WFE Webinar
The Effects of Going Public on Firm Performance and Commercialization Strategy: Evidence from International IPOs
Date:July 20, 2022 Time:13:00-14:00 UTC
Moderator: Pedro Gurrola-Perez, Head of Research, The World Federation of Exchanges
Presenter: Francisco Urzúa, Reader in Finance at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass)
Summary: We study the effects of going public using a unique panel of firms in 16 European countries for which we observe financial data before and after firms' initial-public-offering (IPO) attempts. We compare firms that complete their IPO with firms that withdraw their IPO. We find that firm profitability goes up after going public - contrary to previous results in the literature. The increase in profitability is stronger for firms in countries with higher disclosure requirements and investor protection. We also find a post-IPO expansion in sales per employee, the number of subsidiaries and countries in which IPO firms operate. Overall, our results are consistent with going public inducing a shift in strategy towards commercialization to increase profitability.
Format: There will be a 40 min presentation followed by an audience Q&A.
This is an open event. Feel free to share with colleagues inside or outside your organisation who may be interested.
Please note that all webinars/conferences are recorded and will be available for the WFE members in the members’ area of the WFE website.
Pedro joined the World Federation of Exchanges in October 2019 from the Bank of England, where he led the Financial Market Infrastructures Directorate’s Research Team. He had joined the Bank of England in 2013, after two years at the UK Financial Services Authority. Previously, Pedro spent more than 15 years lecturing and doing research at a range of well-regarded academic institutions, including the University of Barcelona and the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).
Pedro holds two PhDs: one from the University of Barcelona, Spain, and one from the University of Montpellier, France, and has published across key academic journals, including the Journal of Financial Market Infrastructures, the Journal of Risk, International Finance and the Journal of Futures Markets. His recent work includes research on the economics of distributed ledger technologies (DLT) for securities settlement, on the network structure of settlement fails and on market liquidity risk in CCPs. He has also published research on payment systems, back-testing methodologies and on the structure of interest rate futures markets. In 2007 he received the National Award on Derivatives Research, awarded by the Mexican Derivatives Exchange (MexDer).
Francisco is a Reader in Finance at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), having joined in January 2019. He does research in corporate finance and corporate governance. He is currently working on IPOs, trying to understand their effects on firms’ characteristics. He is also working on understanding the effects of enhanced access to information on the economy, both at the firm and industry levels. He holds a PhD from Tilburg University.
