Quiet Filing

  

See: Shelf Registration. See: Regulation A.

What a prisoner does to his cell bars late at night when he’s getting ready to escape.

Also, in the financial world, the term refers to a way to prepare for an initial public offering, while still withholding some information about the company.

When a company files for an IPO, it has to submit certain documents to the SEC. These include information about the company and about the projected offering. In a quiet filing, the company doesn't fill in all the boxes. It purposely leaves out some information. This strategy only works in the early stages of preparing an IPO. All the info has to come out eventually. But the company can initially leave out a lot of the pertinent information and then disclose the details later via amended filing documents.

It's a way of delaying the release of key facts about the company until the firm is absolutely sure that it wants to go through with the IPO. Like...how you didn't tell your fiance about all the previous times you got engaged until after the wedding.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is shelf registration?3 Views

00:00

Finance a la shmoop what is shelf registration?

00:06

well there are mussels and oysters and clams...Oh wait, that would be shellfish [Seafood dishes appear]

00:12

registration but it's making me hungry and yeah the real definition of shelf

00:16

registration needs a little horseradish or something just to like you know wake [Woman sniffs horseradish while in bed]

00:20

you up specifically a shelf registration is a kind of public offering where banks

00:26

and other fiduciary fancy institutions can offer new securities in companies

00:32

without going through the myriad dance steps needed for a full-contact naked

00:37

IPO and usually a shelf registration applies in the situation where a company [Man discussing shelf registration in a club]

00:41

in a similar business might be offering the same product but in different

00:45

geographies like a company drilling oil pipelines in the southeast might file to [Oil pipeline appears]

00:50

raise money just from investors in that area while doing a similar offering in

00:54

the northwest in middle America and maybe even out of the country in this

00:59

situation the business dynamics are almost identical in each area because

01:03

like oil is oil right with the one exception of specific regional laws that [Wolves appear from woods]

01:08

may differ like you gotta be really careful about polluting the Everglades

01:11

in Florida and well, lakes in general and some

01:14

people care a lot about that and some people don't like people in the

01:17

northwest are a whole lot more sensitive to polluting arsenic on their moose then

01:21

are the kindly loving citizens of kamchatka in I think that's in eastern [Man appears with moose in Russia]

01:25

Russia in making this kind of shelf offering the filings are essentially in

01:30

piles on a shelf with a few pages changed for each flavor of filing you

01:34

know simplifies things a lot they are then sent out to the relevant investors

01:38

who then do their own assessments as to whether or not they want to buy in well [Woman investor looking at folder]

01:42

the investment system can come in the form of warrants, convertible bonds,

01:46

series of equities in various shapes and forms but companies appreciate the

01:50

ability to file shelf registrations because of the dramatic reduction in

01:54

paper cost lawyer fees and well, filing experiences where the auditors first

01:59

comment is you know turn your head and cough...stop polluting and you won't [Doctor asks patient to turn head and cough]

02:03

cough so much

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