[elabayarde]

I was reading up on the process of corporations, going public and listing on the NYSE(just to understand the markets more in-depth) I have a general basic understanding of the process and have followed material by many consultants on such. Any of you RVF members familiar with the process or maybe a consultant and care to shed some light on it.

[_GQ_]

Private company decides to go public, pays millions and millions of dollars to an investment bank to handle the ownership split, gather interest and investors, an initial share price is decided (it's not some arbitrary number, tons of analysis is done), and the IPO takes place (initial public offering).

There is also something called a dutch auction, but I won't even get into that.

[WestCoast]

Ipo process:

Bake off - why you should choose xyz bank to do your ipo
Choose set of banks
Book runners get most of the economics (7% on total raise is split between banks) banks called book runners get the lions share of that 7%.

Ex: raise 1billion. Pot is 70 million for banks, split roughly 75% of that 70Million will go to the first 2 banks on the cover (S-1 or 424B, just use the search engine on sec.gov). Rest of banks not the book runners are co-managers they get the rest.

Ipo date is set with "range" then goes public at Ipo price. Banks distribute those shares.

That's basically it.

[Gringuito]

Don't forget the road show, the quiet period, locking up the principles (employment agreements), and deciding how/when the insiders can sell. I've done this from the company side (not the bank side) so you can PM me if you want some more details.

Just a quick edit: Think long and hard before you take your company public. Sometimes it's the right thing to do but often it makes it harder for you to compete effectively and cash out.