Question: When does an IPO end?

I don't know much about initial public offerings (or stocks in general). I assume that the IPO period ends after all the stocks that were offered have been bought, but is there a date after which all the unbought stocks are taken off the table, thereby ending the IPO? Is there an easy way to know which companies are still in an IPO phase and which have finished their IPO?

Answer:

AN IPO, as you note, ends When all offered shares have been sold/distributed. However, even when the initial number of shares have not been sold, one can consider the IPO ended on the offering day, since the unsold shares are usually placed in treasury stock. The shares sold are traded on the stock market and are no longer considered as IPO shares.

The vast majority of IPOs are oversubscribed (meaning that they have demand for more shares than they are actually releasing) so this tends not to be a problem.

Also some IPOs are underwritten.

When there is an IPO an underwriter along with the selling syndicate will attempt to sell or distribute all the New issue of stock (the take down) to member of the selling group and/or other broker dealers who have expressed an interest in "taking down" (buying) the new issue.

Once the stock has been distributed to all the members and the issuing company receives their money for selling their issued stock, the Underwriter will "close" the syndicate, at this point in time the IPO is ended.

There is no defined date for the closing of the syndicate. When all the paper work is filed, the company receives their money and the new issue of stock has been distributed through out the syndicate and none of it comes back to the group, the syndicate manager (usually the underwriter) will close the syndicate.

Website like Yahoo and MSN Money have schedules of stocks that are expecting to issue new stocks but no record is maintained publicly as to when they will be finished.