Reforms Proposed to Help Private Companies Go Public

PSW’s longtime client is a multinational financial services company providing technology, infrastructure, and strategic insight to leading companies worldwide. In 2017, the company’s CEO asked the question, “How do we make the market structure more fair to small investors and companies?” She immediately launched an initiative to modernize the U.S. market structure and improve the public company ecosystem, which had been dwindling for decades. That downturn, plus the fact that those companies that do go public are waiting longer to do so, effectively shut out the average retail investor.

Our team was asked to help spearhead outreach on Capitol Hill for the CEO’s initiative. PSW played a leading role in a comprehensive push to educate Senators, Representatives, and their staffers about the benefits of public markets and the need for reform. As part of our advocacy efforts, we also leveraged our strong relationships with House and Senate committee staff to arrange for our client to testify at Congressional hearings in support of reforming the system. Overall, the proposed reforms sought to make it easier for companies to go public and stay public, lower the barriers for average investors to enter the market, and help build the public company ecosystem to allow job and opportunity growth that would not be available otherwise.

To bolster our efforts with lawmakers, PSW was actively engaged in helping build a coalition of interested parties that could multiply the effectiveness of our outreach on Capitol Hill. PSW also worked closely with our client to turn their ideas into legislation. Our team promoted a set of 15 legislative proposals focused on regulatory reform, market structure modernization, and long-termism. Several of these proposals advanced from the House Financial Services Committee and were approved by the full House. We then worked with Senate Banking Committee members to secure introduction and build support for these bills in the Senate.