On November 17, 1998, trading commenced in DaimlerChrysler AG ordinary shares, a
single global registered share (GRS) certificate, on stock exchanges around the world.
The GRS quotes, trades and settles in U.S. dollars on the New York Stock Exchange and
in deutschmarks/euros on the Deutsche Borse through a new global share registrar linking
German and U.S. registrars and clearing facilities. This clinical study documents how
almost 95 percent of its order flow migrated back to Germany within the first six months
of trading and that the share price underperformed market- and sector-specific
benchmarks by up to 10 percent. I analyze this event as an interesting test of different
hypotheses about multi-market trading, global competition for order flow and liquidity.
Overall, I argue that the choice of the share facility, whether a global share or traditional
ADR program, cannot explain DaimlerChrysler’s flowback and poor share price performance.
