This is an individual decision that should be made on the basis of the company's and stockholders' own unique circumstances. If company does decide to go public, either by selling new issued stock to raise new capital or by selling stock of the cur- rent owners, the key issue is setting the price at which shares will be offered to the public. The company and its current owners should want to set the price as high as possible: the higher the offering price, the smaller the fraction of the company the current owners will have to give up to obtain any specified amount of money. On the other hand, potential buyers want the price set as low as possible. We return to the establishment of the offering price later in the chapter, after we describe some other aspects of common stock financing.