THE BOTTOM LINE
The wrong lessons are being drawn over worries on public equities
Policymakers should focus on tax and planning reform to encourage enterprise rather than financial deregulation
Add BT as a preferred source
POLICYMAKERS around the developed world have long been troubled by the shrinkage in the number of listed companies. Initial public offerings have become more scarce while the ranks of existing quoted companies have been thinned by takeovers, many from private equity.
This has been the most obvious in the US, where the number of listed companies has halved since the start of the century. But now we have SpaceX, the biggest IPO the world has ever seen.
Wide-eyed investors put a value of more than US$1.8 trillion on Elon Musk’s rocket-based corporate adventure playground. Could this mark the end of the global IPO drought?
