Forced Initial Public Offering - IPO

There are pluses and minuses to being a public company. If your stock is available on public exchanges, it's easier to raise money. Need cash? Just sell some stock.

On the downside, a public company faces increased regulatory scrutiny. Also, public companies must release certain financial information on a regular basis (quarterly earnings reports, etc.). These disclosures give competitors an idea of what's going on in the company.

In general, it's up to a company whether it wants to become a public company or not. However, government regulators have rules that can force a company to disclose financial information publicly. These provisions kick in when a company gets big enough and has enough shareholders.

The rules don't necessarily force the company to sell its stock on the public market. But a company that meets the conditions might as well do so. Once it reaches that stage, it has all the reporting requirements, with none of the access to public markets.

That situation represents a forced IPO (an IPO, or initial public offering, is the process by which a company first sells its shares to the public). The SEC, as the main regulator of U.S. markets, says that when a company gets big enough and has enough shareholders, it must report information to the public.

You launch a computer startup in your garage. You are the sole shareholder (of all the computer parts strewn around the lawn mower). You don't have to answer to anyone...all your financial information is kept between you and the IRS.

You start to grow as a company, adding shareholders as you go. Eventually, you have assets of over $10 million and more than 500 shareholders. The SEC sends you a letter: you're going to have to start disclosing your financial info. You decide you might as well launch an initial public offering. A forced IPO.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is an IPO?25 Views

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And finance allah shmoop What is an i p o

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Well this is a hippo and it has nothing to

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do with an ipo Auras Normal humans pronounce it if

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both well actually most people just spell it out I

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po It stands for initial public offering In the three

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words tell the story and i pl refers to a

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company who's raising money by selling shares of itself to

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the public for the first time a maiden voyage in

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public funding if you will Whatever dot com has forty

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million shares outstanding after three private rounds with venture capitalists

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and private investors it wants to raise money to go

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big internationally And for the first time it will offer

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shares to joe and jill public And that means that

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all of it shares will be tradable publicly on the

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open market like on nasdaq or the new york stock

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exchange That is the insiders early investors founders et cetera

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will be able to just call their broker at schwab

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or fidelity or wherever and sell their shares get liquid

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and buy themselves a maserati because it's not what everyone

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does after a nice meal So whatever dot com sells

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ten million shares a twelve bucks each to raise one

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hundred twenty million dollars which they can spend to build

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out offices all over the world So yeah that's an

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ai po and that's Why a company generally wants to

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make shares available to the public because once you've made

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an initial public offering and you make money off the

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sales of your stock you khun by as many hippos

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as you like and just remember to feed them three

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times a day they get Cranky if they go too 00:01:35.158 --> [endTime] long in between No

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