Pre IPO companies are taking advantage of the JOBS Act’s invitation to file confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission so I took a look at a pre-public S-1 and a public S-1 to see how the documents changed.

Groupon is a lot things: ambitious, audacious. Tomorrow, it will be a public company, too. But investors should be very wary about assuming Groupon is the next Amazon. Despite the many times the analogy has been drawn, including by Groupon’s management and investment bankers, nothing could be further from the truth. A Bloomberg article published [...]

Public market investors who once hungrily awaited the IPO of Zynga keep receiving more to digest about the company. It’s not clear how the confusing array of data will settle with them, either. While Zynga’s July 1 S-1 filing was met with much fanfare, some worrisome numbers have emerged since, including in a September amendment [...]

Macquarie Renaissance Infrastructure Fund, a Russia-focused private equity fund, has paid $125 million for a 16% stake in private leasing company Brunswick Rail, Reuters reported. The deal combined an undisclosed amount of equity and debt, and is part of a planned $500 million fundraising goal for Brunswick Rail. Macquarie Renaissance is a joint venture between Australia’s Macquarie Group and Russia’s Renaissance Capital.

After an unprecedented buying binge from 2005 to 2007, private equity firms are looking for public market exits. But while the pace of new filings and offerings is gaining speed, private equity-backed IPOs have actually underperformed in pricing and first-day performance, according to a new report from Renaissance Capital. Currently, the IPO pipeline stands at [...]