32 ◾ The Guide to Entrepreneurship: How to Create Wealth for Your Company
This was a surprising method of turning to the public markets to nance
certain promising operations while retaining a majority interest in the pub-
lic entity post-IPO (Initial Public Offering). Simultaneously lowering its cost
of capital and establishing a higher valuation for its majority stake made the
sum of the parts much greater than the whole.
For example, in August 1983, Thermedics (the rst of Thermo’s IPO
spin-outs) raised a total of $6 million. At the time, Thermedics had sev-
eral research contracts from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
(NHLBI) to develop a surgically implantable left ventricular assist device
(articial heart) for patients in ...