How Can Multiple Banks Serve as Lead Underwriters?
I was reading Term Sheet this morning and read that there are 3 BB banks serving as lead underwriters for the GoDaddy Group IPO. How does this work? Do groups from each bank need to communicate and work together to create the materials or does each bank work on a separate part of the process?
The exact wording from the article is below.
"GoDaddy Group, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Internet hosting company and domain registrar, raised $440 million in its IPO.
The company priced 22 million shares at $20 per share (above $17-$19 range), for an initial market cap of more than $3 billion (or $4.5 billion, including debt). It will trade on the on the NYSE under ticker symbol GDDY, while Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, and Citigroup were listed as lead underwriters. GoDaddy was acquired three years ago for $2.25 billion by KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures."
There is always only one lead underwriter. What happens is that IBs want to claim as much credit as possible so they all request to be referred to as lead underwriters. Clients aren't really to motivated to say "no" since it doesn't hurt them and can actually be a bargaining chip if they want to spank some of the underwriters on fees. Only the far left actually is the lead, however. I think this happened similarly on facebook and potbelly. Not totally uncommon.
Far left as in the first one listed (ie. in this case it would be MS)?
False. You can often have multiple lead underwriters. These are usually listed in alpha order on the cover of a prospectus. They will allocate different fee events to each lead (I.e. one will be billing and delivery, another will be admin agent, and allocation is usually split evenly).
Not saying all issuances have joint or all have a single lead left. But it varies. Some can, and do have multiple joint-leads (with varied responsibilities).
There is a reason there is a "lead left" and it has nothing to do with alphabetical order. Having been through an IPO and interviewing bankers I can tell you those guys take credit and positioning very seriously. I've also dealt with scenarios where there is a dual or multi lead approach and it's as big of a clusterfuck as you can imagine.
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