Morgan Stanley Misses Out on SK Hynix U.S. IPO Underwriting, Causing Internal Stir

Odaily reported that Morgan Stanley was not selected as the sole lead underwriter for SK Hynix's American Depositary Receipt (ADR) listing. The deal is valued at approximately $26.5 billion (around 40 trillion Korean won), marking the largest IPO by a foreign company in the U.S. Based on a 0.5% underwriting fee rate, the commission amounts to about $130 million. The final underwriting syndicate consists of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase. Morgan Stanley had previously secured projects such as SpaceX and Anthropic, and was once considered a frontrunner for the OpenAI IPO. As a result, the loss of this deal is viewed internally as a reputational blow.

Industry insiders widely attribute Morgan Stanley's exclusion to its repeated publication of bearish reports on the Korean semiconductor sector, including the well-known "memory winter" analysis. Multiple investment bankers, including former Morgan Stanley executives, noted that a growing number of staff in the Seoul office believe the previous bearish reports may have cost the company the SK Hynix deal. Consequently, they feel that future releases of related viewpoints need to be more cautious. (CLS)