[jmackinn]

The undrewriters don't always come out doing so well. Take a look at the Facebbok IPO as an example. They didn't end up selling all of the stock that was issued in the IPO and had to buy up stock back from the market at elevated prices in order to keep the stock from plummeting on the first day. They still made money but not what they expected.

As for the insider vs outsider. In order to issue an IPO, a number of stocks are agreed to be issued. These stock either come from the company issuing more shares and diluting the value to current stock holders and the company receives the money from the new share purchase, or the stock holders offer up some of their stock to be sold in which case they receive the money. I believe is usually mix of the two. The current stock holders don't offer all of their shares up. Just enough (I believe this is set by the SEC) to enter the market.

The underwriter assumes a large risk and for the portion of the stock that goes through them to market, they are paid the $20 difference ($26 to $46). As well they facilitate the actual sale of the shares. This is not an easy task (again see the technical issues with the Facebook IPO).

So in the end the 11 rounds of investors get $26 for some of their shares, in order for the rest of them to be worth $46 or now $50. They are also now allowed to sell those remaining shares on the open market. Something they were not able to do before the IPO.

No one is getting screwed here. There is a very big pie, and everyone, from the first investor to the undrewriter, gets a piece.

[YZF]

I believe that usually the underwrites have buyers for all the stock prior to the IPO. The only reason they intervene to keep a stock from plummeting is to secure their own profits as they usually get options on the stock as part of the IPO deal. Talk about conflict of interest. Obviously a lot of the buyers are funds managed by other investment banks. Again talk about conflict of interest. What was the story the other day, that GS didn't record a single day of trading loss for an entire year...

That said, most of the money still does end up in the company which can use it to build its business. The process isn't completely broken. But it's very inefficient.

[gabemart]

>The undrewriters don't always come out doing so well. Take a look at the Facebbok IPO as an example. They didn't end up selling all of the stock that was issued in the IPO and had to buy up stock back from the market at elevated prices in order to keep the stock from plummeting on the first day. They still made money but not what they expected.

If they still made money, what's the risk? I don't consider "X chance of making 100% return, (100-X) chance of making 10% return" to be much of a risk.

[fleitz]

Then when you have a company, don't IPO. Then you don't have to give anything up to underwriters.