Art & Commerce

Poof! The ad world may soon learn the difference between puffery, a standard technique, and poofery, a recent Wall Street maneuver. It has become fashionable–and profitable–for financial engineers to package a group of companies in some fragmented industry, create a new holding company and take the whole shebang public. The IPO is important; it raises cash and creates a marketable security, both of which are used to acquire the new holding company’s constituents. If poor stock-market conditions stymie the offering, the new holding company might never emerge.