Becoming a Public Entity - The Process

There are many routes to becoming a public entity, IPO, DPO, Reverse merger. Depending on the current stage of your business development and requirements. The process once started is formulated and follows a strict well trodden path from private to public.
In any public listing of shares the company will go through a 3 part transformation process.

• Pre Listing
• Listing Stage
• Post Listing

Pre-Listing

The Pre Listing stage can be considered a restructure stage where a company starts the groundwork towards becoming a public entity. Management should be in place, corporate structures simple and transparent. A firm plan of the reasons to become a public entity must be clear and concise and the future looking financial forecasts should be accurate and understandable.
Historic accounts need to be current and the team needs to be ready for the journey to begin.

Listing Stage

During the listing stage the requests for information from the legal team can be extensive as they are liaising directly with the regulator, be that FINRA, UKLA or other such market agency. This is normally financial information adding a time burden to the CFO/ FD/ Finance department.
At this stage the company will be talking to the professional team to be put in place post listing and selecting the best possible fit for the company, this includes ongoing legal council, PR/ IR, Auditor if required and any other such market professionals who will help and guide on the public market side of the company.

The listing stage can take up to 6 months and is process driven with each step being clearly mapped out.

Post Listing

Once the companies shares are listed on a market the company is as the name suggests ‘public’ The public and shareholders can now see all the corporate activity, this is the time you need to execute on the promises and the business strategies the company committed to in the earlier stages. The company should strive to beat expectations, companies in the public sector that continually beat the expectation are usually rewarded for their efforts in the market.

Post listing is an ongoing continual process with two arms, the market arm and the operational arm of the company. The operational arm will remain as it always was doing the daily work to build the business, the market arm will put those developments into the public arena and market the company as a share to own to the general public. The market team will largely be third party appointments keeping the costs lower than full time operatives and allowing the company flexibility in its chosen partners.