Morgan Stanley missed the lead underwriter role for SK hynix’s $26.5 billion IPO, after previously issuing multiple bearish research reports on South Korea’s semiconductor sector

ME News, July 24 (UTC+8): Morgan Stanley was not selected as the sole lead underwriter for SK hynix’s listing of U.S. depositary receipts (ADRs). The deal is valued at about $26.5 billion (about 40 trillion KRW), making it the largest IPO in the U.S. by foreign capital. Based on a 0.5% underwriting fee rate, the commission 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 being passed over is related to its repeated publication of bearish reports on Korean semiconductors. The report author is Korean-American managing director Shawn Kim, who multiple times released research notes that downgraded ratings for memory stock of Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and Micron in 2017, 2021, 2024, and this year on June 6. Among them, the 2021 report title was “Memory, Winter is Coming.”

In addition, Morgan Stanley has recently suffered setbacks in Korea one after another: as a joint underwriter for SpaceX’s IPO, Korea Future Asset applied for $1.14 billion but received zero allocation; the IGIS Asset Management divestment case that Morgan Stanley jointly promoted with Goldman Sachs also ended in failure. Morgan Stanley’s largest shareholder is Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), holding about 24%. (Source: ChainCatcher)