City of London-based financial services company Asset Match has made its innovative IPO Accelerator process available for international participation.
The IPO Accelerator process and platform enables companies to set a market-derived share price for their company’s shares prior to an IPO, and simultaneously conduct a global fundraising – with both of these processes being done in a cost-effective, time-efficient and transparent manner.
It uses a “Dutch Auction” method as the process for bidding on shares and setting the ultimate share price for a company’s shares. The Dutch Auction method - the method used by Google to set its share price for its IPO – is widely regarded as the most fair and equitable method for the setting of a fair and market-derived share price for a company.
The IPO Accelerator platform enables companies to place all of their relevant information on a compact and easy-to-use platform, for open review by global investors. This in effect enables companies to implement a ‘Global Roadshow’ from one central location and with a consistent theme – instead of having to fly all over the world to do so. Similarly, it also enables potential investors worldwide to review the Global Roadshow and all information on the company, and then to openly bid for shares in the company on a live, transparent and professional bidding platform.
The process enables rapid, cost-effective and time-efficient action to be taken by both companies and investors, without the high costs and delays often experienced when intermediaries manage the process.
According to Iain Baillie, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Asset Match, the process has brought about a ‘back-to-basics’ situation, restoring control of their actions and their decision-making process to the two primary parties in the value-creation cycle; they being the companies that bring innovative and productive products and services to the market, and the investors who provide the funding to turn concepts into reality. “Importantly this process transforms the current hidden way that intermediaries set company share prices prior to an IPO. It replaces this hidden and variable methodology with a clear, constant and transparent methodology; which is equally fair for all parties. In other words, it brings an end to years of ‘smoke and mirrors’ in respect of price determination” adds Baillie.
The IPO Accelerator product and process has already received significant support and endorsements by Giles Vardey – a former director of the London Stock Exchange, and by a former senior advisor to the UK’s Financial Services Authority; while Asset Match itself is a company that has already won multiple awards in the financial services industry.
The first high-profile company to participate in an international IPO Accelerator process is global telecommunications company Webtel.mobi (Holdings) Limited, which is seeking to establish a market-derived share price, en-route to a planned IPO later in 2014.
Market followers are watching the process with interest, with many of them commenting privately that this product has the potential to change the way international road-shows, fundraisers and setting of market-derived share prices are implemented.
