The Rise and Fall of the German IPO Market, 1870-1938

This study of over 1,000 initial public offerings (IPOs) on the Berlin stock exchange from German unification to the eve of World War II draws attention to the importance of regulation and deepens our understanding of German stock market development. An increasingly exacting regulatory environment from the early 1880s to 1914 made a vital contribution to the higher likelihood of firms going public surviving. In the inhospitable regulatory setting of the 1930s, IPO activity drew to a halt and the development in the German stock market over the preceding decades reversed. As a complement to our analysis of the impact of regulation, we document the increased involvement of leading universal banks (D-banks) in the IPO market over the whole period.