| The JOBS Act celebrated its 10th birthday on Tuesday. Signed into law by President Obama to great bipartisan fanfare, it was intended to jump-start an increase in IPO filings, but a decade later has ultimately yielded mixed results. Why it matters: The legislation was hailed at the time by its supporters as an antidote to some of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's onerous auditing and reporting requirements and the failure of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to make it easier for companies to go public. Flashback: The law that was eventually named the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act was born out of Washington's efforts to counter the drop-off in IPOs in the years following the dot-com bust. - "If you're a startup and you take money from early stage investors, there are really only two ways to return that capital to the investors… selling or going public," Latham & Watkins partner Joel Trotter said on Tuesday during a roundtable hosted by the House Financial Services Committee, which convened participants who worked on the law. "We thought the balance had tilted too far toward M&A."
- Some of the legislation's shepherds also touted public companies as significant creators of jobs, adding to the argument that the U.S. should get more businesses to go public.
Yes, but: "What determines a company going public: the market... and the stage of a company and the availability of private capital for funding," University of Florida professor Jay Ritter, who studies IPOs, tells Axios. "All of these things are independent from tweaks in regulation." - The JOBS Act also made it easier for companies to not go public sooner, he adds, for instance by increasing the maximum number of shareholders of record a company can have before it has to register to go public.
- The boom in available private capital in the decade since the law passed also affected IPO decisions. "If it wasn't there, there would probably be fewer startups, and there would be more hasty exits," Ritter said.
But, but, but: The JOBS Act did include some productive provisions — namely allowing emerging growth companies (EGCs) to confidentially file a draft of their IPO prospectus for feedback from the SEC, and the ability to "test the waters" with institutional investors, says Ritter. - While in office, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton extended those benefits to all companies in a bid to further stimulate IPOs.
Moreover: Proponents of the legislation also tout the high share of EGCs among IPOs in the years since, hinting that the JOBS Act's on-ramp and lower compliance burden were effective tools. - Since 2013, 93% of U.S. IPOs were completed by EGCs, per a report from the House Financial Services Committee.
What we're watching: Whether the SPAC mania and cryptocurrency boom will cool regulators' interest in new rules that are in the spirit of the JOBS Act. | 
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