Founders and the decision of Chinese dual-class IPOs in the US

Abstract

This study collects data on IPOs of U.S.-listed Chinese companies from 2000 to 2015 and explores why some of these firms deviate from the one share-one vote regime when going public. Our results identify "founder's influence" and "e-businesses" as two key determinants of dual-class IPOs that have not been found in the previous literature. The significance of the effect of fundraising for long-term investments as found in the literature and this study disappears when comparing these two new determinants together. We also provide empirical evidence that managers adopt a dual-class share structure in order to retain control and to diversify the risk of their own wealth, and that there is no significant performance difference between dual-class firms and single-class firms after IPOs.