The present research article is an attempt to add something new and revalidate the influence of already existing corporate governance dimensions related to the board of directors on listing-day performance of the Indian initial public offering (IPO) firms measured through underpricing. Like other emerging market economies, firms in the Indian economy are also characterized by concentrated ownership held by an owner or a promoter in the context of the Indian corporate environment. In the backdrop of this concentrated complex ownership structure, the present study analyses the influence of the board of directors on underpricing when the appointment of such directors is largely an affair handled by such owners, whom they are given the task to monitor. The sample consists of 471 IPO firms which went public during the time period from January 2003 to December 2017. Results obtained from the regression analysis show that the board size and board committees act as information signals for Indian IPO firms having a significant and negative relation with listing-day initial excess returns. Other boardrelated dimensions of governance do not have significant influence on underpricing. Overall board variables have a very miniscule contribution in explaining the underpricing in Indian IPO firms.

The present empirical investigation is an addition to the existing extant literature available on the issue of initial public offering (IPO) which sees its inherent anomaly of underpricing by linking it to some of under-researched dimensions of corporate governance in the emerging economy of India. This study incorporates about 443 Indian IPO firms with their board composition and ownership retained by promoter group post IPO being primary variables of focus which are obtained from respective prospectuses of such firms. Like many previous studies, this study also keeps signalling theory as base, and findings show that only interlocking of directors among all the board variables has a significant and negative relation with underpricing. Significant relation of ownership concentration in hands of promoter group with underpricing shows that it is considered as a signal by investors assisting them in gauging safety of their minority interests. Findings show that too high insiders’ ownership alignment of interest between promoters and minority holders turn into risk of entrenchment by initial investors, that is, promoters as perceived by investors.