Paul Atkins

So the idea is to make IPOs great again, initial public offerings great again, and to make it cool to be public again.

And the reason why people do not want to take their companies public is, one, the high cost of –

by the regulations that the SEC has imposed over the years.

Two is the litigation issues around

you know, a lot of frivolous lawsuits, let's say, that are filed against public companies because lawyers know that they can extract some, you know, settlement and then get contingency fees out of that.

And then finally is the weaponization of corporate governance.

So, shareholding proposals, many of your

listeners probably, you know, have owners of securities in one way or another.

And so you often every year for the annual general shareholder meeting,

you get a proxy statement in the mail.

And oftentimes there is, you know, at least one or more, uh, things that, uh, shareholders are asked to vote on.

So those have been weaponized over the years by politicized shareholder activists who are pushing social agendas and other, they have their ax to grind about something.

Most of these things don't get adopted by the shareholders at the annual meeting, but it's used to pressure management in order to, uh,

kind of extract from management concessions that advance the interests of these special interest groups.

A part of it.

ESG, DEI, that whole thing.

So environmental activists, social activists.

That sort of thing, you know, is what we're talking about here.

So this is a way to, that's why companies, I mean, these things are not central to why or how, in general, how a company makes money for its, that's what they're in the business for after all is to

make money for their shareholders through dividends and whatnot.