Cash-rich acquirers on average perform better than their cash-poor counterparts. This observation is driven by financially constrained acquirers and by the deals made between the 1990s and 2000s. It is robust to alternative measures of financial constraints, to both the short term and the long term, and to the different institutional setting such as the U.K. We conclude cash richness primarily reflects acquirer managers' private information of deal quality instead of agency costs. The precautionary motive can explain the positive cash holdings effect on acquirer performance.

Around the world, investors, practitioners, regulators and policy makers seek to understand whether, when and why recently listed stocks, initial public offerings (IPOs) are delisted rather than continue trading (survive). Using data on 7,627 IPOs issued during 2000–2008 across 32 countries, we explore the impact of the legal system on IPO survival. We find that IPOs in countries with better investor protections remain listed for longer. This suggests that better legal systems increase the net benefits companies derive from staying listed. We also provide evidence that better legal systems increase the effectiveness of IPO certification by venture capitalists, underwriters and auditors.

We examine the impact of incentive fees paid to IPO underwriters at issuers' discretion on IPO pricing and short-term performance. We expect that better-incentivized underwriters produce more information required for IPO pricing reducing underwriters' reliance on investors' information production which requires compensation through IPO underpricing. Using a novel dataset, we find that incentive compensation mitigates the partial-adjustment phenomenon. IPOs with stronger incentives have more informative price ranges, higher price revisions, longer road shows and lower initial returns largely due to interaction effects between underwriters' incentives and their information-production capabilities. Using a battery of tests and addressing endogeneity, our results remain robust.

We examine the determinants of an IPO firm's decision to trade on a when-issued market and find that better quality firms are more likely to trade on this market. Our ‘what-if’ analysis shows that for companies that choose to have when-issued trading, the actual offer price is almost 26% higher than it would have been had these firms chosen not to trade on this market. We interpret this higher offer price as a ‘rent’ that investors pay to acquire shares of such companies. We also show that the informational accuracy of the UK when-issued market is better than that of continental European when-issued markets.

We investigate how venture capitalists (VCs) serving as directors on corporate boards affect portfolio companies’ debt structure after initial public offerings (IPOs). Using hand-collected data, we find that companies with a higher fraction of VC directors on their boards use significantly fewer types of debt. The impact of VC directorships on debt concentration is more pronounced in companies facing greater expected bankruptcy costs or higher degrees of uncertainty. We further explore the benefits of debt concentration and find that a highly concentrated debt structure is associated with better corporate performance in companies with VC directors. Taken together, our evidence suggests that VC directors influence newly listed companies to adopt a concentrated debt structure, thus minimizing the risk of distress and enhancing company value. Our results are robust to accounting for endogeneity and sample selection bias.

This paper examines the benefits to venture capital firms of their officers holding directorships in mature public companies in terms of fundraising and investment performance. Our empirical results show that venture capital firms raise more funds, set higher fund-raising targets, and are more likely to successfully exit their investments post-appointment of their officers to boards of directors of S&P 1500 companies. Directorship status in mature public firms provides venture capital firms with enhanced networks, visibility, and credibility, all of which facilitate their fundraising activities. In addition, the knowledge, expertise, and experience acquired through holding directorships in mature public firms are beneficial for their portfolio companies, as measured by the likelihood of successful exits.

Recent U.S. policy encourages anchor investments to facilitate initial public offerings (IPOs) and increase companies' access to external finance. As access to external funds relies on stocks remaining listed, we study anchor investors' impact on how long IPOs stay listed. We examine two types of anchor investors in Hong Kong: strategic and cornerstone investors, that are similar to U.S. anchor investors, but show varying levels of commitment to the IPO. We find that IPOs backed by more committed investors, with longer post-IPO commitments (lockups), stay listed longer. This suggests that the success of U.S. policies may require investors' commitment.