FBR.com, a way for retail investors to get WEBM IPO allocation.
If you're a small-potatoes retail investor desperate to get WEBM at offering price, how can you do it? Sorry, you probably can't, and you'll risk getting fleeced if buying in the aftermarket fervor.
But, the situation may be less bleak than usual with this particular offering.
The filing notes that the underwriters for the offering are: "MORGAN STANLEY DEAN WITTER [LEAD], MERRILL LYNCH & CO., DAIN RAUSCHER WESSELS, FRIEDMAN BILLINGS RAMSEY."
Friedman, Billings, Ramsey has been quite aggressive about allocating IPOs to retail investors, particularly through its website, fbr.com
Great news for their customers on this front hit the newswire today on the Wall Street Journal and MSNBC:
msnbc.com
"Friedman Billings aims to distribute more IPOs"
A new system is being unveiled called Offering Marketplace, which "should be used in an offering in the next few weeks". I don't know if this would include the webmethods offering.
Additionally, webmethods and FBR seem to have a very strong, longstanding relationship, which may bode well for the IPO allocation for FBR and its clients. In fact, the venture capital arm of the company is one of its leading investors.
The webmethods filing notes:
FBR Technology Venture Partners L.P., an affiliate of Friedman,
Billings, Ramsey & Co., Inc., purchased 50,000 shares
of mandatorily redeemable, convertible Series B preferred stock at a
price of $20 per share in November 1997, 34,638 shares
of mandatorily redeemable, convertible Series C preferred stock at a
price of $33.20 per share in September 1998 and
910 shares of mandatorily redeemable, convertible Series D preferred
stock at a price of $88.40 per share in May 1999, which
will convert into shares of our common stock.
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