Direct Listings of Equity Securities in an IPO or Secondary Offering

Summary

This practice note discusses direct listings of equity securities as an alternative to a traditional underwritten initial public offering (IPO) and as a method of conducting a secondary offering. It describes differences in how a direct listing works in either a primary or secondary offering context, recent regulatory changes, and court cases affecting direct listings, and provides a discussion of the relative costs and benefits of a direct listing versus a traditional IPO.