Sponsor expertise and comment-letter scrutiny in R&D-intensive IPOs: evidence from China

This study investigates how performance-weighted sponsor expertise affects multidimensional IPO comment-letter scrutiny across China’s STAR Market and ChiNext, with heavy concentrations of R&D-intensive firms. Negative binomial regressions and natural language processing reveal that sponsor expertise significantly reduces inquiry volume, review rounds, textual complexity, and severity. This effect is amplified on the STAR Market and for R&D-intensive firms, where regulatory information demands may be more complex. Timeline decomposition links sponsor expertise to shorter issuer response times, consistent with more efficient handling of regulatory information demands. The findings highlight the potential role of intermediary expertise in disclosure review for innovative issuers, with implications for listing systems that rely on intermediary due diligence.