Morgan Stanley Misses Out on Lead Role in SK Hynix’s $26.5B ADR IPO

ChainCatcher report: According to South Korean media Chosun Ilbo, Morgan Stanley was not selected as the sole lead underwriter for SK Hynix’s U.S. depositary receipts (ADRs) listing, a transaction valued at approximately $26.5 billion (around ₩40 trillion), marking the largest IPO by a foreign company in the U.S. At a 0.5% underwriting fee, the commission would amount to roughly $1.3 billion. The final underwriting syndicate consists of Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase. Industry observers widely attribute Morgan Stanley’s exclusion to its repeated publication of bearish reports on South Korea’s semiconductor sector. The reports were authored by Managing Director Shawn Kim, a Korean-American executive who has repeatedly downgraded stock ratings for Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron in 2017, 2021, 2024, and on June 6 of this year. Notably, a 2021 report was titled “Memory, Winter is Coming.” Additionally, Morgan Stanley has recently faced setbacks in South Korea: as a co-underwriter for SpaceX’s IPO, Korea’s Mirae Asset applied for $1.14 billion in shares but received zero allocation; and its joint effort with Goldman Sachs to sell IGIS Asset Management also failed. Morgan Stanley’s largest shareholder is Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), which holds approximately 24%.