Conflict of Interest in Investment Banking
February 12, 2025
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An initial public offer (IPO) is a method of selling securities wherein the entire lot of securities is offered for sale to the general public. An IPO is often used by companies when they want to sell their securities to smaller investment organizations and even retail investors.
In the past few years, IPOs have seen a lot of speculative activity. It is not uncommon for retail investors to just buy shares in an IPO even though they have no intention of keeping these shares in the long run. This leads to a pump and dump effect on the IPO prices.
In order to mitigate this, investment bankers often help their clients undertake a pre-IPO placement. In this article, we will understand what a pre IPO placement is and how it affects the success of an IPO.
Pre-IPO placements, as the name suggests, are private placements that happen just before an IPO is about to be launched. During these placements, investment bankers approach large institutional investors with the stock of their client. In order to induce them to buy the stock, pre-IPO placements happen at a price that is lower than that of the IPO. These transactions often have a lock-in period, and the buying investor is not allowed to sell their shares on the open market for a period of time after the IPO has taken place. In most cases, this lock-in period is for one year.
Pre IPO placement methods are widely used by investors. This is because they offer many distinct advantages. Some of them have been listed below:
The above-mentioned advantages make pre-IPO placement a tempting option. However, there are several disadvantages of pre-IPO placements as well. They have been listed below:
The bottom line is that pre-IPO is a strategic tool that can be used effectively to manage the IPO process. However, the success of the pre-IPO strategy also depends upon the strength of the network of an investment banker. A weak investment banker cannot successfully pull off a pre-IPO placement.
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