The US market in public share listings is ailing; over the past two decades, the number of initial offerings has plunged 45 per cent. That is one reason Barack Obama, then president, passed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which allowed listing companies worth less than $1bn to keep their finances private for longer.
The Trump administration recently loosened those standards to include any company of any size, the idea being that less onerous reporting standards would encourage more public offerings.
Jay Clayton, US Securities and Exchange Commission chair, positioned it as a big win for the little guy. The extent, he said, to which companies are eschewing public markets in the US makes most individual investors unable to benefit from their growth.