Delivering on the promise

x Sponsored content on Research Live and in Impact magazine is editorially independent.
Find out more about advertising and sponsorship.

It is often said that when a company comes to the stock market through an initial public offering (IPO) it is the beginning of the journey and not the end. After months of intense preparation with accountants, lawyers, bankers, brokers and PR advisers, the management team can be forgiven for thinking the latter.

However, having committed their capital, institutional investors expect the management team to ‘play the game’ and ‘get on the front foot’, to work hard and smart to deliver sustainable growth and rising dividends.

In their pursuit of this, the management team need to be aware of the City’s unspoken rules and firmly-held expectations, but there is no pre-prepared manual or guide book on how to deal with fund managers, research analysts or even the press. Instead, management must learn on the job and from hard-won experience.

So have you just IPO’ed your business? In an attempt to de-mystify the stock market, and to shed some light on the ...