This paper examines impact of hiring reputable auditors, underwriters, and lawyers, “namely, the three musketeers”, by issuing firms on the global IPO underpricing. We employ large and unique dataset of 24,312 IPOs in 22 countries between 1995 and 2019. We find that issuers benefit from hiring the three musketeers to certify issuers’ quality to reduce investors’ ex-ante uncertainty to guard their offerings from underpricing. Results show significant differences of the impact of the three musketeers on underpricing in countries with different market sophistication, auditing and reporting standards, and rule of law. Our results reveal that issuers may want to be careful when hiring quality auditors, underwriters, and lawyers when going public since not all those reputable intermediaries are equally important in alleviating underpricing. Our research has implications for IPO owners, investors, researchers, and regulators.

本文研究了通过发行公司聘请知名审计师、承销商和律师（即“三剑客”）对全球 IPO 抑价的影响。我们在 1995 年至 2019 年期间在 22 个国家/地区使用了 24,312 次 IPO 的庞大而独特的数据集。我们发现，发行人受益于聘请三名火枪手来证明发行人的质量，以减少投资者的事前不确定性，以防止他们的产品定价过低。结果表明，在市场成熟度、审计和报告标准以及法治不同的国家，这三个火枪手对抑价的影响存在显着差异。我们的研究结果表明，发行人在聘用优质审计师、承销商和律师时可能要谨慎，因为并非所有这些有信誉的中介机构在缓解抑价方面都同样重要。