The early performance of non‐US banking equities on the NYSE

Abstract

The finance literature extensively documents the abnormal positive returns of unseasoned initial public offerings (IPOs) in the early trading. Neuberger and LaChapelle (1983), McDonald and Fisher (1972), Neuberger and Hammond (1974), Reilly (1977), Logue (1973), Ibbotson (1975), Ibbotson and Jaffe (1975), Ritter (1984), Miller and Reilly (1987), and Ibbotson, Sindelar and Ritter (1988) are but a few studies providing convincing evidence of initial price volatility in IPOs which, after some period of time, tends to level off. Some IPO studies, particularly Neuberger and LaChapelle (1983), Logue (1973), and Friend (1967), intentionally ignore institutional IPOs. Logue (1973) states that banking issues create a downward pricing bias because the market has already accurately priced the assets of financial institutions. Alli, Yau and Yung (1994) provided evidence that banking IPOs enjoyed significantly less positive abnormal returns in the early trading than a control sample of industrial firms. This study examines the early stock price movements of the 32 non‐US banking equities issued on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) from January 1986 through May 2001 and finds that virtually no underpricing exists in the early trading for those issues – a vast deviation from the results of most IPO and ADR event studies, but a strong indication that banking IPOs do create a downward pricing bias when considered in IPO studies with securities from different industries. All new foreign equity issues in this study are traded as American Depository Receipts (ADRs) except the Canadian stocks.

Citation

Schaub, M. (2003), "The early performance of non‐US banking equities on the NYSE", Managerial Finance, Vol. 29 No. 11, pp. 49-60. https://doi.org/10.1108/03074350310768571