Pets At Home is joining in what seems like an IPO (Initial Public Offering) rush on the London stock-market, with other UK-based retailers also considering the possibility of floating. Pets At Home is owned by KKR, a private equity firm. The aim of the flotation is not to raise funds for growth. It is simply about KKR cashing out. So here's the question: should you invest in this IPO? KKR know more about the future prospects of this firm than anyone else. The fact that they are bringing Pets At Home to market is therefore not necessarily a good signal - why would they sell a good prospect? Furthermore, Pets At Home has a business which has nothing unique and can easily be replicated by other firms.
Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, Amir Kermani, James Kwak and Todd Mitton have written a paper on whether firms connected to Timothy Geithner benefited from these connections. They do so by looking at how stocks of these firms reacted to the announcement that he was a nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008. They find that there were large abnormal returns for connected firms. Below is the paper's abstract and the full paper is available here . The announcement of Timothy Geithner as nominee for Treasury Secretary in November 2008 produced a cumulative abnormal return for financial firms with which he had a connection. This return was about 6% after the first full day of trading and about 12% after ten trading days. There were subsequently abnormal negative returns for connected firms when news broke that Geithner's confirmation might be derailed by tax issues. Excess returns for connected firms may reflect the perceived impact of relying on the advice of a small ne...