Corporate Finance
A listing is not a funding event. It is a decision about how the company will be run from then on.
Most IPOs fail on preparation, not on the market. Twelve to eighteen months is realistic if consolidated accounts, quarterly reporting and governance still have to be built. Compressing that timeline usually shows up later as a valuation discount.
We almost always suggest a dual track. Preparation for a listing and for a sale overlaps heavily — numbers, equity story, due diligence readiness. With both options open you negotiate better, and if the market window closes the process does not stall.
One uncomfortable question belongs at the start: do the shareholders actually want the publicity? Quarterly figures, analyst calls, a share price that reprices every piece of news. For some family owners a private capital increase is the better answer.
Building blocks
A sober inventory: accounting, consolidation, internal controls, legal form, shareholder structure, board composition. The output is a list with owners and deadlines — a build plan rather than an assessment.
The story has to survive the third investor meeting, not just the first. That needs a defensible market definition, a peer group you are willing to be measured against, and KPIs management can still steer by in two years.
Listing and sale process run in parallel until shortly before the decision. It adds maybe twenty per cent of effort and improves your position substantially — with investors and with strategic buyers alike.
Not every growth plan needs a listing. A capital increase with an anchor investor, a silent participation or a pre-IPO round brings money in without building the full capital-market infrastructure — and keeps the door open.
Process
Inventory, gap list, a realistic timeline around market windows. The dual-track decision is taken here.
Legal form, group structure, shareholder agreements and the tax treatment of any share sale within the offering.
Choosing syndicate banks on research coverage, placing power and terms — not on the highest indicative valuation.
Prospectus, legal and financial due diligence, comfort letters, coordination with the regulator.
Analyst presentation, research, roadshow and bookbuilding through to pricing.
First trading day, stabilisation, lock-up — and an investor relations routine that still works in year two.
From practice
Three years of audited IFRS accounts plus interim figures. Starting that after the mandate costs a market window. Building consolidation is the longest path in the plan and belongs at the front of it.
A CFO who cannot field investor questions on margin and capital employed costs valuation. That is a matter of rehearsal, not expertise. We practise those meetings long before the first investor is in the room.
Questions
We run the readiness check and tell you what is missing — and whether a dual track is the more pragmatic route.
