Deals continue to flee US public markets

According to an editorial in today's WSJ, Tommy Hilfiger is reemerging as a public company – in Amsterdam. The NYSE and Nasdaq are behind London in the number of deals. 144A institutional investor offerings will again exceed the volume of equity offerings.

Kate Mitchell of Scale Venture Partners says that even start-up companies are spending up to $3 million per year to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley in preparation for going public. "We're at the point of overkill," she notes, adding that regulation has changed the message her companies hear from investment banks. "When we get pitches for IPOs, they always bring into the mix European exchanges, Asian exchanges, even the Canadian exchanges . . . Five or 10 years ago, we never heard that."

Comments

[M.D. Fatwa]

But but but... the latest IPO figures say New York has just surpassed London for the first time in 3 years in IPO valuations. (On the number of deals, who besides the exchanges care? On that metric, Mumbai beats everybody.) Given the weakness of the dollar, NY has to be doing something extraordinarily right just to remain in the game, let alone winning a round.

[M. Hodak]

I read that WSJ passage wondering if what happened in the real world made any difference to the folks in Washington. They get their view of the world from the people who sit in front of them at committee hearings, which people are the product of a highly biased selection.