Journey to the opening bell

Facebook recently announced that it is going public, in a move which would constitute one of the biggest offerings and tech initial public offerings in history, estimated to reach $5 billion. While dwarfing the $1.67 billion raised by Google in 2004, this news can only remind us of the buzz that surrounded Google, turning it into one of the fastest growing companies and most attractive places to work at.  All this ado about Facebook cannot but get us thinking about IPOs in our region, which have been relatively few and far between compared to most developed and emerging economies. Surely there are several challenges that stand in the way of regional companies wishing to go public, ranging from unfavorable regulatory and market conditions to lack of investor confidence in such times of political upheaval. However, there are several areas that a company can work on to prepare the grounds internally