Unprecedented 'Zero Share Allocation' Incident: Foreign Media Reports Mirae Asset Lost IPO Subscription Due to Misunderstanding Wall Street Order Protocol

Bloomberg: "Mirae Asset Mistook Demand Survey for Order Submission"

Mirae Asset Securities: "Malicious Article... Not True" Plans Legal Action

According to foreign media reports, Korean retail investors were unable to receive any allocation of SpaceX shares during its listing on the US Nasdaq because Mirae Asset Securities misunderstood the order submission process and, in reality, did not actually place a subscription order. Mirae Asset Securities immediately refuted the report as false and announced plans for legal action. Meanwhile, the financial authorities are also conducting an investigation regarding the matter.

Bloomberg News reported on June 30 (local time), citing anonymous sources, that SpaceX IPO lead underwriters requested more than 20 members of the joint book-running syndicate via email in mid-May to provide investor demand for SpaceX shares.

Mirae Asset Securities, in responding to this request, believed it had submitted a subscription order. However, the lead underwriters considered this merely an indication of interest. In accordance with standard Wall Street practice, actual orders were only accepted in June after the lead underwriter sent a separate email. Mirae Asset Securities did not follow this procedure, resulting in none of the Korean investors’ subscription demand—amounting to $1.1 billion (approximately 1.7 trillion won)—being entered into the official order book.

Bloomberg stated, “Because of this, Mirae Asset Securities became the only securities firm among the 23 syndicate members for the SpaceX IPO that did not receive a single share allocation,” and added, “This is a case showing how simple communication errors can lead to significant consequences even in multi-billion-dollar deals.”

Bloomberg also noted that the lead underwriters—Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup—as well as Mirae Asset Securities and Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service, declined to comment on the report. Additionally, the report referenced a statement by Lee Chanjin, Governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, who described the failure to allocate IPO shares as “an unbelievable and absurd situation” during a regular press briefing, emphasizing that the ongoing inspection by supervisory authorities may go beyond fact-finding and result in sanctions.

Currently, the Financial Supervisory Service is reportedly focusing on investor protection, aiming to uncover the entire process behind the failed IPO allocation. Plans are also underway to strengthen the responsibility of securities firms in overseas IPO subscriptions and to establish recurrence prevention measures. Initially, Mirae Asset Securities had expected to acquire 2.31 million Class A common shares of SpaceX.

However, Mirae Asset Securities protested that the report was untrue. In a statement, the company said, “This article is a malicious report citing unverified sources and is not the official opinion of the lead underwriters,” and announced legal action, emphasizing, “Any alleged misunderstanding or communication error on our part, as mentioned in the article, is completely untrue.”

Mirae Asset Securities further stressed, “In early June, in accordance with the procedure guided by the lead underwriters, we applied for $1.14 billion—collected from Korean investors through a subscription process based on a private allocation method between June 5 and 10—using the system specified by the lead underwriters, and we even received official confirmation from the lead underwriters who provided the instructions.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.