The act of a stock market listing does not create millionaires. The act of building something that is worthy of a stock market listing does:

The Hut Group is expected to pull the trigger today on a £4.5 billion stock market listing that could put the online retailer’s founder in line for one of the largest windfalls in corporate history and promises to create hundreds of British millionaires overnight.

Matthew Moulding, 48, who started the fast-growing company in 2004, will be awarded shares worth about £700 million if the company’s valuation reaches £7.25 billion in the next two years as part of an incentive scheme.

Mr. Moulding’s deal post-flotation is not the bit that we’re grumbling about. Rather, that part about creating hundreds of millionaires overnight.

No.

The company has been handing out equity to the people that work there all along. OK, fine. That equity has some value when the company is still private. Sure, the flotation gives a public calculation of that value. It might even increase the value as a result of greater liquidity and so on. But those employee stakes in the company are not worth nothing the day before flotation and then millions the day after it.

The value created has come from building the company, not from floating it. Therefore it is the building of the company that creates the millionaires, not the flotation.

This is more than mere pedantry and sniping at journalistic language. If we don’t all understand where value comes from, how it is created, we’re never going to get questions like the taxation or other treatment of value right, are we? Let alone how to set up the system so as to create more such value.