Markoff writes in the NYT today that Google has completed an internal audit of its compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley. This is no small feat, the law requires an audit trail of every third party transaction, and Google has millions of them a week in its PPC engine. According to the Times:
Google’s board has been awaiting the report before giving the final go-ahead for the company to file a formal stock registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to several executives involved with the process….
The company has not yet picked a lead underwriter for its stock market offering, Google executives say, but several people involved in the process say that J. P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the only real candidates to manage the deal. Google is still weighing whether it should offer some shares through a public auction, in part to deflect potential criticism over whether the many investors eager to own a piece of the business will be treated in an equitable fashion.
The “dutch auction” approach popularized by WR Hambrecht is worth a longer think as it relates to Google specifically and others more generally. I’ll post more later.