SEC Chair to Institutional Investors: “Make IPOs cool again”
Securities and Exchange Commission chair Paul Atkins has called on investors to back US equities (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Securities and Exchange Commission chair Paul Atkins has sought to reassure investors about the material benefits of US public equities after several volatile trading sessions, as the US government’s recent military action in Iran and a closely watched February jobs report fueled uncertainty about the economic outlook.
Speaking at an event hosted by the Council of Institutional Investors earlier this month, Atkins lamented what he described as a growing shift by institutional investors away from public equities toward private markets.
Private equity has been one of the defining trends in asset ownership in recent years. An abundance of capital flowing into unlisted investments has allowed companies to remain private for longer, contributing to more concentrated and less dynamic public markets. In turn, asset managers have increasingly moved to offer private market strategies to retail investors.
The shift has coincided with a sharp decline in public listings. According to SEC data, the number of IPOs by corporate issuers has fallen by nearly 50 per cent between 2000 and 2025, from 456 to 226.
At the same time, US equities experienced net outflows of $8.6tn in 2025, according to AOX’s sister publication MandateWire’s annual Deal Flow report.
Atkins compared the current surge in private markets with the sharp pullback investors made from the asset class after the 2008 financial crisis.
“I was speaking with the CIO of a large public pension fund, and she said that after the financial crisis they tried to get out of private markets,” Atkins said. “The result was that their coverage ratio plummeted into the 70s from the 90s.”
Despite current market uncertainty, Atkins emphasised that diversification remains essential for institutional portfolios.
To incentivise public equity investment, Atkins said he plans to adhere to a central adage of Trump-era economic policy: loosen regulations and simplify risk disclosure. During his talk, he noted that sifting through extensive risk factors has become a strain, and therefore a central deterrent, for investors in public equity. He added that he plans to use this year as a benchmark to reassess where policy and practice should change.
“Make IPOs cool again,” the chair said.