This paper studies the two potentially contrasting effects on IPO pricing and post-IPO operating performance of family ties as well as social ties the top management has with board members. While family ties may solve manager–owner conflicts of interests, they may also give rise to minority-shareholder expropriation and/or private benefits of control. Similarly, social ties may either create value or lead to entrenchment and excessive managerial power. Using q-analysis to measure the strength of top manager ties to board members, we find that IPO performance is positively related to the strength of social ties, but negatively to the strength of family ties. We also find that, controlling for social ties, board independence affects both IPO pricing and post-IPO operating performance. Further, we show that the association between IPO performance and ties depends on whether they are with inside or outside directors.

This paper examines the impact of CEO IPO option grants on IPO underpricing. Contrary to Lowry and Murphy (2007) who do not find a relationship between the two, this paper finds such a relationship when board independence, the power of the CEO and venture capitalists (VCs) are taken into account. The results are threefold. First, powerful CEOs are able to reap substantial gains from IPO options, to the detriment of the shareholders. Second, young, powerful VCs use IPO option grants to bribe the CEO to agree to an early IPO which will leave more of the existing shareholders' money on the table. Finally, IPO options only work as a value-enhancing incentive in the presence of strong boards.

We examine whether media news reflect the extent to which issuing firms manage their earnings prior to their equity carve-outs (ECOs). We posit that managers will strategically respond to media requests prior to their equity offerings in order to signal their type and differentiate themselves from others. We find that media news at the time of the ECO is negatively related to earnings management during the year prior to the ECO date. However, when we examine the nature of media news (informative vs uninformative), we find that earnings management is negatively (positively) related to informative (uninformative) media news. Moreover, while price revision is positively related to both informative and uninformative media news, ECO underpricing is positively related to uninformative media news and negatively related to informative media news. This suggests that uninformative news induces investor sentiment during the first day of trading, whereas informative news reduces the asymmetric information between issuing firms and outside investors. Consistently, we document that long-run ECO performance decreases with earnings management and uninformative news, but is positively related to informative news. Our results highlight the importance of the nature of news in media coverage for issuers seeking to differentiate themselves from those managing their earnings prior to equity offerings, evidence consistent with signaling.