Pre-IPO Terminal — the FPPP diagnostic for a London listing

The listing-rules watch

An inside-information procedure reacts to whatever arrives, so anyone who can forge an arrival can set it off — which puts authentication inside the procedure, not beside it. - Authenticate every unsolicited approach through contact details you sourced yourself, never the ones on the letter. - Log the check in the same record as the disclosure committee's assessment, so the order is visible. - Name in advance who decides what the company says if an unverified approach becomes public.

1. 01A forged takeover approach ended in a guilty plea, and it targets the step before your disclosure committee decides anything

The London tape

36 admissions, 58 cancellations, 2 live intentions to float.

median ITF → admission: 22d

FPPP post-mortems

In all three the finding is the absence of a written process rather than the absence of skill, and in all three the gap had been open for years before anything surfaced it. - Write the process down where the people are good. Expertise is what makes an undocumented process survive long enough to matter. - Compare the number to something outside the company. An internal budget and last year's results are both numbers you chose. - A balance that carries forward is a balance nobody has re-derived. Ask for the reconciliation, not the pack.

1. 01Forecasts covering a quarter of the business, measured against a number the company set itself
2. 02Seven years of dealing clearances given informally and never written down
3. 03A balance carried forward for years because nothing required anyone to re-derive it