DETROIT -
As an attorney for General Motors who specializes in securities work, when it came to the automaker’s initial public offering, Robert Shrosbree had his work cut out for him.
“This began back in May when we started interviewing underwriters,” he explained on the Faces of GM Blog.
Since that time, Shrosbree indicated he has been working almost non-stop to pull together all the elements necessary for  the $20 billion deal.
The attorney has apparently read thousands of documents and e-mails over the last six months in preparation for the IPO. And the offering prospectus grew to almost 500 pages as he packed in “all the information about General Motors that you could possibly imagine.”
He had a large target audience in mind as he built the prospectus.
“Our target is … we have large institutional investors like Fidelity, big hedge funds and we have mom and pop retail investors as a large component,” Shrosbree explained. “We wanted to have a large component of this offering to be regular — what I would call regular — investors. So, I don’t know the exact percentage, but it’s probably somewhere around 25 to 30 percent of the investors are going to be you know, average Americans who want to have a piece of General Motors in their portfolio.”
While he indicated that it is unusual having the U.S. Treasury as a selling stockholder in the deal, Shrosbree said that IPOs usually have early investors who are selling stock to the general public when a company goes public.
The big difference with the recent GM IPO is that instead of early investors being venture capital firms or individuals, it’s the United States of America.
Shrosbree said the government is “trying to get out of this investment and so this is a normal avenue for them to do that kind of offering that we’re doing here. So, that’s not unusual.”
And the attorney had his work cut out for him on what would become one of the largest ever IPOs on the New York Stock Exchange, in addition to having the U.S. Treasury represented as one of the sellers of stock. Both these aspects led the IPO to have an “extremely high profile.”
In fact, he said, “Because of the political atmosphere, there’s increased interest in this deal and there are a lot of unique things that have happened that you wouldn’t see in an ordinary IPO.”
Shrosbree tends to understand securities law better than most because he’s responsible for filling quarterly and annual reports. Forms such as 10K, 10Q and 8K are all a part of his regular workday.
GM’s IPO went way beyond the normal workday, but Shrosbree said he doesn’t resent having to give up some of his summer weekends at his cottage to work on the IPO because he got a chance to work on the “Super Bowl” of corporate finance.
“This is a very huge project and really exciting. For a securities lawyer, it’s fantastic. I mean, you don’t get opportunities like that very often, that’s for sure,” he said.
After graduating from law school almost a quarter-century ago, Shrosbree worked for law firms and an international energy company before joining GM.
“I did a lot of international merger and acquisition type of work, deals all over the world. But coming here (to GM), I’ve been more focused on securities, which, with a company of this size, there is ample opportunity for work, that’s for sure. So it’s pretty exciting,” he explained.
Now that the IPO has been offered, the attorney is ready to unwind and spend some time with his family.
Shrosbree, his wife, Sue, and their three daughters like to go on vacations; however, due to the demands of his work, he said, “This year’s been very spotty in that regard.”
The Shrosbree clan is planning some catch-up vacation time heading into the holidays.