The United States is home to the most active and most prominent financial instrument exchange industries in the world, which is centered around with New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, both of which are located on New York City’s famed Wall Street, located in the heart of Manhattan. As one might imagine, the domestic stock exchange market is also one of the most closely regulated such markets in the world, with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission closely overseeing everything imaginable related to the industry, its participants, and its competitors as possible.
The Securities and Exchange Commission requires private companies that plan on selling shares of ownership on public stock exchanges to first undergo a 20-day initial public offering in which the public has a fair opportunity to purchase such companies’ stock before it actually begins trading on exchanges such as the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange. Entities that funded initial rounds of Series X financing are able to sell their shares of ownership for a profit, effectively rewarding them for taking the risk of investing in such growing companies in their earliest stages of development.
Companies also like to engage in initial public offerings, of IPOs for short, because they’re able to drum up significant capital to get operations going on a large scale like never before. It also helps build their credibility; the more investments they receive during the initial public offering phase, the better credentials they’re likely to have.
WeWork is a growing company founded in 2010 that competes in the domestic real estate market. Specifically, WeWork offers business and organizational clients the opportunity to divvy up large, wide-open workspaces to save money. Most of WeWork’s clients are tech startups.
WeWork has been thought of as a budding company for a while. Rumors have existed for months on end that WeWork is gearing up to offer its stock through an initial public offering at any moment now. However, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, on Monday, Sept. 16, 2019, that WeWork would not, in fact, be carrying out its planned IPO toward the end of this month as it had planned. According to the business publication, WeWork’s IPO won’t be taking place until the middle of October “at the earliest.”
SoftBank, one of WeWork’s most substantial investors, has informed the budding real estate company to hold off on going through with an IPO until next year. Who knows what will happen? Even the experts sure don’t!
Dil Bole Oberoi
