OpenIPO

OpenIPO is a modified Dutch auction which allows shares of an initial public offering (IPO) to be allocated impartially.

Financial historians Richard Sylla and Robert E. Wright have shown that before the Civil War, most early U.S. corporations sold shares in themselves directly to the public without the aid of intermediaries like investment banks.

[3] The direct public offering or DPO, as they term it,[4] was not done by auction, but rather at a share price set by the issuing corporation.

The DPO eliminated the agency problem associated with offerings intermediated by investment banks, but was not as effective at price discovery.

The original implementation of OpenIPO was originally done by Charles Ocheret, Jordan Hayes, and Othar Hansson as Thinkbank, Inc. Later, as part of WR Hambrecht + Co the system was adapted for auctions of other asset classes, including the Freddie Mac Reference Note issuance and repurchase auction systems.