Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments September 8, 2019 erstellt
Description:
We study the optimal disclosure policy in security issuance using a Bayesian persuasion approach. An issuer designs a signal to persuade an investment bank to underwrite. The bank forms a posterior on the basis of the signal and makes its underwriting and retention decisions. When there is no demand uncertainty, a partially informative disclosure is enough to curb primary market underpricing due to informed sales by the underwriter in the secondary market. When demand is uncertain, the underwriter may shy away because of more retention than his privately optimal level and larger losses due to increased total cost of capital. The optimal disclosure can solve such hold-up problem resulting from weak demand and induce the bank to underwrite. We derive predictions on the effects of the issuer's fundamentals, the underwriter's cost of capital, the demand uncertainty, and the market liquidity on the informativeness of the optimal disclosure. Our model not only captures the adverse selection problem in the originate-to-distribute lending model, but also rationalizes the phenomenon that arrangers may be willing to retain large and costly stakes in leveraged loan syndication. Finally, if viewed as an extant blockholder, we show that the underwriter may exert governance by exit to promote more transparent disclosure by the issuing firm