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SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/01/13 -- Cooley LLP, PwC US and RR Donnelley recently hosted an event to help prepare CFOs and companies as they consider an IPO.

The event, titled "Preparing for and Executing a Successful IPO," was held on April 24, 2013 in San Francisco. It featured an overview of the US IPO market by Kempton Dunn, an Executive Director at Morgan Stanley, and a keynote address by Wayne Carnall, PwC SEC Services Partner and former SEC Chief Accountant of the Division of Corporation Finance.

Cooley Business partner David Peinsipp, Dunn of Morgan Stanley, and PwC partner Bryan McLaughlin offered an advisor's perspective on key tactics to deliver a successful IPO on a panel moderated by Cooley Business partner Drew Williamson. Together, they offered the following guidelines to companies considering an IPO:

•Plan ahead to take advantage of market opportunities.
Careful thought, preparation and planning are critical to executing a successful IPO. The goal is to be in control of the process and the timing for each step of the IPO to avoid unnecessary delays, which could be costly to the company.

•Ensure IPO and "Being Public" readiness preparations are cross-functional and comprehensive.
The JOBS Act (2012) created significant accommodations for companies accessing the capital markets. Many companies are using the "IPO on-ramp" created by the JOBS Act to improve their path to market and ease their post-IPO regulatory burdens. However, the JOBS Act did not eliminate the need for thorough preparation to "Go Public" and "Be Public." The impact of the JOBS Act on reporting to date shows that most companies continue to choose to include three years of audited financial statements.

•Understand recent changes to regulations and their impact on the process.
The governance and compliance landscape for IPOs continues to evolve. Consequently, readiness activities for IPOs should be done with consideration of the impact to management and the company, as well as the board of directors, including identifying and educating non-executive and independent board members early. Additionally, proposed rulemaking may require NASDAQ-listed companies to have internal audit functions at the time they initially list, which will require an additional level of planning that was historically left to a later stage in a company's life cycle.

•Build your internal team as well as your external team of advisors.
A company's external advisors serve as key members of the company's IPO team to help plan, prepare and execute on the IPO Readiness plan and the processes of "Going Public" and "Being Public."



Following the advisor panel, Sean DeWinter, a partner at PwC, moderated a panel of CFOs who had recently completed successful IPOs that provided company-side suggestions on how to best execute a successful IPO.

About Cooley's Public Offerings Practice

Over the past decade, Cooley has provided legal counsel to issuers on approximately 230 offerings, giving us deep expertise in a full range of issues involved in bringing public offerings to market. Our practice is consistently recognized nationally for the number of completed IPOs and public offerings, including being highly ranked by Legal 500. In addition, Cooley has represented investment banks as the underwriters of more than 150 offerings.