When companies like Arm Holdings or Bumble list on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange, they are greeted with great fanfare: giant billboards with their names blazoned in neon-coloured lights beam out from screens on Nasdaq’s seven-storey building on Times Square. Inside the exchange, there is a newly opened cutting-edge department – MarketSite – dedicated to advertising the IPO and marketing the float with bell-ringing ceremonies galore and live feeds to just about every US media outlet.
In short, like most American events, floating your business is bold and brazen: creating enterprise – and wealth – is so deeply embedded in the US culture that listing your shares on the public markets is the big white whale and the great American dream. And so is Nasdaq itself: the exchange is the most visited tourist attraction in the US with 41.9 million visitors a year. Eat your heart out Disneyland, the Californian theme park said to be the most visited in the world but which last year had 16.9 million visitors.
