
Gone With the Wind: Small IPOs, the JOBS Act, and Reality
A dramatic reversal occurred in the capital markets, beginning around 2000, and its causes and implications appear to have been widely misunderstood. From 1980 to 2000, an average of 310 operating companies did initial public offerings (IPOs) each year, but from 2001 to 2011, this number fell by over two-thirds to only 99 operating companies per year.1 This decline cannot be explained by macro-economic conditions as Gross Domestic Product more than doubled over this period.
Moreover, this decline has been even more precipitous in the case of smaller IPOs (hereinafter defined to mean IPOs of companies with pre-issuance annual … Read more