Going public and initial public offering: An exploratory study of motives from Serbian companies

The paper explores motives for and against going public, from the insider point of view. We employed tailor-made structured questionnaire framework to analyze advantages and disadvantages as perceived by CEO/controlling owners. Responses point out that most companies' insiders sees going public as being potentially beneficial strategy in terms of financial restructuring, efficiently combining its business to strategic alliances, possibility to divest, visibility and image of the company. The overall positive impression is offset with some disadvantages: costs and risks imposed to those who going public. Moreover, the sample is stratified in order to gain insights into how four companies' features influence the relative importance of the motives pro et contra going public. Finally, correlation matrix is employed to assess how logically robust are the responses.