The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has published a guidebook titled “Guide for Listing of Companies through Initial Public Offerings (IPOs)”. As a part of its developmental efforts, SECP aims at facilitating the issuers and their lead manager, consultants, advisors, book runners and the underwriters to make their IPOs smoothly and efficiently.
The guidebook is a useful tool to understand the process of approval of the SECP for issue, circulation and publication of prospectus and listing of a company on a stock exchange. It describes benefits of listing and the minimal requirements for seeking approval for listing of a company. It refers to various provisions of the applicable laws, rules and regulations and contains a checklist of the disclosures of an equity prospectus, the format of applications to obtain the SECP’s approval and a stock exchange for issue of prospectus.