Corporate Governance Practices in US Initial Public Offerings

Despite the pressure placed on US public companies by shareholders and proxy advisory firms to adopt or modify certain corporate governance practices, a review of the largest initial public offerings (in terms of deal size) shows 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.