Morgan Stanley Misses Lead Role in SK Hynix ADR Listing

Morgan Stanley was not selected as the sole lead underwriter for SK Hynix's American depositary receipt listing. According to Jin10, the deal is worth about $26.5 billion, making it the largest IPO by a foreign company in the U.S., and the underwriting fee is about $130 million based on a 0.5% rate. The final underwriting group consists of BofA, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase. Morgan Stanley had previously won assignments for SpaceX and Anthropic and had been viewed as a strong candidate for OpenAI's listing, so the outcome was seen internally as a reputational setback. Industry participants widely believe Morgan Stanley's repeated bearish reports on South Korean semiconductors, including its well-known "memory winter" analysis, played a role in the loss. Several investment bankers, including former Morgan Stanley executives, said more people in the Seoul office now believe the earlier bearish reports may have cost the firm the SK Hynix deal, and that it will need to be more cautious when publishing similar views in the future.