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This study examines the endogenous market choice and its impact on underwriter spread if Alternative Investment Market (AIM) IPOs that meet Main Market (MM) listing requirements had issued equity in the MM during the 1995–2021 period. We find that the spread is 1.33% higher in the AIM than the MM for IPO listings that meet the MM listing requirements. This finding suggests that AIM companies, meeting the MM listing requirements, could have saved more than £100 million by going public through the MM than the AIM market. We also find that this spread differential is attributed to the issuing firms' market self‐selection. We demonstrate that listing requirements in the MM have an impact on the gross spread. The Propensity score matching results show that AIM firms that meet the MM market listing requirements pay a 0.921% higher spread which is significant at a 1% level compared to the MM market IPOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the impact of bank regulation on the risks of Islamic banks (IBs) and conventional banks (CBs) between 2004 and 2015 by employing 455 CBs and 95 IBs from 22 countries where IBs and CBs coexist. Since the objective of Basel regulations is to achieve a stable banking sector by mitigating risks, we examine the impact of bank regulations on various risks of IBs and CBs by using a regression framework. We examine solvency risk, credit risk, idiosyncratic risk and systemic risk by using capital oversight, restriction on activities, private monitoring and supervisory power bank regulation data provided by the World Bank. The findings show that though the Basel regulations were originally developed for CBs, our results imply that they are effective for IBs as well as CBs. However, our study also shows that regulations affect IBs and CBs differently as their business models are different. More targeted regulations towards IBs would be necessary to support IBs. Additionally, in regions with higher economic freedom indexes, banking regulations can mitigate the risk of IBs and CBs to a greater extent. Our results imply that the combination of free economic policies and banking supervision addresses risks in banking effectively. Finally, the bank regulations did not appear to be able to control the risk of the sample banks during the 2007–2009 crisis. Hence, the Basel committee needs to rethink about regulations during crisis times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines public trust in government and public belief in its truthfulness in respect of the measures it is taking to combat COVID‐19. Analysing global data from the International Coronavirus Survey of 178 countries between 20 March and 8 April 2020, we establish that integrated government response policies, underpinned by containment health measures and economic reliefs, are crucial to winning public trust and support. We find that a one standard deviation increase in composite government response measures leads to a 0.353% increase in public trust in government and a 0.414% increase in public belief in its truthfulness. The impacts vary according to legal systems, whose political ethos determines the quality of welfare services and their ability to respond to citizens' needs during a public health emergency. Further, public trust in government measures differs in relation to how a country's system of governance and institutional culture respond to meet public expectations, with citizens' attitudes influenced by the fairness, effectiveness and accountability of government agencies. Most importantly, our evidence consistently demonstrates that the provision of impartial, transparent and truthful government communications is vital for maintaining public trust. Moreover, experience gained from previous pandemics, reinforcing a nation's preparedness and responsiveness to future public health crises, is crucial to ensuring citizens' confidence in government competence. Overall, our original investigation reveals a contention between the exigencies of government policies and public expectations in a global health emergency, and has profound implications for public management and business and economic regeneration in the aftermath of the pandemic, laying the foundations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the determinants of capital structure and funding sources of 347 large global banks between 1998 and 2016 from 57 countries around the world. We find that the capital structure of banks does not evolve only as a result of capital regulations, it is also affected by market forces. We find that bank capital structure corresponds to corporate finance theory and buffer view and, in particular, that market‐to‐book ratio, size, and risk are positively related and that profitability is negatively related to bank leverage. Banks in countries with higher tax advantages, creditor rights, deposit insurance, and bankruptcy codes have more leverage, and those bound by common law have less leverage. Size and country‐level factors are important determinants of sources of financing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between the Islamic and conventional equity indices by employing the newly launched MSCI Global Islamic Indices which began in 2008. We argue for the case of cointegration supported by fundamental, category and habitat theories, and against cointegration due to the fundamental difference between Islamic and conventional stocks in terms of debt ratio, accounts receivable and interest bearing securities. We find Islamic and conventional equity markets move together despite fundamental differences and given that market microstructure, dividends, capital gains, taxation and governance systems are different across the markets. Almost simultaneous movement of the permanent and cycle components of Islamic and mainstream equity indices has been supported by the application of the Beveridge Nelson (BN) time series decomposition technique. Theoretically, the volatility of Islamic equities should be lower due to their low leverage ratio. Surprisingly, permanent parts of the Islamic indices appear to be more volatile during the crisis period and less volatile during the post-crisis period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use a unique mainly hand-collected dataset to assess the impact of directors' trades on IPOs' long-term returns. We find that IPOs where directors are net sellers are more likely to generate positive long-run returns which occur mostly before the sell trades, suggesting that directors sell when their IPOs reach their optimal values. Conversely, IPOs where directors are net buyers underperform significantly. Our results are not consistent with insider trading in seasoned firms, partly because the valuation uncertainty of IPOs and the specific motivations to trade weaken the precision of the trades' informativeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses heterogeneous lockup agreements from the London Stock Market. With hand-collected data, I compare and contrast absolute-date lockups with the relative-date lockups and single lockups versus staggered lockups. This paper tests several potential explanations for the choice of lockup contracts: (i) information asymmetry, (ii) signaling, (iii) agency problem, and (iv) certification. I find strong evidence for information asymmetry and certification (VC and prestigious underwriters) and partial support for agency explanation for the choice of lockups. The insider selling activity and lockup expiration returns are also consistent with asymmetric information, certification and agency hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]