DEREGULATION IN INVESTMENT BANKING - INDUSTRY CONCENTRATION FOLLOWINGRULE-415

This paper examines activity in the investment banking industry around the passage of Rule 415 (the 'shelf registration regulation'). Our em pirical results document that corporations that issued securities via shelf registrations chose to do so using significantly fewer and more prestigious underwriters per issue than corporations that issued secur ities prior to Rule 415. Although the trend toward fewer underwriters occurred for both shelf and non-shelf registrations, it is more pronou nced for the shelf registered issues. Further, we show that stockholde rs of small, less prestigious underwriters experienced significantly l arger stock price decreases than stockholders of larger, more prestigi ous underwriters during the period in which Rule 415 was passed.