Abstract:

The Damascus Securities Exchange (DSE) was launched on the 10th of March of 2009 with six listed firms. After two years from its first operation, the number of the listed firms has increased to reach twenty. This paper aims to shed light on the institutional framework of the DSE and to provide some findings on the initial and first year returns of firms listed on it. Consistent with the international evidence, the results indicate that, Syrian IPOs are significantly underpriced. When examining the determinants of this underpricing, the analysis reveals that the age of the firm is the only variable that is significantly linked to the underpricing level where old firms are more underpriced than young firms. In terms of the first year performance of the listed firms, the findings indicate that Syrian IPOs experience positive first year post listing returns

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