[credit_guy]

That's not "slightly", it's big time conspiracy theory. Once a company goes public, stock manipulation is illegal. It's illegal before too, but it's much more difficult to prove. But once it's public, the SEC loves to go after whomever tries to manipulate stocks. Now, the vast majority of offenders are short term stock manipulators. What you are describing here is a scheme involving multiple "capitalists" who would coordinate themselves and invest billions in an long term illegal scheme, with the hope that nobody rats, and the scheme would produce no profit in the end, but would "save capitalism", and would have some nebulous upside to IB's, VC's, etc.

[questime]

If you think the SEC is some sort of godlike entity who can read peoples mind yeah this may be illegal. What I'm suggesting is not manipulation - just that investors would be extra willing to invest in the ARM IPO since it increases the value of other assets they own.

It doesn't involve scheming, secret organizations etc. If you were a huge LP and you took on a lower ROI investment on ARM but it increases the value of all the companies in your portfolio wouldn't you do it? Also as an investment banker you would pull out all the stops to get this deal done in a favorable way to investors since you want the market to reopen. That isn't manipulation either, the IB is lowering their fees in order to get the market back open.