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The number of public US companies has fallen from 7800 in the late 1990s to 3700 in 2015. These include bankruptcies, mergers, taken private, never gone public
by peter303 10y ago
The number of public US companies has fallen from 7800 in the late 1990s to 3700 in 2015. These include bankruptcies, mergers, taken private, never gone public etc. In the long term this could mean difficulties for savings plans like 401K who buy lots of equity.
In a related story, the number of shareholders per company has been plummenting too. Part of this is that money funds like ETFs only count as one shareholder, but have many owners. The other is the trend towatd just one or few private equity holders.