In the paper, “Unicorniphobia,” Alexander I. Platt counters the viewpoint held by many legal scholars and regulators, including the SEC, that unicorns pose regulatory, financial, and social risks. Many recent articles argue that unicorns pose concerns because: they are not subject to SEC reporting and SEC scrutiny and oversight; unicorn CEOs/founders are usually innovative but
Nicole Veru
The Jobs Act Did Not Raise IPO Underpricing
In their study and accompanying paper, “The Jobs Act Did Not Raise IPO Underpricing” Omri Even-Tov, Panos N. Patatoukas and Young S. Yoon, review the effects of the JOBS Act on emerging growth company (EGCs) IPOs. The JOBS Act was signed into law in 2012, now ten years ago, and, among other things…
NYSE Listings 2021 in Review
The NYSE’s yearly statistics release highlights a second consecutive year of record new listings and the exchange’s increased focus on sustainability. This year’s listings added $1 trillion of new market capitalization to the exchange, with a total of 2,400 companies listed. Technology, biotech, and consumer products companies were prominently represented. Four of the five largest…
Insider Giving
In their article Insider Giving in Duke Law Journal, S. Burcu Avci, Cindy A. Schipani, H. Nejat Seyhun, and Andrew Verstein, use their dataset to illustrate the scope, strategies, and effects of insider giving. In this context, insider giving refers to shareholders with inside information and/or the ability to backdate their gifts donating securities to…
Dual-Class Stock IPOs
In their dataset and working paper, titled The Rise of Dual-Class Stock IPOs, Dhruv Aggarwal, Ofer Eldar, Yael Hochberg, and Lubomir P. Litov, find that the rise in the number of dual-class IPOs is tied to the increase in bargaining power of founders. In recent years, before 2019, the public markets saw a decrease…
ESG and the Pricing of IPOs
Alessandro Fenili and Carlo Raimondo, in their study and paper ESG and the Pricing of IPOs: Does Sustainability Matter, find a significant relationship between a discussion of ESG related issues and IPO pricing. They performed textual analyses of 783 US IPOs completed during the period from 2012 through 2019 across various industries. Given investor…
Global Venture Financing Trends in 2021 Q2
According to CB Insights’ latest State of Venture Report, global startup financing in Q2’21 reached $156.2 billion, a 157% year-over-year increase and a record quarter high. U.S. startup funding accounted for the largest portion of the global quarter total, raising $70.4 billion, followed by Asia raising $42.2 billion. Meanwhile, funding to China-based companies continued…
A Survey of Middle Market Life Sciences Companies
The National Center of the Middle Market (NCMM) conducted a survey from March 12-23, 2020 of 400 strategic decision makers from life sciences companies in the United States and Canada. The report noted middle market life sciences companies, which include companies with annual revenues between $10 million and $1 billion, have experienced robust growth. Between…
COVID-19 Related Middle Market Trends
The National Center for the Middle Market recently published the results of a survey of 1,000 financial decision-makers in June 2020 relating to results from the fourth quarter of 2019 and a March 2020 survey of 260 middle market companies, which include companies with annual revenues between $10 million and $1 billion.
The survey found…
Healthcare Financing Trends
CBInsights recently hosted a webcast, The State of Healthcare Q2 2020. Capital raising by companies in the global healthcare sector yielded a historic high of $18.1 billion in the second quarter of 2020, and deal volume rose 6% quarter-over-quarter. Total funding was boosted by six mega-rounds, or capital raises over $100 million, in the regenerative…