NASDAQ’s Bob Greifeld writes in the WSJ:
According to the Small Business Association, small businesses accounted for 64% of the 15 million net new jobs created from 1993 through 2008. In 2010, only 51% of jobs in the U.S. were created by small businesses. In the 1990s, initial public offerings by smaller companies (those raising $50 million or less) averaged more than 300 per year in the U.S. In 2010, there were only 30. Clearly, we need to do more to promote capital formation by these engines of job creation.
He has three ideas on how to do that:
- Revise SOX (“the most visible sign of overregulation in this country, and the primary excuse for foreign companies and smaller domestic companies to forgo a U.S. public listing”) to expand the exemption from the Section 404 audit to firms up to $700 million market cap, and make the audit biennial for companies with clean internal control audits.
- Join the U.K., Canada and Sweden in offering “incubator” markets for smaller companies.
- Increase H-1B visas and reform the employment-based green-card process: “Entrepreneurs are critical to this country, but under the current system we are educating highly skilled individuals and sending them elsewhere.”
Sounds like a plan.