sure - but someone fucked up right? the bankers ?

Not in anyway an authority on this, but I don't think so. They have to price the stock based on fundamentals and make a best guess. Would a different bank have priced it higher? Maybe marginally, but probably not double or more.

Maybe someone with a better understanding can say something here but it seems like the way we do IPOs is not great. I'm not sure how to do it better, but I'm sure that there is a better way to do it. I guess this should be the next yCombinator startup. Disrupting the IPO landscape :P.

SPAC could be the "better" way perhaps.

I think we can safely not blame the bankers for failing to assign a $100B valuation to a travel sector company that was valued at $31B before the pandemic.

Yes, if a company gains significantly (or drops significantly) in an IPO, the underwriter royally fucked up.

In the old days, there would have been recriminations. These days, people just shrug and think it's acceptable that the financiers lock up most of the gains for economic value created (or, depending on your thoughts of Airbnb's business model, acquired) by others.

It's one of the reasons Wall Street has fought so hard to prevent become fiduciaries again. If they were fiduciaries they couldn't get away with crap like this.