I honestly believe this explains the current situation at DWA way better then I can write up. The IPO is not a golden road to riches, it is a difficult transition as I have found out recently...
Bringing a corporation to the market exerts a number of new pressures on the management team. As an initial matter, the members of management can expect to spend from three to six months deeply involved in the mechanics of the transaction. This precious time is added to that already spent attending to their other responsibilities with the company. Added to this additional time demand is the potential liability attendant to intentional or negligent misstatements contained in the company’s stock offering documents. Ongoing periodic disclosure of financial information, management’s compensation, insiders’ dealings with the company, and the equity ownership of directors and key management personnel is required by federal securities laws and the regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC). Information, both positive and negative, is subject to disclosure obligations throughout the life of the corporation. Compliance with these ongoing disclosure obligations and with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 necessarily means that expenses for legal and accounting advice and consultation, as well as other services of the type outlined above, are going to continue to accrue, oftentimes in significant amounts, year after year.
For the first time, perhaps, insiders face bringing new players into what has been, in essence, a private party, diluting their ownership interest and losing at least a measure of control over the direction that the corporation ultimately takes. Public scrutiny resulting from disclosure of a company’s operations may be painful enough to a formerly private corporation, but actually letting a large number of "outsiders" have a voice in corporate governance is an entirely different matter to a management team not accustomed to shareholder oversight.
In addition, as the officers of a newly-public company quickly learn, the company’s new owners will expect a certain return on their investment, subjecting management to performance pressures it may have never before experienced. Substantial time and effort, and thus dollars, must be expended in dealing with the investing community in order to ensure that investors and analysts remain satisfied with the company’s performance over the short term, while at all times keeping in mind, and working towards, management’s long term goals for the company. Finally, fiduciary obligations with respect to minority ownership interests have been expanded by the courts in recent years and cannot be taken lightly when planning to let others into a previously closed circle of ownership.
DWA is no longer a private company, it is publicly traded, which means JK is no longer calling all the shots. He now has investors to answer to.... so what happened to the DWA you all know and love? Wall street happened. Wall Street “the place where businesses are taken apart and run by someone else”.