Undersubscribed

As an investor in some form of a new or secondary offering, you "subscribe" to it. That is, you offer that you'll buy a million shares at $2.20 a share, should everything that the company said would be in place, is in fact, in place. Most banks placing or marketing deal offerings like this, like to have oversubscription because it kind of guarantees that the deal will in fact go through (and the bank will get paid its commission). However, every now and then deals go awry either because the company had a hiccup; or the markets puked or worse. So then if the bank still wants to sally forth with an offering, it then ends up being undersubscribed and the bank has to either settle for a lower price per share for its client (who will be po'd and a half); or withdraw the deal entirely (and not get paid). Not a good sitch.