Essays on venture capital market and exit stage.

Summary This thesis pursues four research objectives, the combination of which is intended to contribute to the understanding of the functioning of the venture capital (VC) market. The first objective is to provide a synthesis of the literature on the exit stage of venture capital. The survey begins by describing the VC funding process by highlighting how the industry operates to manage the information asymmetry between the entrepreneur and the VC investor. The survey also highlights the central position of the exit stage in the VC funding cycle. Indeed, VC firms are managed by professionals who provide capital and expertise to entrepreneurial companies; portfolio companies typically do not pay dividends, and the returns generated by the investment are realized through an exit event, indicating that a profitable exit is at the heart of the venture capital industry. In particular, the survey focuses on the determinants of the exit phase, and examines how the exit choice may vary depending on the goals of the venture capitalist and the entrepreneur. The research question of the first empirical chapter focuses on the competitive effect of venture capital financing in IPOs. Two hypotheses underlie this study. First, if IPO announcements reveal valuable information about the firms being introduced, it is likely that investors in competing firms use this information to reassess the value and prospects of their own firms. Therefore, IPO announcements are likely to have externality effects on rival firms. Second, if venture capitalists are seen as having a role in helping their firms deal with the public market, competitors are likely to react differently to IPOs of VC-backed firms. Accordingly, the following two research questions were formulated: (1) what is the reaction of competitors to the announcement of IPOs? And (2) does the reaction of competitors differ according to the status of the companies issued? Consistent with the literature, the results show that in France, IPOs of companies without VC financing create a negative reaction towards competitors operating in the same sector of activity. This suggests that IPO firms will be able to improve their competitive position. In a different way, the IPO of a company financed by CR has a positive announcement effect on the stock market performance of its competitors. This result suggests that the public market views the IPO of CR-supported firms as a positive signal about the prospects of the market as a whole, from which competitors can also benefit. In fact, this positive relationship suggests that IPOs of VC-backed firms signal positive market conditions. Thus, conferring on venture capitalists a power of foresight, where the venture capitalist will decide to list his company when the stock market valuation is high.