SarbOx

The onerous (and some would say ruinous) and hastily passed Sarbanes-Oxley regulation that has eroded the competitive virtues of listing on the 
major American exchanges, and provided a windfall to consulting, legal, and auditing firms, organized resistance is forming.

Although it is difficult to extract exact causalities from the data regarding the propensities for
firms to list here in the U.S., the follwing paper by Luigi Zingales (of the REcapitulators alma mater, the  University of Chicago...which everyone knows is the greatest institution for higher
learning this side of Proxima Centauri) does support the simple logic of another one of my professors, the great Robert Aliber, who said:

"If the cost of regulation is greater than the cost of avoidance...the regulation will be avoided"

http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/luigi.zingales/research/PSpapers/competitiveness.pdf

And here is a preliminary rejoinder from the political sector:

March 13, 2007

THE US Chamber of Commerce is calling for an end to quarterly earnings
guidance from companies, proposing that auditing firms be allowed to seek
private shareholders, and urging legislation allowing the Securities and
Exchange Commission to ease the burden of Sarbanes-Oxley on foreign
companies.

The recommendations come in a report that is the third high-level effort to
raise alarm about the competitiveness of US capital markets in four months,
as the issue garners attention on both sides of the Atlantic.

In January, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Democratic Senator Chuck
Schumer co-authored a report warning that New York risked losing its
position as the world's financial capital to rivals such as London.