The upcoming General Motors IPO will reach for the masses, and to accomplish that goal, the event will be run on a Web site called RetailRoadshow.com.  From its Web site:

• RetailRoadshow provides electronic roadshows for individual investors seeking information about public offerings.
• The electronic Roadshow features a presentation by the executives of the issuing company.
• Please be aware that the electronic roadshow is only available until the underlying transaction is completed. The available presentations change daily.

• Always read the Preliminary Prospectus before making any investment decisions.
  

The site presently is host to 16 roadshows - including GM's and LPL's offerings.  A Who's Who of Underwriters use the site - BofA-ML, Barclays, DeuBk, Goldman, etc.  It started some 5 years ago, the day that new SEC rules went into effect requiring roadshows to be made available not just to institutional investors, but to individuals, too.

    Brad Hammond, Formerly of Robinson-Humphrey Banker.   RetailRoadshow president, Brad Hammond, 56, modestly noted, “We’re pretty much the only game in town.”   Then again, he should know, having made a cottage industry out of making roadshows available online.  After working in Silicon Valley for a mainframe computer company, Mr. Hammond switched to finance, working in the institutional sales and high net-worth businesses for Morgan Stanley in the 1990s before moving to Atlanta in 1995 to work for what was then the Robinson-Humphrey Company.

Robinson-Humphrey’s roadshows drew only a fraction of the attendees as those who Mr. Hammond had seen at Morgan Stanley.  So he turned to the Internet, founding NetRoadshow in 1997 with a green light from the SEC.  That site catered to institutional investors;  sibling RetailRoadshow, debuted in 2005 when the SEC changed its rules. 

“The whole purpose of RetailRoadshow is compliance,” Mr. Hammond said. “The S.E.C. kind of said, ‘Hey, we need to do this, you need to do this.’  So we’re doing it.  It’s not the bulk of the business.”

[NYT Dealbook, 11/8]