Interclean

Introduction

Gene One, an 8-year-old biotechnology company, has quickly grown to be one of the top players in the biotechnological industry. In just few short years, the company Chief Executive Officer Don Ruiz has led the start up company with the initial two million dollars into a 400 million dollar industry leader. To maintain its position within the industry, Gene One plans to generate the capital through an Initial Public Offering (IPO). However, the rapid expansion the last few years has left Gene One limited time to recruit talents from big corporation whom have experience in complicated IPO process. In addition, Gene One is faced with losing its current scientists and talents due to fear of job stability stemming from the IPO process. In preparation for a successful IPO, Gene One will benchmark other companies that faced similar situations to derive optimal solution for career development, employee retention, organizational communication and corporate structure.

Company

Visa, the world’s largest retail electronic payments network that empowers the global economy by securely transferring trillions of dollars in more than 170 countries worldwide.

Issue

For more than 30 years, Visa has pioneered the migration to electronic payments from cash and checks (Visa, 2008). To increase its market share in a furious competitive industry and to compete with its main rival MasterCard which went public in 2006, Visa would need capital from an IPO to invest in the company business model as well as in its organization and employees. To ensure a successful IPO, the company encompassed a team of experts with legal and compliance expertise as well as solid pre-IPO and post-IPO strategies to gain trust and build creditability with its employees, its investors and its consumers or clients.

Alternative Solution

Visa just recently went through the IPO process in March 2008. Due to the anti-trust lawsuits brought towards Visa, it spent years taking appropriate steps to ensure its IPO success. The time of the IPO is not an ideal due to credit crunch stemming from sub-prime mortgage melt down which caused consumer confidence plummeted for months. Visa, however, recognizes delays in advancement and opportunity can be devastating to the development an expansion of companies and result in diminishing revenue and makes decision to go full force with its IPO plan. In addition, in dealing with its legal problems, Visa states that benefits from its IPO will allow Visa to gain cash to make acquisitions, invest in new technologies, and hire top talents to maintain its advantages in an extremely competitive merchant processing industry, notably its rival MasterCard. It also planned to reserve a large portion of the IPO proceeds for legal matters it is faced with before and after the IPO process. Visa became a public company on March 19, 2008 through the biggest IPO in the United States history with the record breaking $18 billions in proceeds. Visa, with its ticker symbol V, opened on March 19th, 2008 at $59.50, a 35% value increase compared to its IPO price and closed on April 4th, 2008 at $64.48. Visa is committed to use the proceeds to invest in payment technology to increase its market share locally and globally (Yahoo Finance, 2008).

Outcomes

Today, consumers, businesses and governments use Visa’s branded products and services every minute of every day to make their lives easier and more rewarding. With its recent IPO, Visa is harnessing its unparalleled network scale and processing capabilities to help drive more value for the benefit of all its stakeholders. Visa’s commitment to innovation allows it to extend the reach of electronic payments and information-based services to more people in more places in ways that better serve their needs (Visa, 2008).

Course Concepts

In deciding whether to go ahead with a public offering, it is important that companies know how to manage the expectations of their new stakeholders, namely their shareholders. The benefits of going public frequently outweigh the costs and sacrifices along the way. An IPO provides the necessary capital to make acquisitions, attract talent, and develop strategic partnerships that help companies get to the next level of growth (Kaplan, 2003).

Best Practices for Gene One

To ensure its IPO success, Gene One will need to implement the following:

1. Gene One’s CEO Don Ruiz needs to implement a new corporate vision within 3 months of the decision.

2. The company will need to bring in a third party to evaluate Gene One within 6 months to ensure that