Bespoke support to make your transition to public listed company simpler and smoother
- Floating your company is a landmark event for your business, yet it can be complex and costly.
- There are many legal and regulatory requirements, and you’ll need experienced legal specialists to prepare you for flotation.
- We have worked on flotations and public company fundraisings for decades on both the London Stock Exchange and Alternative Investment Market.
- Our team is big enough to provide the comprehensive knowledge and support you need, and flexible enough to ensure partner involvement throughout the transaction.
What is floating a company?
Floating a company refers to the process of taking a company public by offering its shares for sale to the general public. This allows the company to raise capital, increase its visibility, and offer liquidity to its shareholders.
How Moore Barlow can help
Floating your company (taking it from privately to publicly held) is seen by many as the ultimate endorsement of your success at building a business. It gives you the ability to raise capital, offer equity-based incentives to attract the best staff and increase your public profile.
Flotation can be complex and time-consuming, so it’s important not to let it monopolise your attention. You still have to run and develop your business in the meantime, so you’ll need to appoint specialist advisors, including a legal team. You should be able to trust them to handle this process efficiently. You may also want to seek their advice first, to discuss the possible drawbacks and ensure you want to proceed.
Due diligence is a key part of the flotation process. All your legal documentation, such as contracts, licences, trademarks and articles of incorporation, must be present and correct. This is an area where attention to detail is paramount.
When you make the transition from private to public, your company’s privately held stock will be offered to investors through an Initial Public Offering (IPO), via the Official List at the London Stock Exchange or the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).
You will need a legal team that understands and can deal with all the legal and regulatory standards. You must have the right legal structure, a Trading Certificate from Companies House, and at least two directors and a company secretary. In addition, the company must have an annual audit and publish full, compliant accounts twice a year.
All these requirements may seem onerous, but we can lighten your load. We have many years’ experience of working on complex flotations and public company fundraisings. We have worked on many projects over the years, starting with Omnicare in 1995, one of the first AIM IPOs.
The size and flexibility of our team means we are big enough to provide the quality expertise you need, and flexible enough to ensure you have the personal involvement of a highly-experienced partner at every stage of the transaction.
Our advice will be tailored specifically to your company’s structure, requirements and goals. You can depend on us to support you all the way, from preparation for the IPO, to providing a full company secretarial service.
We have offices in London, Richmond, Guildford, Southampton, Woking and Lymington. Contact us today for expert advice.
