Corporate Governance Practices in IPOs

Despite pressure on US public companies to adopt certain governance practices, a review of the largest initial public offerings (in terms of deal size) show that newly public companies continue to exercise a great deal of latitude in designing their governance structures, at least at the time of their IPO. This report discusses governance practices for the largest US IPOs from September 2011 through October 2013 and compares them with companies that went public in the United States during two earlier periods.