Friday, June 25, 2010

Expansion Consultants - Taking Your Company Public

By James Scott

Global finance is a convergence of polar opposites. It's a hybrid element that is the result of merging bankruptcy and profitability and the infusion of the ethically inclined and the ethically obscene.

The obtuse minded institutional banking system and the endless motivational depth of the prototypical entrepreneur clash and a give and take, debt and debtor mentality evolves. This evolution results in the crisis of indentured servitude where the banks will give but will take much more.

The entrepreneur is often stranded without the means for economic defense in difficult times and the FDIC backed lender moves in to take assets whose value are derived by number crunchers in a backroom and the bank's corporate headquarters.

Business owners will often sign their lives away in order to obtain modest loans and lines of credit, the financial equivalent to signing your soul away to the devil in blood. As a globalization consultant I am constantly hearing from small and medium size companies who have proprietary patents and technology and will put them up as collateral for financing.

I must admit, at times its tempting to facilitate a merger between them and an existing client that will result in instantaneous profitability and distribution for my client and the end for this uninformed startup.

If you are an upstart you need to evaluate your options before signing on that dotted line and giving up a pound of flesh. Banks should only be used as a last resort. Venture capital funds should only be considered if all else fails.

Your key to raising capital is to go directly to the public via vehicles such as a Private Placement Memorandum (Regulation D Rule 504, 505 and 506) which will allow you to sell stock in your company in return for capital and the ultimate in maximum capitalization would be to go public on the OTCBB (Over The Counter Bulletin Board), NASDAQ or NYSE. Even the London Exchange or Frankfurt Exchange are better options then institutional lending sources.

Taking your company public, growth through acquisition and merger and solidifying your public position with a hefty amount of corporate publicity and hardcore investor relations, this is what will get you to the next level.

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