These days, more than a handful of communications execs are abandoning the mother ships of "established" agencies andFortune 1000 corporations in search of greener stock options.
A major trend among job seekers is to try and sniff out private winners on the verge of going public. IPOs made a strong comeback in 1999, according to the Venture Economics group of Thomson Financial Securities Data. Two hundred seventy-one companies went public, raising over $23 billion for themselves.
Numbers like this have not been seen since 1996, when 280 IPOs were hatched but only raised a little over $12 billion.
All in all, the 271 ventured-back companies for 1999 marked a post offer valuation at offering date of $136.2 billion. (www.ventureeconomics.com.)