April 17th, 2014: Lessons Learned: IPO Planning and Transitioning to Public Company Practices
During the April 2014 meeting of the HR BioTech Connect group, attendees were treated to a presentation that dealt with a topic that is timely for many of our members — IPO planning and transitioning.
Presentation Description:
Ed Speidel and Robert Surdel of Radford led this 90-minute presentation, which was themed “Lessons Learned: IPO Planning and Transitioning to Public Company Practices”. The standing-room only crowd received valuable insight throughout the meeting from two people that certainly have extensive experience in this area.
Over the course of the last 18 months, Radford has supported more than 25 IPOs in the Life Sciences sector. Each company brought with it a unique set of challenges and opportunities relating to timing, company constraints, compensation philosophy, equity planning, and pay actions considered headed into the IPO.
During the meeting, Radford facilitated a panel of companies that have recently gone through the IPO process. This included Foundation Medicine, Acceleron, and Flexion Therapeutics. Representatives from each company shared their IPO experience by discussing the process, by highlighting some of the “wins” and sticking points they found along the way (both internally and at the Comp Committee level), and by providing an overview of the new set of challenges faced by newly public companies.
The challenges discussed included introducing more structure in broader employee cash and equity programs, developing policies for delegation of authority in equity granting practices, reinforcing good governance habits at the Compensation Committee level and managing employee communications in a public company environment.
We are grateful to our presenters from Radford, to our panelists, and to all HR BioTech Connect members that attended this event!
If you would like to receive a copy of the slides that were presented, please contact Jeanne Nicholson.