February 18, 2025

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SEC Backs NYSE Plan for Non-Traditional IPOs

In a important go to encourage additional firms to go general public, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has authorised a New York Stock Exchange approach to allow issuers to elevate new capital by a “direct” listing.

The rule change introduced on Tuesday will give firms an alternate to the traditional general public providing, enabling them to record their shares without having getting to spend hefty costs to Wall Street underwriters.

Previously, the SEC only permitted firms to offer present shares by a direct listing, not elevate new capital.

NYSE President Stacey Cunningham said the SEC had authorised a crucial innovation for private firms breaking into general public markets.

“Some of them will go on to opt for a traditional IPO but some others will have this as an alternate if they want to reduce their price tag of capital and they want to have a democratized access to their firm on the initially day,” she informed CNBC. “I do imagine there’s an improvement that is welcome in the IPO arena.”

Stated undertaking capitalist Monthly bill Gurley: “I cannot consider, in my mind, when you can do a main providing by a direct listing, why any board or CEO or founder would opt for to go by this archaic approach that has resulted in huge one-day wealth transfers straight from founders, staff, and investors to the acquire-facet,”

The SEC turned down arguments by the Council of Institutional Traders, which warned that the new sort of direct-listing approach would circumvent the investor protections of traditional IPOs.

Commissioners Allison Herron Lee and Caroline Crenshaw dissented, saying the SEC had “not candidly assessed the potential benefits and drawbacks of retail investor participation in main direct listing IPOs. We should have engaged in a further debate and assessment to contemplate options for mitigating the pitfalls to investors right before approving today’s order.”

In accordance to the dissenting commissioners, “investors in main direct listings less than NYSE’s strategy will deal with at least two important and interrelated problems: initially, the absence of a agency-determination underwriter that is incentivized to impose higher willpower all over the due diligence and disclosure approach, and next, the potential lack of ability of shareholders to get well losses for inaccurate disclosures” due to the fact in a direct listing it is challenging to trace a trade instantly again to the issuer.

In accordance to The Wall Street Journal, a firm accomplishing a direct listing “could also perhaps reward additional from a initially-day pop in its share cost.” In a regular IPO, the key beneficiaries of these kinds of a pop are the institutional investors that acquire shares from the firm right before they start off investing publicly.

(Image by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP through Getty Illustrations or photos)
direct listing, New York Stock Exchange, retail investors, Stacey Cunningham, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission