This study explores the role of venture capitalists on investee boards at the time of listing for 552 initial public offerings. Australian board structures and mechanisms are more similar to those in the US and the United Kingdom, but market activity characteristics are more similar to Japanese and German systems. Further, the Australian private equity market is relatively young compared to US and European markets. IPOs backed by venture capital have more independent boards, similar to US IPOs. Venture capitalists improve governance by using their networks to recruit specialist independent directors with industry experience.

This study documents a significant positive announcement effect for a unique capital raising tool, stand alone warrants, in the Australian market. The result is consistent with the models of Schultz [J. Financ. Econom. 34 (1993) 109] and Mayers [J. Financ. Econom. 47 (1998) 83] where a warrant is viewed positively by the market. The results of the model developed to analyse the determinants of the announcement effect, support variants of the information asymmetry hypothesis (proxied by major shareholder pre-commitment and issue size).

This paper analyzes the role of foreign VCs in driving venture success in emerging markets. We analyze a comprehensive data set of 4753 portfolio companies from China. We test whether the presence of a foreign VC increases the likelihood that a portfolio company is successfully exited. We find that the presence of a foreign VC does not per se significantly increase the likelihood of a successful exit. However, the likelihood of a successful exit increases if the foreign VC collaborates with a joint venture (JV) partner. Further, the impact of foreign VC backing depends on the nature of the VC, with foreign VCs tending to perform better when investing in late-stage companies and when they are diversified across industries. If a foreign VC successfully exits an investment, then, compared with a domestic-VC, it prefers to exit via a M&A or secondary-buyout than via an IPO, reflecting the significant lock-up periods associated with VC-backed IPOs in China, the difficulty of achieving a foreign listing, and the difficulty listing a start-up on Chinese markets.

We compare the motivations for switching underwriters between seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) for both shelf offerings and traditional offerings. Shelf offerings have risen in importance and accounted for more than 90% of SEOs in 2015. In traditional offerings, the underwriter is selected before the terms and pricing of the deal are set. In contrast, shelf issuers request proposals or bids from underwriters for the sale of securities and the underwriter is selected based on the pricing, terms and services offered in the bid. The competitive and transactional nature of the shelf registered market may reduce switching costs for the issuer and potentially increases the issuer's bargaining power. This suggests that underwriter switching in shelf offerings might have different, heretofore unexplored, drivers from traditional offerings. The results suggest that cost-considerations motivate switching in shelf offerings whereas underwriter reputation motivates switching in traditional offerings. However, changes in underwriter reputation can themselves be associated with changes in cost. Cost considerations also impact switching from traditional offerings to shelf offerings.