We investigate the dynamics of earnings management (EM) in IPOs and the role of venture capitalist (VC) in hampering such practice. We study the behavior of EM in four phases: Pre-IPO, IPO, Lock-up and Post-lock-up. We find that VC-sponsored firms tend to do more EM in the PreIPO period, and less in two subsequent periods. These results are distinct for those of Wongsunwai (2013), for which, VC-sponsored firms do less EM only in the IPO period. We also find that VC and non-VC-sponsored firms do EM around the IPO in distinct fashions. Non-VCsponsored firms inflate earnings during the IPO period and deflate in the Lock-up and Post-lockup periods. VC-sponsored firms inflate earnings in the Pre-IPO period and deflate earnings only in the Lock-up period. Our results are robust with respect to how one measures EM and the statistical methods used.

Introduction

This paper examines the role of venture capital-sponsorship (VC-sponsorship) in hampering earnings management (EM) in IPOs. EM is a wide variety of changes in financial reporting that affects an entity’s earnings, not motivated by the need to represent the reality intrinsic to the business. Although not illegal, EM can distort the information content of the financial statements in a way that can harm shareholders. The IPO process gives entrepreneurs both motivation and opportunities to engage in EM. If earnings were artificially inflated, investors who are unaware of this procedure can be lead to pay an artificially high price. There is high information asymmetry between investors and issuers at the time of the IPO. Prospectuses are the main source of information for IPOs. However, prospectuses usually contain financial statement for only some few quarters preceding the IPO. Consequently, investors cannot rely on historical data to estimate the extent to which firms engage into EM at the time of the IPO. Thus, managers of issuing firms have both the opportunity and the motivation to manipulate earnings in order to inflate offering price. Several authors studied EM at the time of public offerings. Teoh et al. (1998b) relate the poor long-term return of IPOs detected by Ritter (1991) to EM. They find that EM around the IPO is higher for IPO issuers as compared to non-issuing firms. VCs have incentives to force their invested firms to adopt good corporate governance practices. Kaplan and Strömberg (2002) document that VCs impose complex control rights when they sponsor a company, and put in place strong monitoring and advisory mechanisms. Hellmann and Puri (2002) find that VC-sponsorship is related to a variety of professionalization measures, such as the adoption of stock options plans, the hiring of a marketing or sales vice-president and the formulation of human resources policies.