Meet the Father of the Modern IPO
Eric Dobkin turned to institutional investors to boost sales
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In 1984, Eric Dobkin was working for Goldman Sachs, selling stocks to professional money managers, when he was handed an assignment: The bank ranked a lowly ninth in underwriting new stock offerings. Fix it.
Dobkin, then 41, spent a few sleepless nights mulling the problem. At the time, initial public offerings were handled by thousands of regional stockbrokers peddling the shares to individual investors. It finally hit him one morning in the shower, he says. If Goldman Sachs could sell large blocks of equities to institutional investors, it could surely sell more initial offerings to them as well. Thus was born Wall Street’s new model for raising money for corporations, earning Dobkin credit as the father of the modern-day IPO.