The Rise and Fall of the European New Markets: on the Short and Long-run Performance of High-tech Initial Public Offerings

This paper studies the short- and long-run share price performance of firms that have gone public on the Euro New Markets (EuroNMs) since their foundation in 1996/97. The initial and long-run returns are remarkable in four ways. First, underpricing is on average 2-3 times higher than that on the main markets. Second, the proportion of IPOs with negative initial returns is much higher. Third, the long-run buy-and-hold returns and the cumulative abnormal returns are strongly negative and even substantially more negative than longterm returns on the main markets. Fourth, even across EuroNMs, we find large differences in short- and long-run performance. We show that the performance discrepancies can largely be explained by differences in firm and industry characteristics between the various countries involved.