This section of the PrimaryBid Connect API documentation explains a few essential concepts required to fully understand the design and function of the API. We organised the terms by domain and particularity, starting with the main PrimaryBid Connect API notions, and continuing with Financial and Technical terminology.
PrimaryBid Connect Basic Terms
Offer
A public offering that involves the sale of equity shares or other financial instruments such as bonds to the public in order to raise capital. PrimaryBid provides access to the following offer types: IPOs, Follow-ons, Bonds, Blocks, and SPACs, with Investment Trusts as a sub-category. Our API provides all the offer metadata needed to provide a customisable branded experience for Retail Investors on your platform.
Subscription
The firm intention where an investor commits to invest in a financial instrument before the closing of an offer. To provide a consistent experience, you can seamlessly extend your flows by submitting these subscriptions directly to our API.
Allocation
The operational process of dividing and assigning new shares to investors, based on the requirements of the company issuing such shares. Occasionally, deals may be oversubscribed, in which case, partial allocations will take place. The PrimaryBid Connect API facilitates a streamlined allocation process that instantly alerts your system upon completion, eliminating manual enquiries.
Webhook
An HTTP callback that allows your system to subscribe to event notifications, such as when offers launch/close and when allocations become available. It’s an efficient way of using our API to keep investors informed and allow them to sit back without having to repeatedly log in to your platform to check for updates.
Financial Terms
Accelerated Bookbuild (ABB)
A type of offering on the equity capital markets is characterised by quickly taking orders from investors over a short period (a few hours to a day). This process is known as “building a book”.
Block
A transaction involving a large number of shares that are traded in a single transaction.
Bond
A loan from investors (lenders) to an issuing company (borrower).
Community offer
An offering in which an issuer identifies and invites a group or groups of individuals to participate in the offer - either exclusively or alongside the public - and gives them preferential treatment at allocation.
Follow-on
The offering of new or existing shares once a company has completed its IPO and is publicly traded on an exchange.
Initial Public Offering (IPO)
The process through which a private company first offers its shares to the public. The newly-issued shares are listed on a stock exchange such as the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in the UK or the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or Nasdaq in the US. The process is often called ‘going public’, ‘floating’ or ‘listing’.
Investment trust
An investment trust (also called an investment company or a closed-ended fund) is a public limited company - just like others listed on a stock exchange - that aims to make money by investing in other companies or assets.
Primary placing
When a company issues new securities/shares.
Re-IPO
The re-IPO (or de-SPAC) process occurs once the SPAC has completed its IPO, raised funds and successfully negotiated an acquisition agreement. The target company merges with the SPAC to become a new publicly traded company, subject to the acquisition being approved by the SPAC’s existing shareholders. The de-SPAC process transitions the target company into a publicly traded entity.
Secondary placing
When a company sells already-existing securities.
Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC)
A SPAC is formed with the purpose of raising capital through an initial public offering (IPO) in order to acquire an existing company. In simple terms, a SPAC is a "blank check" or “shell” company created to find and acquire a target company.
Technical/API terms
API
Stands for Application Programming Interface and is a set of rules that enables two or more computer programs to exchange information.
HTTP methods
Also called HTTP requests or verbs that indicate what actions the web server should perform with the data identified by the URL. HTTP methods are included in the request header, in all-caps, and depending on their purpose can be: POST, GET, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE.
PrimaryBid Connect API only uses two methods:
- GET - Returns a single resource or a list of resources from the server.
- POST - Sends data to a server to create a new resource or update an already-existing one.
REST
The acronym for REpresentational State Transfer. It’s an architectural style that guides the design, behaviour and development of the World Wide Web. It’s used to create stateless, reliable web APIs, informally described as RESTful.
RESTful web API
An interface that’s loosely based on HTTP methods and used by two computer systems to exchange information securely over the internet. Data is transmitted in a JSON or XML format.