Initial public offerings

(General Motors)

The main purpose of an initial public offering (IPO) is to raise capital for the corporation. While IPOs are effective at raising capital, being listed on a stock exchange comes with heavy regulatory compliance and reporting requirements which are expensive.

The session long project (SLP) for the course will be performed using information on a company that is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). To complete Module 1 SLP, please choose a company that is publicly traded in the stock market. If you are unsure which company to choose, you can look through this list of companies in the S&P 500. The company can’t be a financial institution such as a bank, insurance company or a trust company.

NOTE: If you’ve taken FIN 301 at TUI then please choose a company different than the one you chose for FIN 301.

The company that you choose will be “your SLP Company” for the entire course. Please state the name of that company in each of the Session Long Project reports.

You are to search for the company’s web site, approach the section called “Investors relations” in order to obtain the financial information of the company over the past several years. Your deliverables for the first Module are to write a two to three page paper with the following:

1) Provide a brief description of the company you chose, its main business and operational activities and a short synopsis of the main developments of the company over the past few years of the company. Include some financial information such as the stock price, its profitability, and other financial information you find relevant.

2) Explain why you chose this company (e.g., what makes it interesting to you personally).

3) This is the main part of the assignment. Find out what you can about your SLP company’s IPO. If it is a newer corporation, this should not be too difficult. But if it is an older company this might be difficult. So if you cannot find any information about your company’s IPO, instead discuss how you would go about taking your company public using what you’ve learned from the background materials.

4) What do you perceive you have learnt in Module 1 SLP? Please provide your evaluation of the Module 1 SLP in brief.