The Advisors
The choice of the team of advisors, which will support the company during the listing process and, in particular, the choice of the Euronext Growth Advisor represent a fundamental passage for the success of the admission to the market. It is advisable that the choice is accurate and well weighted since the company and the advisors will work together in the preparation stage to the listing and throughout the period of permanence of the company on Euronext Growth Milan.
Euronext Growth Advisor
The Euronext Growth Advisor is a central figure for Euronext Growth Milan. The Euronext Growth Advisors must be approved by Borsa Italiana and included on the Euronext Growth Milan Register. A Euronext Growth Advisor can be a bank, an intermediary or a company mainly operating in the corporate finance sector. It must assess the appropriateness of the company to the admission to the market, supporting it in maintaining an adequate profile of transparency, and stimulate the attention by the company to comply with the rules deriving from being listed on Euronext Growth Milan, maximizing the benefits thereof.
The main duties of a Euronext Growth Advisor, so as provided by Euronext Growth Milan Rules, are the following:
- to make the due diligence described in the Rules of Euronext Growth Milan for the purpose of evaluating whether a company is eligible for admission to the market;
- to handle the listing process, coordinating the team of advisors, defining the time schedule and guiding the company in the preparation of the admission document;
- to provide advice to the company, once it is listed, about the requirements included in the Rules for companies. A Euronext Growth Advisor assists the company listed on Euronext Growth Milan - throughout the period of permanence on the market.
Global Coordinator
The company that lists on Euronext Growth Milan must choose a Global Coordinator, which participates in the markets of Borsa Italiana and in the Euronext Growth Advisor Register with the duty of placing the securities of the company on the market, after defining with the company the type of target investors, the most adequate price and the investor relations strategy to be adopted.
After being admitted, the company must provide itself with a specialist, who shall have the responsibility to support the liquidity of the security. A specialist does not always coincide with the Global Coordinator, which placed the securities during the admission phase, whilst the figure of the Global Coordinator and that of the Euronext Growth Advisor may coincide, where the Euronext Growth Advisor is an authorized intermediary.
Other advisors
The team of advisors, which will join the Euronext Growth Advisor during the listing process, in order to ensure that all the activities are perfectly coordinated and planned for maintaining the envisaged time schedule for the listing, is represented by several firms depending on the company’s needs and the complexity of the transaction: the law firm, the auditing firm, the finance advisor, the communication company and the advisor in investor relations.
How to become a Euronext Growth Advisor
In order to become a Euronext Growth Advisor it is first of all necessary to meet the admission criteria defined by Borsa Italiana, i.e. one must:
- be a company known to the market and with good standing, which has elected a board of directors, a supervisory board and with audited financial statements;
- have practiced mainly corporate finance activity for an adequate period of time;
- have performed an adequate number of transactions such as, for example, transactions providing for the preparation of a prospectus or equivalent document (IPO or takeover bids);
- have a sufficient number of employees to develop the activities;
- have key executives of good standing and experience, evidenced by a number of material transactions and an adequate technical competence in corporate finance and market practices. These executives should have a solid comprenshion of the legal and regulatory scheme connected to corporate finance activities and should also know the Manual of issuers
- have adequate procedures in order to comply with the Regulation. For banks and investment companies this criteria is already considered fulfilled.
- Borsa Italiana in assessing the adequacy of the exercise period of corporate finance activities, can take into consideration the 2-year-period whenever the applicant has highly experienced key executives (e.g. when the key executives come from a pre-existing Euronext Growth Advisor).