using a sample of 476 European financial institutions between 2006 and 2015. We find that systemic risk increases significantly in the size of large financial institutions, particularly Money Market Funds, while it is insensitive to the size of Finance Services. We also find that Finance Services are particularly sensitive to proxies for market risk. For traditional banks, their reliance on short term wholesale funding is a key determinant of their contribution to systemic risk.

We use a sample of 3677 European IPOs during the period 1998–2012 to examine how the adoptions of corporate governance codes by Member States of the European Union (EU) have affected IPO underpricing on Member State-regulated markets, where issuers are subject to corporate governance rules instituted by Member States, relative to a control sample of IPOs on exchange-regulated markets, where issuers are exempt from Member State corporate governance codes. Using this control sample approach facilitated by the existence of second-tier, exchange-regulated markets in the EU, we find that, on average, IPO underpricing declined on Member State-regulated markets after Member States adopted corporate governance codes containing SOX-like provisions. We do not find a similar reduction in IPO underpricing on exchange-regulated markets. Our results are robust to alternative specifications, and our findings support the view that elevating corporate governance standards increases transparency and reduces information asymmetries that affect IPO valuations.