Rumblings over the fairness of capital raising

The float of Medibank Private is going to raise more tricky questions about the pricing of shares in an IPO and whether certain investors should get priority access to them. As the mispriced float of Royal Mail in Britain indicates, selling an asset cheaply may delight investors and make privatisations more popular with the public. But it can cost governments a lot of money.

This is all part of the part of the continual financial balancing act in the market between the certainty of being able to raise money by selling shares or an asset and the fairness of the terms on which this is done.