Analysis of the main characteristics of Initial Public Offerings in the Czech Republic and perspectives of their further development

Funding development of the company through the “Initial Public Offering” has a high representation globally, the Czech Republic unlike, and belongs to traditional methods of raising funds necessary for development of business in the developed capital markets. In the United States of America, Japan and in the Western Europe countries the method of company funding through IPO has been applying for several decades already. The first public stock offerings began to be applied in these markets in higher volumes from the beginning of the 60th of the last century. From that period importance of IPO goes up globally and the initial public stock offerings begin to be applied more and more even in the Central and Eastern European countries. Since 2004, several companies that have opted for this form of financing can be found in the Czech Republic as well. The objective of the paper is to analyze the main characteristics of initial public offerings of shares effected on the Czech capital market between 2004 and 2008 and to outline the perspectives of further development in this area.