According to MarketWatch, the number of publicly traded U.S. stocks has declined by roughly 40% from its peak in the 1990s, even as American household investment in the market hits record highs this year. In a speech on Tuesday, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins labeled this trend a significant problem. He argued that companies are now choosing to stay private for much longer periods. This shift, he contends, allows well-connected venture capitalists to capture investment returns that historically would have gone to public shareholders holding common stock. Atkins framed his regulatory approach as an effort to reverse this dynamic and, in his words, “make IPOs great again.”
The Private Club Problem
Atkins has a point, and it’s one that’s been brewing for years. The rise of massive private capital pools—from VC funds to private equity—means a hot startup can become a decacorn without ever filing an S-1. The average company now goes public at age 11, compared to just 4 years old in 1999. So what used to be a high-growth, public-market phase is now happening behind closed doors. The returns from that growth? They’re going to institutional investors and ultra-wealthy individuals who can meet the accredited investor thresholds. Your average 401(k) holder is locked out. That’s a fundamental change in who gets to build wealth from American innovation.
Can Regulation Fix This?
Here’s the thing: the SEC itself is a big part of the reason companies stay private. Regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank made being a public company more expensive and legally risky. The compliance burden is enormous. So Atkins’s plan to “make IPOs great again” likely involves rolling back some of those rules, making the public markets more attractive. But is that the right fix? It feels like trying to put a genie back in the bottle. The private markets are now deep, sophisticated, and offer fewer headaches than the quarterly earnings circus and activist investors. Why would a CEO willingly jump into that fray if they don’t have to?
The Flip Side: Risk
And let’s not forget the other side of this coin. The whole point of public market regulation is to protect those everyday investors Atkins says are missing out. Easing rules to spur IPOs might bring more companies to market, but it could also mean bringing *riskier* companies to market. Remember the WeWork debacle? That was a private market spectacle that eventually spared the public. If the gates are opened wider, will mom-and-pop investors be buying into the next big thing or the next big implosion? There’s a real tension here between access and protection. You can’t have it both ways.
A Shift, Not a Solution
I think we’re looking at a permanent structural shift, not a problem a few rule changes can solve. The capital landscape has fundamentally changed. The question isn’t really how to force more companies to go public. It’s whether there’s a way to give ordinary investors a safe, regulated path to access pre-IPO growth. Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) were a messy, flawed attempt at that. Maybe the future is something else—more democratized funds that invest in late-stage private companies? Whatever the answer, simply trying to revive the 1990s IPO boom is probably nostalgia, not policy. The market has moved on.
