Essays on equity issues

Abstract

In Chapter One of this dissertation we present evidence consistent with the hypothesis that firms select a price range for their shares that appeals to a particular ownership clientele. We find a statistically significant relationship between three proxies for the ownership clientele and firms' share prices. We also find that firms with larger investors, as measured by the dollar investment of the average shareholder, have higher share prices. Because it is costly for firms to attract a different ownership clientele, they take actions, such as stock splits, which keep their share prices within a particular range. We show that firms are more likely to split, the further their share price deviates from it's optimal range. Chapter Two examines the role of the underwriter's reputation and certification in seasoned equity offerings. Our findings indicate that the portfolio of securities underwritten by high-quality underwriters outperforms the portfolio of securities underwritten by low-quality underwriters. However, we also find that portfolios formed solely on the basis of publicly available information match or better the performance of the portfolio of securities underwritten by high-quality underwriters. The implication of this latter result is that investors do not need underwriters to identify high-quality firms when buying SEO's. This finding adds to the puzzle of why public firms that issue equity use underwriters.