Going Private But Staying Public: Reexamining the Effect of Sarbanes-Oxley on Firms' Going-Private Decisions

54 Pages Posted: 4 Feb 2008 Last revised: 15 May 2008

Abstract

This article examines whether the cost of complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) contributed to the rise in going-private transactions after its enactment. Prior studies of this issue generally suffer from a mistaken assumption that by going-private, a publicly-traded firm necessarily immunizes itself from SOX. In actuality, the need to finance a going-private transaction often requires firms to issue high-yield debt securities that subject the surviving firm to SEC-reporting obligations and, as a consequence, most of the substantive provisions of SOX. This paper thus explores a previously unexamined natural experiment: To the extent SOX contributed to the rise in going-private transactions, one should observe after 2002 a transition away from high-yield debt in the financing of going-private transactions towards other forms of "SOX-free" finance.

Using a unique dataset of going-private transactions, this paper examines the financing decisions of 468 going-private transactions occurring in the eight year period surrounding the enactment of SOX. Although SOX-free forms of subordinated debt-financing were widely available during this period, I find no significant change in the overall rate at which firms used high-yield debt-financing in structuring going-private transactions after SOX was enacted. Cross-sectional analysis, however, reveals that the use of high-yield financing marginally declined after 2002 for small- and medium-sized transactions, while significantly increasing for large-sized transactions. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the costs of SOX have disproportionately burdened small firms. They also strongly suggest that non-SOX factors were the primary impetus for the "name brand" buyouts commonly evoked as evidence that SOX has harmed the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets.

Keywords: Sarbanes-Oxley, Securities

JEL Classification: G30, G32, G34, G38, K22

Suggested Citation

Bartlett, Robert P., Going Private But Staying Public: Reexamining the Effect of Sarbanes-Oxley on Firms' Going-Private Decisions. UGA Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08-003, University of Chicago Law Review, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1088830

Robert P. Bartlett (Contact Author)

Stanford Law School

559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305-8610
United States

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