Investment banking describes the activities of a firm conducted when serving as an intermediary between an issuer of securities and the investing public. Most of these activities are related to what is called “underwriting” whereby an investment bank commits to buy the new issue shares of a company for resale to the investing public. The majority of investment banks also maintain brokerage and trading operations for institutional and retail clients. As an investment bank, a company can use one of several agreements when assisting a company going through the process of issuing shares to the public. Investment banks will usually undertake one of the following arrangements when assisting a company in the issuance of shares: firm commitment, best efforts, or all or none. Not all of these methods guarantee that the initial public offering of stock will be successful.
投资银行业务描述的是一家公司作为证券发行者和投资大众的中间人进行服务活动。这些活动大多数与承销有关，由此投资银行许诺购买一家公司的新股票并转售给投资大众。大多数投资银行也会为一些机构和散户投资者做经纪和委托买卖业务。作为一家投资银行公司，它可以使用多种发行协议之一来帮助公司发行股票。它通常会进行以下协议中的一种：包销，代销或整批委托。不是所有这些方式都可以保证首次公开发行能够成功。