Recently, Faegre & Benson LLP, one of the 100 largest law firms headquartered in the U.S., and Baker Tilly Virchow Krause, a full-service accounting and advisory firm, sponsored an informative seminar and panel discussion regarding alternative going public strategies. Faegre speakers included Michael Coddington, Jason Day, David Miller, Donald Stewart and Jonathan Zimmerman.  Also included in the panel discussion was Rick Schweiger, Chief Operating Officer at Keating Investments; Octavio Cabral, Partner at Collins Barrow; Janis Koyanagi, Director of Business Development at the Toronto Stock Exchange; Rick Hartfiel, Head of Investment Banking at Craig-Hallum Capital Group; and Mike McKee, Partner at Baker Tilly.

Topics included the TSX and AIM stock exchange alternatives; OTC and Pink Sheet market alternatives; senior exchange listing requirements; corporate governance; current state of the equity capital markets; and more.  For those CEOs considering going public, or for advisers to high growth private companies, I recommend you view the panel discussion at http://faegreandbensonllp.mediasite.com/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=7f57c16212ee4c2d82c8580c8ae56e9c1d, as the panelists provide some very interesting data.

The opinions set forth in the foregoing article do not necessarily represent the opinions of Keating Capital, Inc. or Keating Investments, LLC.

I found the new information provided by Grant Thornton LLP’s Capital Markets Group in its updated U.S. IPO Market Study, released on June 21st, to be very interesting in light of the current condition of the traditional IPO market.  The release of Market structure is causing the IPO crisis – and more provides new and updated data that analyzes how the IPO market structure drives job losses.  The White Paper also addresses misconceptions about the impact of private equity, penny stocks and inflation on new public equity offerings.

Building upon Grant Thornton’s original 2008 study, Why are IPOs in the ICU?, the White Paper proposes a new investor and issuer opt-in market that would be subject to full regulatory oversight from the SEC and would bring choice in market structure back to the U.S. equities markets.

Authors of the White Paper are David Weild and Edward Kim, both Senior Capital Markets Advisors at Grant Thornton.  The full article can be found at www.GrantThornton.com/IPO.

The opinions set forth in the foregoing article do not necessarily represent the opinions of Keating Capital, Inc. or Keating Investments, LLC.