Corporate Governance for IPO Companies

The average IPO in 2016 is up a whopping 32 percent from its initial offering price, and 81 percent of deals are trading above issue, according to Renaissance Capital. This is welcome news for an otherwise anemic IPO market: in 2016 we’ve seen the lowest level of IPO activity since 2009.

More good news: the buzz I’m hearing at conferences right now—for example, at the Liquidity Summit held at the Four Seasons in Palo Alto last week—is that 2017 will be a strong year for IPOs.

If you are planning for an IPO in the next year or are a newly public company, there’s a lot to consider when it comes to governance.

Given that IPO companies are a continued target of securities class action suits (30 percent of the cases filed in 2015 were against companies that had been public for three or fewer years), practicing good corporate governance can go a long way to reduce risk.

Consider joining Woodruff Sawyer partner Denise Amantea and a group of experts in their fields in San Diego on December 1 to discuss fundamentals for newly public companies. This event is hosted by Equilar, Cooley and Nasdaq.

This half-day event will combine learning and networking, and cover topics like:

• The realities of shareholder engagement and proxy voting
• Recruiting directors for the future
• The ins and outs of executive compensation
• Operational and liability factors in growth decisions

The event brings together companies and professionals from diverse backgrounds to increase governance fitness for pre-IPO companies and newly public companies.

In addition to the host companies for this event, representatives from organizations such as BlackRock, Glass Lewis & Co. and PwC will be there.

If you’re interested, go here for more information. Readers of this blog can take advantage of $400 worth of savings by using the code: WSFriend400 when registering.