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The titular questions have been swirling in the back of my head for the past month or so. Spoiler alert: I don't have the answer. But Jeff Schwartz' post in the CLS Blue Sky blog on the SEC Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies' proposal to create a separate market for small and emerging companies, open only to accredited investors--more or less a public SecondMarket/SharesPost--has me asking it again.

This strikes me, unlike Jeff, at first blush as a bad idea, but let's ignore the merits of the proposal and focus on one of its premises. One of the arguments the Committee makes in favor of it is that "providing a satisfactory trading venue" for these companies might encourage IPOs of their securities.

First question: Really? Isn't it just as likely that, if a robust market exists for these companies, they're less likely to go public? Isn't obtaining liquidity one big reason for going public in the first place?

Second question: How many is the right number of IPOs, anyway? The WSJ told me yesterday IPOs are set to raise the most cash since 2007. Jay Ritter argued in a recent paper that IPOs have dried up not because of heavy-handed government regulation but because times have changed. Now getting big fast is the way to go, and going public and being a small independent company isn't as attractive to a young firm being acquired by a bigger player.

As Ritter writes, "If the reason that many small companies are not going public is because they will be more profitable as part of a larger organization, then policies designed to encourage companies to remain small and independent have the potential to harm the economy, rather than boost it." Ritter's prescriptions to help IPOs are to encourage auctions over bookbuilding (here's yet more evidence that the underwriter spread is too big), discourage class action lawsuits, and reform the copyright and patent system.

Ritter closes with: "I do not know what the optimal level of IPO activity is in the United States or any other country, nor do I think that it should necessarily be the same now as it one was."

Right now I'm with him.

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The titular questions have been swirling in the back of my head for the past month or so. Spoiler alert: I don't have the answer. But Jeff Schwartz' post in the CLS Blue Sky blog on the SEC Advisory Committee on Small and Emerging Companies' proposal to create a separate market for small and emerging companies, open only to accredited investors--more or less a public SecondMarket/SharesPost--has me asking it again.

This strikes me, unlike Jeff, at first blush as a bad idea, but let's ignore the merits of the proposal and focus on one of its premises. One of the arguments the Committee makes in favor of it is that "providing a satisfactory trading venue" for these companies might encourage IPOs of their securities.

First question: Really? Isn't it just as likely that, if a robust market exists for these companies, they're less likely to go public? Isn't obtaining liquidity one big reason for going public in the first place?

Second question: How many is the right number of IPOs, anyway? The WSJ told me yesterday IPOs are set to raise the most cash since 2007. Jay Ritter argued in a recent paper that IPOs have dried up not because of heavy-handed government regulation but because times have changed. Now getting big fast is the way to go, and going public and being a small independent company isn't as attractive to a young firm being acquired by a bigger player.

As Ritter writes, "If the reason that many small companies are not going public is because they will be more profitable as part of a larger organization, then policies designed to encourage companies to remain small and independent have the potential to harm the economy, rather than boost it." Ritter's prescriptions to help IPOs are to encourage auctions over bookbuilding (here's yet more evidence that the underwriter spread is too big), discourage class action lawsuits, and reform the copyright and patent system.

Ritter closes with: "I do not know what the optimal level of IPO activity is in the United States or any other country, nor do I think that it should necessarily be the same now as it one was."

Right now I'm with him.

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