The JOBS Act and the Return of the Microcaps

Six years ago, I wrote in a sister publication opposing the application of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's internal accounting control rules to small public companies, but I broke with my fellow critics on the reason why. I argued that small companies shouldn't be treated like big companies, not because they couldn't afford regulation, but because being small made them qualitatively different. Intrusive regulation made sense for large companies, I argued, because their failures could cause wide-ranging damage. Words like “systemic risk” were not yet in vogue, but that's what I meant. On the other hand, because failure and fraud in small companies would not impact the rest of the economy, they should largely be left alone, and their investors left to their traditional fraud remedies. It was, admittedly, a radical position. See Aegis J. Frumento, The Rich are Different, The Corporate Compliance & Regulatory Newsletter (May 2006), available at www.lawjournalnewsletters.com/issues/ljn_corporate/3_9/news/146512-1.html.