FHB News

With the S&P 500 at record highs and average IPO returns handily beating the broad market indices, the US IPO market should have produced high levels of issuance in 2016. Instead, proceeds fell to their lowest level since 2003 and activity was the worst since 2009. This seemingly contradictory year can be explained in part by the market freefall in the 1Q that resulted in...read more

Lowering corporate taxes has been at the top of the Trump agenda and, under a Republican controlled legislature, it is possible that a change in tax policy can be accomplished in the next few years. The details: The proposal is to lower corporate tax rates from the current 35% to 15%. Of course, many large-cap global companies are able to tax arbitrage and pay...read more

Four IPOs raised almost $700 million this past week. Coming in first was First Hawaiian with an 8% gain; the state's largest bank raised $485 million in the largest banking IPO since 2014. Meanwhile, high-growth retailer At Home Group was not a home run, trading up just 2%. While new IPO filings have yet to pick up, market conditions appear ripe for sustained deal flow after...read more

First Hawaiian, a Hawaii-based spin-off from BNP with 62 branches and $19 billion in assets, raised $485 million by offering 21.1 million shares at $23, the high end of the range of $21 to $23. First Hawaiian plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol FHB. Goldman Sachs, BofA Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan, Citi, Morgan Stanley...read more