美國IPO數量爲何暴跌
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.
美國首次公開發行(IPO)市場出現了問題；過去20年裏，IPO數量暴跌了45%。這也是時任美國總統巴拉克?奧巴馬(Barack Obama)簽署《創業企業融資法案》（Jumpstart Our Business Startups,簡稱JOBS）的一個原因——該法案允許價值不足10億美元的擬上市公司延長其財務數據的保密時間。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.
特朗普(Trump)政府最近進一步放鬆了標準，把所有規模的公司都包括進來，想法是爲繁瑣的財務報告標準減負能鼓勵更多的企業上市。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.
美國證交會(SEC)主席傑伊?克萊頓(Jay Clayton)認爲這是散戶的重大勝利。他說，越來越多的公司迴避在美國上市，讓大多數散戶投資者無法受益於它們的發展。
It is a laudable goal, not only when viewed through the lens of wealth sharing but also because companies that go public create jobs faster than those that remain private.
這是一個值得稱讚的目標，不僅是從財富分享的角度來看是這樣，而且還因爲上市公司創造就業的速度要超過那些未上市公司。Yet the logic of loosening standards to increase the number of companies seeking to list is wrong. It is true that the regulatory burden for public companies has risen, in part because of greater reporting demands following scandals such as Enron and the financial crisis.
然而，通過放鬆標準來增加擬上市公司數量的邏輯是錯誤的。的確，上市公司的監管負擔有所增加，這在一定程度上是在安然(Enron)等醜聞和金融危機之後會計報告要求提升所致。But by and large, companies are not eschewing public markets because of what happens during the IPO process, but because of what happens before and after. An increase in private funding sources, looser patent enforcement, added pressure for short-term results and a fraying social safety net that stymies risk-taking have reduced willingness to seek an IPO.
但總的來說，公司逃避上市，問題並不出在IPO期間，而出在IPO之前與之後。私人融資來源增加，專利執法力度減弱，短期業績壓力上升，以及捉襟見肘、抑制冒險的社保體系，都降低了企業上市的意願。As Steve Case, chief executive of Revolution, a Washington-based venture capital group, and founder of AOL, recently pointed out, “companies used to go public to actually raise operating capital”.
正如華盛頓風險資本集團Revolution首席執行官、美國在線(AOL)創始人史蒂夫?凱斯(Steve Case)最近指出的那樣，“公司過去上市真的是爲了籌集運營資本”。Now the goal of an IPO is all too often for investors to “exit” with as high a valuation as possible. Many sources of private money, from hedge funds and private equity firms to sovereign wealth funds, are eager for a cut of a hot sector. Facebook raised $2.2bn in private equity funding over seven years ahead of its IPO.
如今，對投資者來說，IPO的目標往往是獲得儘可能高的估值“退出”。從對衝基金到私人股本公司和主權財富基金，許多私人資金來源都渴望從熱門行業中分得一杯羹。Facebook在上市前的7年裏從私人股本資金那裏籌得了22億美元。Uber has raised five times that as well as more than $3bn in debt funding thanks to low interest rates.
優步(Uber)經歷了5輪融資，此外還得益於低利率，通過債務融資逾30億美元。This means that, even as the number of IPOs has decreased, the average size of companies that go public has increased dramatically. This has the effect of keeping more money in private hands: even large asset managers know they may not receive all the shares they want from a hot IPO in a constrained market, so they buy in early, acquiring a stake in the pre-public phase. A winner-takes-all dynamic is created in which a small number of institutional investors get in early on hot new companies, and fewer such companies need to come to market.
這意味着，即便IPO數量減少了，上市公司的平均體量卻大幅增加。結果是讓更多的錢保留在私人手中：即便大型資產管理公司也知道，它們在一個受限制的市場中可能拿不到熱門IPO公司的所有股份，因此它們提早買入，在公司上市前收購股份。由此造成了一種“贏家通吃”的局面：少數幾家機構投資者早早獲得熱門上市公司的股份，而需要上市融資的此類公司越來越少。Other reasons lie behind the dramatic decline in IPOs, such as weaker patent protection over the past 10 years, which makes it tougher for start-ups to protect their intellectual property and thus garner investment.
IPO數量大幅下降還有其他原因，比如過去10年專利保護力度減弱，這讓初創企業更難保護自己的知識產權，從而獲得投資。Macro issues such as decreasing public spending and a threadbare social security system play a role. The lack of single payer healthcare, for example, makes it more difficult for Americans to leave their jobs to start companies. A 2008 Harvard study estimated 11m workers were caught in “job lock” because they were dependent on employer-based healthcare.
公共支出不斷下降和社保體系日顯陳腐等宏觀問題也是原因之一。例如，缺少全民醫保制度讓美國人更難離職創業。哈佛大學(Harvard)在2008年的一項研究估計，有1100萬人由於依賴僱主繳納醫保而卡在現有工作裏。An increase in student debt, thanks in part to lower state funding of college costs, has held back would-be entrepreneurs. “With that [$1.4tn] student debt burden on their shoulders, many millennials don’t feel empowered to take the risk of striking out on their own,” says David Jolley, Americas growth markets leader at EY, the accounting firm.
學生債務增長——部分歸因於政府削減了對大學開銷的資助——阻止了未來的創業家。會計公司安永(EY)的美國增長市場主管大衛?喬利(David Jolley)表示：“揹負着（1.4萬億美元的）學生債務負擔，許多千禧一代人覺得沒有勇氣冒險創業。”What is to be done? In lieu of a debt jubilee or healthcare reform, pushing back against short-term market pressure is a good start. Making share buybacks illegal, for example, as they were before 1982, would be a step in the right direction, as would limiting the amount of performance pay that can be awarded in stock options. These give business leaders major incentives to think more about the short rather than long term.
那麼應該怎麼辦？應該從抵制短期市場壓力做起，而不是債務豁免或者醫療改革。例如，就像1982年以前那樣，讓股份回購不合法是向正確方向邁出的一步，限制以期權形式獲得的績效薪酬額也是正確之舉。這些做法讓企業高管更有動力考慮短期而非長期利益。Chief executives and investors such as Jamie Dimon, Larry Fink and Warren Buffett have spoken out about the need to shift standards of corporate governance so that boards can focus less on “tick the box” legal demands and more on management, strategy and risk evaluation. That would probably require major tort reform. One of the reasons boards spend so much time on such issues is the amount of corporate litigation in the US.
傑米?戴蒙(Jamie Dimon)、拉里?芬克(Larry Fink)和沃倫?巴菲特(Warren Buffett)等首席執行官和投資者們公開表示有必要改變企業治理標準，從而讓董事會少去在意那些只需“打勾”的法律要求，而更多地關注管理、戰略和風險評估。這可能需要對民事侵權法進行重大改革。董事會之所以花這麼多時間關注此類事情，原因之一就是美國的企業訴訟非常多。
There is lower hanging fruit, namely focusing on the types of businesses in the US that need funding. Most of them are not those that would list but those that are making ends meet via founders’ personal credit cards and loans from community banks, which have been unfairly constrained by Dodd-Frank rules. Community banks represent 13 per cent of banking industry assets but 43 per cent of all small business funding.
還有一種更容易獲得成功的做法，即聚焦於美國需要融資的企業種類。其中大多數公司不會去上市，而是通過創始人的個人信用卡和社區銀行貸款來實現收支平衡，後者不公平地受到《多德-弗蘭克法案》(Dodd-Frank Act)的限制。社區銀行僅佔銀行業總資產的13%，但貢獻了所有小企業融資的43%。If the Trump administration wants to repeal regulation, it would do better to focus efforts, not around making public markets more opaque, but on helping bolster the institutions that encourage start-ups to market in the first place.
如果特朗普政府希望解除監管，那麼最好不要讓公開市場變得更加不透明，而是首先要幫助改善那些鼓勵初創企業進入市場的機制。
