On Wednesday, February 3, 2021 at 1:18:51 AM UTC-5, micky wrote:
Ancestry.com became a publicly traded company on NASDAQ (symbol: ACOM)
on November 5, 2009, with an initial public offering of 7.4 million
shares priced at $13.50 per share, underwritten by Morgan Stanley, Bank
of America, Merrill Lynch, Jefferies & Company, Piper Jaffray, and BMO
Capital Markets.[26]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestry.com

What does underwritten mean here? I see it all the time wrt IPOs.

Underwriters are used for insurance because someone has to agree to pay
if there is a large claim or a slew of smaller claims.

But IPO's take in money. What are those 4 companies underwriting, what
are they doing?

Why can't some bookkeeping company with no assets just sell the stock
and take in the money for ancestry.com?

They are the group of investment bankers that agreed to take it public
at $13.50 a share, that will offer the IPO to their best customers, that will
make a market in it, stand behind it to make sure it goes up in price and is
successful. They are endorsing it with their firm's reputation. Some bookkeeping
company can't do that, because among other things, it's illegal, there are laws
and requirements governing dealing in publicly traded stocks.