US listings see 39% dip in last 11 yrs: Grant Thornton

The United States has witnessed a significant decline of nearly 39 per cent in the number of publicly listed companies over the last 11 years, as some recent regulations seem to have undermined market support for small and innovative firms, a study says.

According to global consultancy firm Grant Thornton, the number of listings in the year 2008 stood at 5,401, a 38.8 per cent dip from 1997 level, when it hit a high of 8,823.

"Our 'one-size-fits-all' market structure has added liquidity to large cap stocks, but has created a black hole for small cap listed companies. Wall Street's very nature has been substantially transformed," Grant Thornton Capital Markets Advisor and former VC of Nasdaq David Weild said.

As per the study, SEC actions over recent decades have encouraged the development of markets that favour the most technologically sophisticated traders. These regulations are designed to increase efficiency, but have also tended to undermine market support for small, innovative companies.

The study called for an intelligent review of our US equity markets, by the US innovation policy, so that "Wall Street once again helps innovative small companies to succeed", it added.

The number of US listed companies has fallen by more than 22 per cent since 1991. In contrast, exchanges in Asia are adding new listings faster than GDP growth rates, Grant Thornton said.

The inability for emerging growth companies to access US public equity capital may push them to move to non-US emerging innovation hotspots, where start-ups are nurtured through attractive capital incentives, the study added.

"America's slipping global competitiveness in the capital markets is rooted in long-term structural problems, with devastating consequences for growth capital formation in the US," Board Member of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) Pascal Levensohn.

According to the study, 360 new listings per year are required by the United States simply to replace the number of listed companies that are lost every year. Moreover, 520 new listings per year are needed to grow the US listed markets roughly in line with GDP growth.

In reality, however, the US has averaged fewer than 166 IPOs per year since 2001, with only 54 in 2008.

"We need a regulatory framework that guides Wall Street to help small companies with their capital formation needs, not just build faster and more powerful trading algorithms," Grant Thornton Capital Markets Advisor Edward Kim added.