Cornerstones are firmly back in play across EMEA’s IPO market.

Dealogic data show that IPOs with cornerstone investors have been worth around USD 11.1bn this year, a sharp rise from both 2024 (USD 4.1bn) and 2023 (USD 7.8bn).

The appeal is easy to grasp; they bring early certainty of demand, but at the cost of flexibility on price.

The central question has become whether this increase in cornerstone engagement reflects lingering market fragility, regional idiosyncrasies, or a structural reset in issuer risk appetite. While cornerstone support secures execution, it also anchors pricing early, leaving issuers less room to adjust if demand improves during marketing.

Cornerstones give certainty in volatile markets, one banker said, but they also set the valuation tone very early. The range becomes tighter and the rest of the book follows that signal. It is an advantage when sentiment is fragile but constraining when conditions improve.

That tension has shaped some of 2025’s biggest transactions. Verisure’s Stockholm IPO in September, the largest European listing since Porsche, brought in cornerstone investors including Alecta, AMF, GIC, Swedbank Robur, and Tredje AP-fonden, which committed roughly EUR 1.38bn.

Ottobock, the German prosthetics maker, followed in October with a EUR 750m Frankfurt debut supported by Kühne Holding and Capital Group. The shares gained modestly on day one, a welcome result in a hesitant quarter.

“Ottobock and a few others are really showing cornerstones in action and how important they are in this current phase of the market,” said one ECM lawyer. “If German issuers fail to engage with prospective cornerstones, it signals a lack of compatibility with this audience and ability to fuel momentum.”

Another example were the cornerstone investors in the SMG Swiss Marketplace Group IPO, including BlackRock and Pictet Asset Management. Other major shareholders include Mobiliar, Ringier, General Atlantic, and TX Group, which have held significant stakes both before and after the IPO. The share price rose when the stock started trading, after investors reportedly placed orders for at least 10 times more shares than were for sale.

The dynamic could be seen at different degrees in prior years, too. In the UK, Applied Nutrition’s 2024 London listing featured a group of regional entrepreneurs including Asda co-owner Mohsin Issa. “They gave the book immediate social proof and helped conviction for other investors,” said a banker. “In a thin market, that sort of visible sponsorship calms nerves and pulls in fence sitters.” The deal priced near the bottom but traded up after debut.

Within the cornerstone discussions, Nordic markets provide useful context. Deals such as Verisure, Asker Healthcare, and NOBA Bank relied on cornerstone allocations that covered large portions of their books, a long-standing convention in that region.

A Nordic ECM lawyer said that Nordic issuance has contributed to lifting the headline use of cornerstone structures this year, but this alone does not explain the shift. While Nordic long-only investor culture is dominated by large domestic pension foundations and institutions who historically secure meaningful allocations in advance, the same lawyer said the pick-up in other geographies is a clearer indicator of sentiment, since those issuers have historically been less reliant on named pre-commitments unless conditions demanded it.

Periods of uncertainty have always favoured this model. In 2021, as markets reopened after the pandemic, IPOs with cornerstone investors raised about USD 35.9bn across 88 deals. Volumes fell sharply in 2022 to USD 19.84bn and then slid into single-digit-billion territory in 2023 and 2024. The upturn in 2025 shows issuers returning to the structure as they prioritise execution certainty.

Still, reliance on cornerstones divides opinion. Supporters argue that such visible demand can make a deal in fragile markets. Critics say the practice narrows price discovery and risks ceding too much control to a small group of investors.

The approach remains more prevalent in Europe than in the United States.

“That is absolutely the case in Europe,” one cross-border banker noted. “It is certainly not a must in the US. It can be beneficial, but in Europe the transactions that are coming with investors on the cover are those that have come organically out of testing-the-waters processes, and it has been working well for them.”

Some warn the model can backfire if used to engineer scarcity rather than stability. Another cross-border advisor noted that in the US in previous years some issuers used cornerstones to restrict supply and push valuations higher.

“Either the cornerstone hands were leaky, or you priced out the real long-only demand and ended up with a lot of hedge-fund demand instead,” he said.

“Those investors flipped the stock, and the deals just did not trade well.”

He added that Europe’s smaller, more relationship-driven investor base may reduce such distortions but said allocation discipline remains key.

Performance data so far back the logic. Large cornerstone-backed IPOs such as Verisure have traded above issue price, while some without have struggled.

Whether this reliance carries into 2026 will depend on market stability and fund inflows. If volatility eases and secondary performance holds, issuers may once again test the market without heavy pre-placement.

For now, many Europe’s IPOs are being judged as much by who commits early as by what is being sold.