US banks accused of strategic pricing for ‘7% solution’

Fees charged by banks to IPO issuers in the US market are consistent with models of implicit collusion, said a trio of academics in a paper published just before the year-end break. The Said Business School academics updated their 2009 findings — which showed that US IPO gross fees were 3% higher than in Europe — after widening the data-set and delving more deeply into the question of underpricing.