David Daniels
As we enter into 2011, things are looking up. The Dow Jones has recently broken through 12,000 and is climbing to pre-recession heights. The economy has emerged from the greatest downturn since the Great Depression and continues to show modest growth. Unemployment is slowly decreasing. But all is not well. A potentially worrying trend that gained traction at the beginning of the millennia continues to unfold: the decline of the competitiveness of U.S. public equity markets.
For example, consider the U.S. primary equity markets. In 2000, these markets attracted 54% of all global initial public offerings (IPOs)—IPOs by foreign companies issued on at least one public exchange outside the company’s domestic market. Similarly, foreign companies raised about 82% of the dollar value of all global IPOs on U.S. public exchanges.
