The NASDAQ Private Market

On Wednesday, March 6, 2013, NASDAQ surprised the small-cap and investment community when it announced it is acquiring Sharepost’s private company market place (PCMP) exchange and rebranding it.  On March 5, 2014, NASDAQ officially launched the NASDAQ Private Market (“NPM”) a new marketplace for private companies.  A PCMP is a trading platform, such as SharePost or SecondMarket, that provides a marketplace for illiquid restricted securities, such as private company securities, 144 stock, debt instruments, warrants, and the like or alternative assets.  It is on a PCMP that pre-IPO Facebook, Groupon and LinkedIn received their trading start.

The official NASDAQ press release announcing the launch of the NPM states that the NPM will “provide qualifying private companies the tools and resources to efficiently