The shock of ‘0 shares of SpaceX public offering’, a painful self-portrait faced by Korea in the global capital market > News

The core of the non-allocation of public offering shares can be found in the unilateral allotment decision by Goldman Sachs, a global lead underwriter, and the lack of negotiating power of domestic securities firms. Mirae Asset Securities was listed as an underwriter in the investment prospectus and promised to allocate 2.31 million shares, but the amount became '0' in the final stage. It is difficult to avoid criticism that this is a complacent response that fails to take into account the special characteristics of the US IPO market. Unlike domestic IPO practices, the U.S. market has a structure in which the lead underwriter holds full authority and reallocates volume based on demand forecast results. As a result, the subscription size presented by Mirae Asset Securities was not enough to handle the huge demand in the global market, and as a result, domestic investors faced a desolate situation in which their margins were returned without being able to enjoy the public offering stock premium they had expected.

Domestic asset management companies that failed to secure public offering volume immediately revised their management strategies and chose the next best option, buying on the market. Management companies, led by Korea Investment Trust Management and Samsung Asset Management, aggressively purchased SpaceX stocks at market prices from the first day of listing, increasing their inclusion in the ETF. In particular, Samsung Asset Management utilized pre-designed special inclusion regulations to quickly secure volume through the resolution of the Index Committee, and Korea Investment Trust Management also incorporated SpaceX as a core stock in its portfolio through an active strategy. However, this response imposed the cost burden of having to purchase stocks at a market price much higher than the public offering price, which resulted in a direct hit to ETF returns. Investors suffered the double whammy of loss of opportunity cost due to failure to allocate public offering shares and increase in purchase price due to market surge.

This incident has caused stark returns and supply-demand imbalances across aerospace-themed ETFs. Although Space This is because the stock prices of related companies, such as Rocket Lab and AST Space Mobile, which previously comprised the aerospace ETF, fell as investment funds rapidly poured into Space In the case of passive ETFs that follow the basic index, there is a need to sell existing space-related stocks to add new stocks, which maximizes portfolio volatility. Ultimately, the emergence of a giant stock called SpaceX forced a reallocation of funds in the existing space industry ecosystem, reminding investors of the importance of strategic choices.

Financial authorities are closely watching this situation and have begun an inspection of Mirae Asset Securities' public offering process and management companies' marketing methods. The key subject of the Financial Supervisory Service's investigation is whether Mirae Asset Securities sufficiently notified investment risks and whether asset management companies carried out excessive publicity by making it a fait accompli to secure public offering shares. Legally, it was a subscription for professional investors and the possibility of non-allocation was specified in the investment prospectus, so it is unlikely to lead to a lawsuit, but it left a big mark in terms of investor protection and market trust. In some quarters, there are strong voices pointing out structural inequality in that, unlike large institutions such as the National Pension Service or KIC, which secured public offerings through overseas investment banks, public offerings targeting general professional investors were completely excluded. This leaves us with the challenge of how domestic securities firms will exercise their negotiating power with global IBs when participating in large-scale IPOs in the future and establish a system that can provide trust to investors.