A consulting giant goes public, and the fun's just starting. The word black has been used to describe any dark day for the stock market, but the one that birthed the term happened on Black Friday, September 24, 1869. Demand grew so strong that militias were dispatched to put down the violence that was taking place at banks as depositors demanded their gold, threatening to hang bankers who wouldn't cough it up. When the president realized he'd been duped, he ordered his Treasury secretary to announce that gold from the reserves had been made available for trading. But a look at the recent IPO market reveals a pretty sorry picture.
Entire weeks go by with no one coming to market.
More telling are the dollars that aren't flying, as investors have stayed away from practically everything. And then . . . a single event ended the panic. Wait a tick. Consulting companies going public are part of the problem, not the solution. MarchFirst, Razorfish, Lante, Scient, and Viant all went public over the last few years.