François Derrien

How Much Does Investor Sentiment Really Matter for Equity Issuance Activity

We study the extent to which investor sentiment matters for aggregate equity issuance activity. We focus on firms that are susceptible to investor sentiment and for which accurate measures of economic fundamentals are available. While sentiment on its own matters for equity issuance, it matters relatively little once we control for accurately measured fundamentals. Collectively, proxies for sentiment explain roughly 10 percentage points of the time-series variation of equity issuance beyond the roughly 40% explained by fundamentals. We conclude that investor sentiment does not seem to matter very much for aggregate equity issuance activity.

Auctioned IPOs: the U.S. Evidence

Between 1999 and 2007, WR Hambrecht has completed 19 IPOs in the U.S. using an auction mechanism. We analyze investor behavior and mechanism performance in these auctioned IPOs using detailed bidding data. The existence of some bids posted at high prices suggests that some investors (mostly retail) try to free-ride on the mechanism. But institutional demand in these auctions is very elastic, suggesting that institutional investors reveal information in the bidding process. Investor participation is largely predictable based on deal size, and demand is dominated by institutions. Flipping is equally prevalent in auctions as in bookbuilt deals – but unlike in bookbuilding, investors in auctions tend to flip their shares more in cold deals. Finally, we find that institutional investors, who provide more information, are rewarded by obtaining a larger share of the deals that have higher initial returns. Our results therefore suggest that auctioned IPOs could be an effective alternative to traditional bookbuilding.

Systemic Risk in Clearing Houses: Evidence from the European Repo Market

How do crises affect Central clearing Counterparties (CCPs)? We focus on CCPs that clear and guarantee a large and safe segment of the repo market during the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. We start by developing a simple framework to infer CCP stress, which can be measured through the sensitivity of repo rates to sovereign CDS spreads. Such sensitivity jointly captures three effects: (1) the effectiveness of the haircut policy, (2) CCP member default risk (conditional on sovereign default) and (3) CCP default risk (conditional on both sovereign and CCP member default). The data show that, during the sovereign debt crisis of 2011, repo rates strongly respond to movements in sovereign risk, in particular for GIIPS countries, indicating significant CCP stress. Our model suggests that repo investors behaved as if the conditional probability of CCP default was very large.How do crises affect Central clearing Counterparties (CCPs)? We focus on CCPs that clear and guarantee a large and safe segment of the repo market during the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. We start by developing a simple framework to infer CCP stress, which can be measured through the sensitivity of repo rates to sovereign CDS spreads. Such sensitivity jointly captures three effects: (1) the effectiveness of the haircut policy, (2) CCP member default risk (conditional on sovereign default) and (3) CCP default risk (conditional on both sovereign and CCP member default). The data show that, during the sovereign debt crisis of 2011, repo rates strongly respond to movements in sovereign risk, in particular for GIIPS countries, indicating significant CCP stress. Our model suggests that repo investors behaved as if the conditional probability of CCP default was very large.

The Effects of Investment Bank Rankings: Evidence from M&A League Tables

This paper explores how league tables, which are rankings based on market shares, influence the M&A market. A bank’s league table rank predicts its future deal flow, above and beyond other determinants of this future deal flow. This creates incentives for banks to manage their league table ranks. League table management tools include selling fairness opinions and reducing fees. Banks use such tools mostly when their incentives to do so are high: when a transaction affects their league table position or when they lost ranks in recent league tables. League table management seems to affect the quality of M&A transactions.

The Real Effects of Analyst Coverage

We study the causal effects of analyst coverage on corporate investment and financing policies. We hypothesize that a decrease in analyst coverage increases information asymmetry and thus increases the cost of capital; as a result, firms decrease their investment and financing. We use broker closures and broker mergers to identify changes in analyst coverage that are exogenous to corporate policies. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that firms that lose an analyst decrease their investment and financing by 1.9% and 2.0% of total assets, respectively, compared to similar firms that do not lose an analyst. These results are significantly stronger for firms that are smaller, have less analyst coverage, have a bigger increase in information asymmetry, and are more financially constrained.

Systemic risk in clearing houses: Evidence from the European repo market

We study how crises affect Central Clearing Counterparties (CCPs). We focus on a large and safe segment of the CCP-cleared repo market during the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. We develop a simple model to infer CCP stress, which is measured as repo rates’ sensitivity to sovereign credit default swaps (CDS) spreads and jointly captures (1) the effectiveness of haircut policies, (2) CCP-member default risk (conditional on sovereign default), and (3) CCP default risk (conditional on both sovereign and CCP-member default). During 2011, repo rates strongly respond to sovereign risk, particularly for Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain (GIIPS): Repo investors behaved as if the conditional probability of CCP default was substantial.

Labor Force Demographics and Corporate Innovation

Firms in younger labor markets produce more innovation. We establish this using the local labor force projected based on historical births in each local labor market in the United States. Three successive levels of analysis – labor markets, firms, and inventors – allow us to separate out effects such as firm and inventor life cycles. We also find that corporate innovation activities reflect the innovative characteristics of younger labor forces, and firms in younger labor markets have higher valuations. Our results indicate that younger people as a group – inventors interacting with non-inventors – produce more innovation for firms through the labor supply channel rather than through a financing supply or consumer demand channel.

The Unintended Consequences of Government Regulations in Emerging Financial Markets: Evidence from the Chinese IPO Market

This paper explores the impact of regulations imposed by the Chinese government on the development of the Chinese IPO market between 2000 and 2011. Some of these regulations have affected the population of Chinese firms that went public domestically, some firms being excluding from the domestic IPO markets, others being induced to list abroad. We also provide evidence that, because of limits on prices and proceeds, the Chinese IPO market does not attract companies that need cash the most. Some IPO firms that raise large amounts of cash decide to pay large dividends shortly after going public, which investors interpret as evidence that their growth options were overestimated at the time of their IPO.