Taking Your Company to a New Level: The IPO

Gordon Davidson, Fenwick & West, LLP

Google has decided to IPO though the Dutch auction method, which has never been done for such a large-scale offering. In the Dutch auction method, each buyer makes a blind bid for what they are willing to pay. The seller then finds a clearing price for how many shares they want to sell, and the people with bids above that price are awarded stock. The method is designed to avoid the tremendous first day stock price volatility experienced by newly-public companies.