An article in the Wall Street Journal dated June 3rd begins: “The initial public offering of Vonage Holdings Corp. is shaping up as a classic case study in how not to go public.”
The article continues: “It’s not just that the stock, one of the year’s high-profile market debuts, has tumbled about 30% since its May 24 launch on the New York Stock Exchange. Some investors — many of whom are longtime Vonage customers — say the fall has been aggravated by missteps by the Internet phone company and the offering’s underwriters, which include Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG and UBS AG.” The piece concludes with: “Vonage acknowledged in a filing prior to the IPO that it made technical errors in notifying customers about the program under which they could be eligible to buy stock. The company said the errors, including failing to provide a live link to an online prospectus in one email it sent to customers, could give customers grounds to seek compensation. But Vonage also doesn’t believe customers would necessarily prevail if they sought compensation on those grounds, since they were automatically linked to the prospectus when they signed up to buy.”
