Business and Personal Finance Dictionary

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• SECONDARY OFFERING
  
  The most common form of secondary offering occurs when an investor (usually a corporation, but sometimes an individual) sells to the public a large block of stock or other securities it has been holding in its portfolio. In a sale of this kind, all of the profits go to the seller rather than the company that issued the securities in the first place. Secondary offerings can also originate with the issuing companies themselves. In these cases, a company issues shares of its stock over and above those sold in its initial public offering (IPO), usually in order to raise additional capital. However, because an increase in the number of shares devalues those that have already been issued, many companies make a secondary offering only if their stock prices are high.
  
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