This study investigates venture capital (VC) reputation impact on the pre-IPO performance of the entrepreneurial firms backed by three kinds of VCs. This study employs backward stepwise regression models following prior theoretical frameworks to examine the research question. Based on a database of the top 50 VC firms ranked during 2016 to 2020 and their portfolio firms. This study shows some contingent contribution to pre-IPO firm performance. Firstly, the reputation of the Chinese government-owned VCs is negatively associated with their portfolio firm performance. Still, there is a positive relationship between foreign and local private VCs. Secondly, entrepreneurial firm performance is significantly associated with industry policy and entrepreneur’s performance than VC reputation. This study has practical implications for entrepreneurs and limited partners regarding their corporation relationships with the Chinese VCs.

More than one in five listed firms in China initiate dividend payments during the year right before their initial public offerings (IPOs). This tendency, which seems to contradict the purpose of raising capital, constitutes the pre-IPO dividend puzzle. This paper examines this puzzle using manually collected Chinese data from 2006 to 2019. We find that firms initiating pre-IPO dividends tend to have lower IPO underpricing than non-initiating firms. We also find that the effect of pre-IPO dividend initiation on IPO underpricing is more pronounced for firms with stronger pre-IPO growth and profitability. Additional analyses indicate that initiating firms have better pre- and post-IPO operating performance and post-IPO stock performance. Moreover, initiating firms pay more dividends and have significantly higher investor attention after the IPOs. Collectively, the pre-IPO dividend initiation is not a short-term strategic behavior of low-quality firms but is intended to send positive signals and improve investors’ stock valuation.

How do private equity (PE) investors affect a firm’s decision-making during the IPO process? The special IPO approval system for China’s stock market provides a unique setting to investigate this issue. In China, all IPO candidates need to submit an application to the China Securities Regulatory Commission and only approved firms can then be listed. Using data from ChiNext, we documented that pre-IPO PE investors, who invested in a firm less than a year prior to the IPO filing day, are associated with higher earnings management at the IPO, while longterm PE investors are associated with lower earnings management at the IPO. We propose that this is because long-term PE investors may prefer conservative financial statements to increase the probability of gaining approval in order to guarantee successful exit; on the other hand, pre- IPO PE investors are more likely to have political connections that can help the firms gain approval and they share the profits through a high IPO price. Consistent with this explanation, we find that local pre-IPO PE investors, who are more likely to have strong political connections, are associated with a higher probability of IPO approval. The evidence suggests that PE investors do have an impact on a firm’s decision-making during the IPO process. It also points to an important cost of the IPO approval system in China as well as the rent-seeking behavior associated with it.

With a sample of 504 IPO issuers over a period of 2002-2008 in China, this paper studies a previously ignored issue by examining the relationship between pre-IPO earnings management and underwriter reputation for issuers with different level of marketization. We document that underwriter reputation is negatively related to pre-IPO earnings management only if the issuer is highly marketized. Specifically, we find a significantly negative relationship between pre-IPO earnings management and underwriter reputation if the issuer is a non-state-owned enterprise (NSOE) issuer, a small-size issuer, or is listed on the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Board. No significant association is found for the state-owned enterprise (SOE) issuers, the large issuers, or Main Board issuers. We argue that the results are driven by the fact that issuers in the NSOE, small-sized, or SME market segment have more incentives to signal their earnings quality to avoid adverse selection by the investors, and/or reputable underwriters are more influential over their clients in mitigating earnings management.