Reconciling Socioemotional Wealth with Financial Wealth in Family Firm IPOs

The aim of this paper is to shed light on whether initial public offering (IPO) share pricing as a strategic decision in family firms going public is impacted by socioemotional wealth (SEW). Previous literature maintained that family firms accept higher costs in terms of IPO underpricing (UP) than nonfamily firms to preserve their SEW, yet disregarding the incomplete information that UP provides. The authors contribute to existing literature on family-firm effect on the IPO pricing by embedding the primary market pricing perspective in the UP analysis. This study documents that family firms do not excessively forgo IPO earnings to protect their SEW; rather they compromise between financial wealth (FW) and SEW safeguarding by avoiding excess UP.