Theeclipseofthepubliccompany(DOC可编).docVIP

The eclipse of the public company 黯然失色的上市公司 Traditional listed firms are facing competition 传统上市公司面临竞争 FOR most of the past 150 years public companies have swept all before them. Wall Streeters have dissolved their cosy partnerships to go public. Communists have abandoned their five-year plans in favour of stockmarket listings. And Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have bowed before the god of the IPO—the initial public offering that takes a start-up public and makes its founders rich. 过去的150年来，上市公司横扫千军万马，独领风骚。于是，华尔街人士纷纷放弃了安逸的合作制转将公司上市。共产主义人士也抛弃了五年计划，选择了股票上市。同样的，硅谷企业家们面对着不仅能让新兴企业转公而且还能让创立者暴富的首次发行募股之神，也已俯首称臣。 But is the sun finally setting on the public company? Its rise came at the expense of two older kinds of organisation that had dominated business until the middle of the 19th century—private partnerships and chartered companies. Private partnerships were wonderfully flexible but lacked the vital ingredient of limited liability: partners could lose everything they owned if the business failed. Chartered companies offered limited liability but were controlled by governments. Liberal reformers combined the best of both models: they gave managers freedom from government control and investors the shield of limited liability. Their invention conquered the world. 但是，难道上市公司就日薄西山了吗？上市公司的崛起，是以19世纪中叶流行的两种老牌组织形式--私营合伙公司及特许公司的没落为代价的。私营合伙公司灵活性十足，却缺乏有限责任的重要元素。也就是说，一旦他们拥有的企业失败，合伙人将一无所有。特许公司承担有限责任，但是受政府掌控。自由改革家们结合了这两种形式的精华创立了新的公司形式：在此，经理人不再受政府约束，投资人也有了有限责任的保护。他们的这项发明征服了全世界。 Yet now both the private partnership and the state-controlled company are making a comeback. Two of the world’s three largest banks by market capitalisation are state-directed Chinese ones. The world’s biggest telecoms company, China Mobile, is state-run. State-owned energy firms such as Russia’s Gazprom and Saudi Aramco now account for more than three-quarters of the world’s oil production. Many of these state-run giants resemble old-style chartered companies. They have the trappings of the private sector, suc