The order of appearance of underwriters‘ names in a securities offering. Bracketing is typically based on a given factor: particularly, importance of an underwriter relative to others on the list of potential underwriters. Importance reflects respective share in the underwriting process and strength of an underwriter as to fulfillment of its respective role, etc.

Investment bankers and other financial institutions are typically classified as major bracket or minor bracket according to the degree of their commitment to acquire new issues/ offerings (of a security). In the middle, there is the so-called mezzanine bracket which constitutes he members of an underwriting syndicate/ group (a list of underwriters) which plays a moderately important role (i.e., constituting the second participation tier/ bracket, given their respective size) in a securities offering.