Why companies like Facebook, Zillow turn to Pat Healy before an IPO

The IPOs again make one of the newspapers, which could mean that the hopes of Pat Healy for the “hot and heavy” activity this year may not be completely canceled after all.

Healy is the founder and CEO of the Network transmitter, who helps C-Suite managers obtain several million dollars on potential scholarships through “bake-off” tenders competition. Over the past 30 years, he has worked behind the scenes of some of the largest IPOs and business spin-offs, including Facebook, Zillow, Kraftheinz and 3M.

He praised customers such as Jason Child, the financial director of the arm of the company of semiconductors (and the former financial director of Splunk), and Dick Grasso, a former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, who sat on the Healy agreement table when he launched the issuing network in 1995.

He helped customers get everything, from free advertising to Davos to NFL players to attend their closing ceremonies.

Never heard of him? There is a reason for that. Healy, who seems to be an ancestors of this type of cooking or competition between companies, manages his business largely by word of mouth. He also refuses to spend a penny in marketing. Take a look at the company’s website – the very image of a web interface in the mid -2000s.

“I could make a big problem on some of these things, but it is not who I am,” Healy, 74, told Business Insider in an interview. “I think I do a very good job for people, and I shouldn’t boast myself. I just let my customers talk.”

With the IPOs under the spotlight, thanks to the Fintech Chime and Etoro, BI sat with Healy and spoke to people who worked with him. We wanted to understand the company and man behind, including how he made his debut, how a cooking exchange works and what was occupied since public offers took a nose in 2022.

The activity of the IPOs has made its doors this year with Trump’s prices, and Healy saw several of the offers from his file drawn due to the volatility of the market. Where things go next is the assumption of anyone, but Healy is preparing for a potential torrent of demand.

“Who knows when the sun goes out?” Said Healy. “When this is the case, I expect all these guys to set foot on the gas and come immediately to the market.”

In the early 1990s, after having occupied several CFO roles in the banks of the DC region, Healy began to do consultation work for the NASDAQ. His work, he explained, was to dissuade companies from leaving for the NYSE at a time when Nasdaq was a less known exchange for new companies.

“I have designed and helped build useful products for financial directors so that if they decided to leave the Nasdaq, they should abandon something,” he said. “They would be less inclined to do so. And that has created an adhesion.”

It opened Healy’s eyes to what he called an un -filled gap. Investment bankers advising on stock exchange do not want to get caught in the fires between exchanges, he said (and many banks are themselves listed in the NYSE). There are other professionals who help companies be listed on a scholarship, including commercial consultants, but Healy seems to have been the first to specialize in this competitive process for marketing advantages.

“I discovered that the financial directors really had no one to talk to when they were to make a decision as to the place where they will list their stock,” he said.

“There was no one else. And there is still no one else,” he added.

The first customer of the network transmitter was AOL, the Internet service and instant messaging now (mainly) now (mainly). Hely said he had managed to obtain a meeting with the financial director and convinced him to let Hely negotiate a “co-starting” on behalf of the company.

“I just jumped into my car and went to the corner of Tyson”, a suburb of Virginia in Washington, DC, where AOL had its registered office at the time. “I visited the CFO. I said,” Listen, you are on the wrong exchange here. “”

In August 1996, AOL went from Nasdaq to NYSE.

AOL was an example of a service that Hely calls “switches”. Today, most of its activities are to advise companies about to make public on what exchange they should be listed. Beyond the style of trading and the adjustment of a given exchange, there are hidden levers that Ccan companies draw, said Healy.

“Emitters are still focusing on registration fees,” he said. “What they don’t see is what the exchange will list.”

Exchanges cannot technically buy the list of a company, but they can take the tab for co-marked advertisements or other marketing advantages. This is where Healy enters. It essentially creates a competition between exchanges to see which one can offer customers the best package with their list.

“We create fairly important co-branding packages and we literally cook,” he said.

As a rule, a company would contact the exchanges to say that it has decided to make its decision to register “a competitive process”. Then, said Healy, the company will explain how it wanted to reach customers, and the exchanges would return with “a co-branding package proportionate to these defined results”. From there, it is a back and forth of negotiations and adjustments until the company (not Healy, as he pointed out) appoints a winner. The entire process usually takes about six weeks.

Healy would not reveal how much these offers are worth – except for one, which is public. The package he obtained for Arm, a semiconductor company which became public in 2023, was worth $ 50 million.

“It understands exactly what the terms and conditions for the market are,” said Child, CFO of Arm. “So he can help you understand, as a issuing company, what is the advantage for exchange? What is the value they can provide? What are the advantages and disadvantages?”

Child first hired Healy when he was the financial director of Groupon for the IPO of the Technological Company. He hit Healy again in 2023 when Arm became public.

The ARM package with the Nasdaq, for example, included several years of advertising at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland. As part of its agreement, another Healy customer, PNC, obtained the NFL renowned temple, including Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith, to ring the closing bell of the NYSE with the company’s employees in 2010.

There are times when the two parties are unhappy, said Healy, but everything is matter – nothing personal.

“I maintain very good relations with the two exchanges,” he said. “We have no agenda here other than the best offer for our client. And we do not favor anyone. By the minute we do, we lose all credibility and we are bankrupt.”

Among the IPOs that occurred at the start of Healy’s business, only a small percentage of its customers was large enough to be eligible for the NYSE. Those who have been crossed from the Grasso, told BI the former chief of the NYSE.

“Some of my marketing people, at the start of Pat’s business, were very skeptical,” said Grasso, who led the exchange from 1995 to 2003. “But after a few sit-down with me, I was very comfortable that Pat was going to be fair.”

Healy also advises customers on what he calls “towers”, when a company turns part of its activities in its own business. The issuing network worked more during the recent slowdown in the IPO.

“You have Comcast Spinning, Honeywell Spinning, Fedex Spinning. You have a whole range of laps,” he said. “We have done a lot of tricks in our time, and we expect to be active on the spin market here in the foreseeable future – throughout the summer, at least. Many of these offers will bleed in 26, but their decision to select exchanges that I expect will be made in 2000.”

Healy said he could not disclose current customers, but noted that he had worked on a tour with 3m last year. He advised the company when it transferred its health activity, now called Solventum, and led to cooking between exchanges for the parent company and spinal at the same time.

“The winner takes everything,” said Healy. “So, instead of obtaining a co-branding package of $ 5 or 10 million for ‘Spinco’ ‘, you get this amount several times for the entire Enchilada.”

(3m stayed with the Nyse and Solventum joined his lists.)

Healy refused to discuss his costs, but said he was following a “satisfaction guarantee” policy: he tells customers that they can “tear our bill” if they are not happy – something of an anomaly to Wall Street.

The child called Healy “an old soul”.

“He essentially says to you:” Pay me what you think it’s worth “when it’s over,” said Child. “It’s like the opposite to manage business software.”

Healy’s humble education could explain its aversion to the spotlight. Growing up, he was one of the nine children. His father was a factor in the suburbs of Cleveland de Brook Park. The city housed a Ford manufacturing plant, which Healy described as “a ugly scene” – not necessarily the kind of place where you could expect someone who courts the agreements to Wall Street for some of the largest companies in the world.

“I’m just an Ohio Hick,” said Healy. “People like to talk to me. And I have something good to offer them. You are building a momentum over time while keeping your nose in the mill, offering good results and shooting straight with people.”