ipo-ipo

Paranoid.

That one word currently describes the environment in my beloved office. Despite the dreaded word, the smooth operation and day-to-day debacle of office work continues. That's mainly because the paranoia I am talking about is limited to the company's directors, senior officers and the luckless departments like Finance and Communications (which I run by the way) so you can just imagine my delight (sarcasm intended here).

The paranoia rippling through the upper echelons and select niche of the office is due to three letters -- I, P and O -- which in biz-speak (and I'm not referring to showbiz here) means Initial Public Offering, the next phase in the Darwinian-like evolution that happens in the corporate jungle.

IPO, according to Wikipedia is:

"is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. IPOs are often issued by smaller, younger companies seeking capital to expand, but can also be done by large privately-owned companies looking to become publicly traded."

Read the entire Wikipedia entry HERE.

What this means for us is that we'll be a publicly-listed company and that investors can now ... errr, invest their money in the hopes that we continue to grow. The better performance we do, the higher the value of the company and the more returns all investors are guaranteed.

This also means that we'll become a public company owned no longer by a just a triumvirate of expatriates but by anybody rich enough to shell out dough as a form of investment. But this entails of course, lots of changes internally. We're no longer just accountable to T, C and K but to a Board of Directors whose main concern is to continue seeing the bottomline profit margins gaps go off the excel charts and to avoid seeing red.

As I see it, we're now publicly-listed in a major Asian market but we're also aiming for AIM, yes, join the big boys in London's Alternative Investment Markets (the counterpart of the US' NASDAQ where all tech companies list).

If that sounds like a lot of work, just imagine the pre-listing activities. Some blogs ago I mentioned doing work for auditors and those were for the IPO. The weeks that followed, while not so much, still had me working on IPO numbers. But this past week as the deadline for the London listing neared, more and more IPO-related work was passed on to us.

As is typical and usual and common in my beloved company, work for my department was just passed on a few days ago. Not complaining, just musing that if they had expected us to work on things, they've could've mentioned them to us like four weeks ago when we could've done things slowly. Now, we have to rush things with barely just a couple of weeks away from the listing date.

This week, my Brit boss and I poured over figures and data to support the potential growth of the industry until the next decade. We had to verify and redo calculations to make sure everything was accurate. I've also been tasked with making sure I chic and familiar with a 150-page document about the AIM listing. Just yesterday, I finished a procedures memo that talked about handling communications and info dissemination during this listing period.

This last bit was what got the paranoia level in the office rising. One of the tenets of the AIM scriptures was adamant that communication and information flow be controlled and monitored during this sensitive period. Great care must be taken that all info released for public consumption should not, in any way, affect or influence investor behavior. If the AIM authorities find any communication from the company to be breaching this tenet -- it meant doom for the listing, a disastrous demise for the company, and imprisonment for all involved in that communication.

With such a Damocles sword hanging over everyone's head in the office, no wonder paranoia broke out. Eat-the-Mark, the IT honcho, went absolutely praning and proceeded to forbid all marketing emails to our customers. Now, he's on the verge of martial lawing access to the servers and unless you had Level 5 security clearance, changing a period on the website required director-level approval. The normally-composed K was heard discussing with REbs in a voice an octane two times higher than his usual range. Though REbs headed the Ops, everything needed for the IPO needed to be signed by K since he was the only one left of the triumvirate. So, if things went wrong, K would be in the best position to wear stripes.

T and C are now more familiar with their stewardesses than their wives or girlfriends as they're jetsetting all across the globe to make sure pledges of support by investors still hold true. On the other hand, the HK office is as paranoid as the Philippine office is since they're to be affected as well.

Last Tuesday, in the usual weekly meeting I asked our Marketing Director if we should expect any IPO-related work to come. He answered that aside from updating the corporate website, he didn't expect anything to come in.

I got to the office the next day late in the afternoon due to a prior and unavoidable pediatric appointment and was surprisingly surprised to find that most of the team was working on something IPO-related. Soon after, I was, myself immersed in the business.

No complaints except for the possibility that mebbe we should've been given these assignments not on the 11th hour?

Personally, I feel an enormous weight of responsibility with this IPO thingy. As the one running the Communications Department, there's a lot of room for mistakes and with accountability to a BoD and not just T,C, and K, mistakes are sure to be costly. Changes will be sweeping the office starting next year and there's no doubt, my team will be very much involved in the new evangelization of the company and its employees.

On the brighter side, an IPO is supposed to mean fresh capitalization and influx of resources. If the company manages to use these resources well, it's going to be a windfall. And if it's a windfall, I guess it's only fair each and every employee receives his ample share of the pie, 'no?

Good luck!