Role of stock exchanges

Stock exchanges have multiple roles in the economy. This may include the following:

1. Raising capital for businesses
2. Mobilizing savings for investment
3. Facilitating company growth
4. Profit sharing
5. Corporate governance
6. Creating investment opportunities for small investors

Raising capital for businesses

A stock exchange provides companies with the facility to raise capital for expansion through selling shares to the investing public.

Common forms of capital raising

Besides the borrowing capacity provided to an individual or firm by the banking system, in the form of credit or a loan, there are four common forms of capital raising used by companies and entrepreneurs. Most of these available options might be achieved, directly or indirectly, through a stock exchange.

Going public

Capital intensive companies, particularly high tech companies, always need to raise high volumes of capital in their early stages. For this reason, the public market provided by the stock exchanges has been one of the most important funding sources for many capital intensive startups. After the 1990s and early-2000s hi-tech listed companies' boom and bust in the world's major stock exchanges, it has been much more demanding for the high-tech entrepreneur to take his/her company public, unless either the company already has products in the market and is generating sales and earnings, or the company has completed advanced promising clinical trials, earned potentially profitable patents or conducted market research which demonstrated very positive outcomes. This is quite different from the situation of the 1990s to early-2000s period, when a number of companies (particularly Internet boom and biotechnology companies) went public in the most prominent stock exchanges around the world, in the total absence of sales, earnings and any well-documented promising outcome. Anyway, every year a number of companies, including unknown highly speculative and financially unpredictable hi-tech startups, are listed for the first time in all the major stock exchanges – there are even specialized entry markets for these kind of companies or stock indexes tracking their performance (examples include the Alternext, CAC Small, SDAX, TecDAX, or most of the third market good companies).

Limited partnerships

A number of companies have also raised significant amounts of capital through R&D limited partnerships. Tax law changes that were enacted in 1987 in the United States changed the tax deductibility of investments in R&D limited partnerships. In order for a partnership to be of interest to investors today, the cash on cash return must be high enough to entice investors.

Venture capital

A third usual source of capital for startup companies has been venture capital. This source remains largely available today, but the maximum statistical amount that the venture company firms in aggregate will invest in any one company is not limitless (it was approximately $15 million in 2001 for a biotechnology company).

Corporate partners

A fourth alternative source of cash for a private company is a corporate partner, usually an established multinational company, which provides capital for the smaller company in return for marketing rights, patent rights, or equity. Corporate partnerships have been used successfully in a large number of cases.

Mobilizing savings for investment

When people draw their savings and invest in shares (through an IPO or the issuance of new company shares of an already listed company), it usually leads to rational allocation of resources because funds, which could have been consumed, or kept in idle depositswith banks, are mobilized and redirected to help companies' management boards finance their organizations. This may promote business activity with benefits for several economic sectors such as agriculture, commerce and industry, resulting in stronger economic growth and higher productivity levels of firms.

Facilitating company growth

Companies view acquisitions as an opportunity to expand product lines, increase distribution channels, hedge against volatility, increase theirmarket share, or acquire other necessary business assets. A takeover bid or a merger agreement through the stock market is one of the simplest and most common ways for a company to grow by acquisition or fusion.

Profit sharing

Both casual and professional stock investors, as large as institutional investors or as small as an ordinary middle-class family, throughdividends and stock price increases that may result in capital gains, share in the wealth of profitable businesses. Unprofitable and troubled businesses may result in capital losses for shareholders.

Corporate governance

By having a wide and varied scope of owners, companies generally tend to improve management standards and efficiency to satisfy the demands of these shareholders, and the more stringent rules for public corporations imposed by public stock exchanges and the government. Consequently, it is alleged that public companies (companies that are owned by shareholders who are members of the general public and trade shares on public exchanges) tend to have better management records than privately held companies (those companies where shares are not publicly traded, often owned by the company founders and/or their families and heirs, or otherwise by a small group of investors).

Despite this claim, some well-documented cases are known where it is alleged that there has been considerable slippage in corporate governance on the part of some public companies. The dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, and the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007–08, are classical examples of corporate mismanagement. Companies like Pets.com(2000), Enron (2001), One.Tel (2001), Sunbeam (2001), Webvan (2001), Adelphia (2002), MCI WorldCom (2002), Parmalat (2003), American International Group (2008), Bear Stearns (2008), Lehman Brothers (2008), General Motors (2009) and Satyam Computer Services (2009) were among the most widely scrutinized by the media.

To assist in corporate governance many banks and companies worldwide utilize securities identification numbers (ISIN) to identify, uniquely, their stocks, bonds and other securities. Adding an ISIN code helps to distinctly identify securities and the ISIN system is used worldwide by funds, companies, and governments.

However, when poor financial, ethical or managerial records are known by the stock investors, the stock and the company tend to lose value. In the stock exchanges, shareholders of underperforming firms are often penalized by significant share price decline, and they tend as well to dismiss incompetent management teams.

Creating investment opportunities for small investors

As opposed to other businesses that require huge capital outlay, investing in shares is open to both the large and small stock investors because a person buys the number of shares they can afford. Therefore, the Stock Exchange provides the opportunity for small investors to own shares of the same companies as large investors.

Government capital-raising for development projects

Governments at various levels may decide to borrow money to finance infrastructure projects such as sewage and water treatment works or housing estates by selling another category of securities known as bonds. These bonds can be raised through the stock exchange whereby members of the public buy them, thus loaning money to the government. The issuance of such bonds can obviate, in the short term, direct taxation of citizens to finance development—though by securing such bonds with the full faith and credit of the government instead of with collateral, the government must eventually tax citizens or otherwise raise additional funds to make any regular coupon payments and refund the principal when the bonds mature.

Barometer of the economy

At the stock exchange, share prices rise and fall depending, largely, on economic forces. Share prices tend to rise or remain stable when companies and the economy in general show signs of stability and growth. An economic recession, depression, or financial crisis could eventually lead to a stock market crash. Therefore, the movement of share prices and in general of the stock indexes can be an indicator of the general trend in the economy.