Puma went public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 1986. The sportswear company became a public company as PUMA AG, with its shares traded on both the Frankfurt and Munich stock exchanges.
The stock-market listing came nearly four decades after Rudolf Dassler founded the company in 1948. Dassler had previously worked with his brother Adolf in the Gebrüder Dassler shoe business before the brothers split and established separate companies.
The year 1986 is sometimes confused with 1996 because Puma later became associated with Germany’s MDAX mid-cap index. That later index inclusion was not the company’s initial public offering. Puma’s shares had already been traded on the German exchanges for a decade.
The listing marked a major transition from a family-founded shoe manufacturer to a publicly traded international brand. Puma’s corporate structure and ownership changed repeatedly afterward, including the sale of a large family stake in 1989 and later ownership links with the French luxury group Kering.