It is much more convenient not to be a public company. As a private company you don't have to give information to the public. Secrecy is an important factor of success in the commodity business.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There's not a whole lot of advantage for a company to be public.
Going public for the sake of going public is not really an optimal thing. You're going public because as a company you believe it is the right thing to do and it will benefit the ability of the company to achieve its long-term objectives.
In my experience, there are only two valid reasons to take a company public: access to growth capital and investor fatigue.
It's a special thing to be a public company.
There are certainly valid reasons for taking a company private, and it's also possible that C.E.O.s perform better when monitored by a small number of owners in a private company rather than by the dispersed and often uninterested shareholders of a public corporation.
I think overall it is better for businesses to stay private because you have more latitude, more freedom.
If I ever took a business public, I wouldn't want to take the shares off the table. I don't want people thinking I'm doing it just to make money and then going to run for the hills. I think that's a very important distinction.
Secrecy is what is known, but not to everyone. Privacy is what allows us to keep what we know to ourselves.
With a private company, you've got to get into who's investing and what's the balance sheet like. So going public is a positive thing from the perspective of the sales organization.
Even if a company is taken private, at some stage people want to make it public.