Lord_Majestic - 3:15 pm on Aug 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

They offered stock options to a lot of people and they had a legal obligation to go public.

AFAIK they had to start doing all accounting at the level of a PLC, but they did not actually had to float - they just thought that after going into expense of being de facto PLC costs wise, they might as well float and reap the benefits too. Being very secretive company they were edgy about telling the whole world about it and not getting something back. I also think they concluded that they probably at their peak and its best time to sell out.