Competitiveness & Debt Markets

At last week's ALI-ABA conference on corporate governance, Hal Scott (who leads the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation) announced that his Committee likely would expand its review of U.S. competitiveness to include private debt markets.  Meanwhile, Scott produced data indicating that the U.S. was still slipping relative to foreign markets with respect to public equity offerings.  He noted that U.S. markets did not host any of the 20 largest initial public offerings in 2007 (compared to hosting 8 of 20 in 1998).  That statistic should change for the better in 2008, however, with Visa's pending IPO of up to $17 billion in stock.

Scott also noted that historically the average number of U.S. companies going abroad for their initial public offerings was about 0.1 percent.  In 2007, 4.2 percent of companies went abroad.

Posted by: Paul Rose