The initial public offering is a major financing operation in a company’s life. The choice of advising intermediaries is of paramount significance. This is the case in particular for the underwriting syndicate whose responsibilities, such as the certification of the issue price and the successful placement of securities are important. Multiple information asymmetries and anomalies in stock markets involve the issuer making the right decisions. We pay particular attention to a thorough understanding of the selection criteria used by the issuing firm in the choice of the lead manager. One of these is the reputation criteria, observed in empirical studies, mostly from across the Atlantic, which have highlighted its positive impact in mitigating stock market deviations. The approach we followed to develop this thesis led us, in the first chapter, to justify our theoretical positioning and to develop our research framework. In the second chapter, we carried out a case study of the Electricité De France IPO, a major European issue during this last decade and undertook a qualitative approach in which we covered the economic and financial realities. Finally, the empirical verification of this issue was developed in the third chapter. We carried out a statistical study based on a sample of European IPOs in order to clarify the structure of the underwriting syndicate and explore the relationship of this structure with the lead manager reputation.
