Morgan Stanley missed the lead underwriting qualification for SK Hynix's $26.5 billion IPO, having previously released multiple bearish reports on the South Korean semiconductor industry
According to South Korean media outlet Chosun Ilbo, Morgan Stanley was not selected as the sole lead underwriter for SK Hynix's American Depositary Receipts (ADR) listing. The transaction size is approximately $26.5 billion (about 40 trillion Korean won), making it the largest IPO for foreign capital in the U.S. The commission, calculated at a 0.5% underwriting fee rate, is about $130 million. The final underwriting syndicate consists of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase. Industry insiders generally believe that Morgan Stanley's exclusion is related to its repeated issuance of bearish reports on South Korean semiconductors.The report's author is Korean-American Managing Director Shawn Kim, who has repeatedly downgraded the stock ratings of memory stocks such as Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron in research reports published in 2017, 2021, 2024, and on June 6 of this year, with the 2021 report titled "Memory, Winter is Coming." Additionally, Morgan Stanley has recently faced setbacks in South Korea: as a co-underwriter for the SpaceX IPO, Korea's Mirae Asset applied for $1.14 billion in subscriptions but received zero allocation; the sale of IGIS Asset Management, promoted in conjunction with Goldman Sachs, also ended in failure. Morgan Stanley's largest shareholder is Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), which holds approximately 24% of the shares.
