Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the two investment banks harboring the biggest market shares by far in tech IPOs, are now battling to lead looming debuts that promise the winners a pair of the richest profit pots in Wall Street history. Goldman already captured a huge prize by clinching the position of “lead left” book runner for the SpaceX offering scheduled for June 12. Though both banks will play prominent roles in the two trophy deals to come, the one that gets the lead left position on the front page of the S-1 prospectus is placed to garner multiples of the potential rewards that go to its rival listed just to the right, not to mention the probable two dozen or so banks lower on the list.
Of course, the big hedge and mutual funds, as well as insurers, endowments, and sundry other institutional investors, are super-hungry to get the biggest possible share allocations for both of these mega-IPOs, just as in the SpaceX deal. It’s been widely reported that both Anthropic and OpenAI have chosen Goldman and Morgan Stanley as their two top book runners, but haven’t determined who’ll get the all-important lead left designation. Hence, “they’ll need to spread their bets by gaining favor with both,” says Jay Ritter, the University of Florida professor who’s the world’s top academic expert on IPOs.
