IPO from the GC perspective – “a marathon and a sprint”

Abstract

On Friday 21 June 2019, City A.M. reported that “Trainline’s shares soared on their first day of trading today after the tech giant made its £1.7bn stock market debut. The train travel booking app priced its shares at 350p each in its initial public offering (IPO) today, to value the firm at £1.68bn.” Behind the headline lay many months, if not years, of preparation towards the event, which was very much the tip of the iceberg for the team that had worked on the deal. “A marathon not a sprint” is often said about bigger projects and whilst this is a good start to describe going through an IPO from a GC’s point of view, let me stretch the analogy a bit. In my view, it’s like “sprinting a marathon” and even then just to get to the start line. Let me explain…