What are the reasons a private company doesn't want to be on the stock market?

• Fees: Stock exchanges charge listing fees. There are also fees associated with keeping shareholder records, and expenses for a maintaining a shareholder relations department. Some companies would rather not have to pay these fees.

• Listing requirements: The listing requirements of some stock exchanges may require companies to set up audit committees and compensation committees. Some exchanges may require that the company have a minimum number of independent directors. Some companies may not like to be bound by the listing requirements.

• Ownership: Listing on stock exchanges means that shares are publicly traded. Publicly traded shares means that there are more owners. The existing owners of the company may not want to share the ownership of their company with others.

• Lack of market for shares is not a problem: Some companies have no need for the stock market. They have no need to raise money by selling shares to the public, and their owners are perfectly content with the illiquidity of their shares.

• Revealing information to competitors: Being a public company means that the company has to make its financials public. Public companies also have to publicly notify their shareholders when there are major events. The company may not like this because this could reveal information to competitors that the company would rather keep secret.

Because taking a company public risks losing control of it.

Many small companies are owned by individuals or families. They decide how the company is run, usually with the intention of creating a long-lasting profitable business that they can pass on to their children.

As soon as you sell shares on the stock market, you create new shareholders who will also have votes at the AGM. Once the family's shareholding drops below 50%, it's not their company any more.

Activist investors may move in and vote the family members off the board of directors. They may vote to "return value to the shareholders" - which means raiding the company's bank account and giving all the money to the shareholders as dividends.

Instead of being ownders of a sustainable family business, they are now minority shareholders in a company that can only grow by borrowing money. If it does try to grow with borrowed money, it risks going bankrupt the next time there is a recession.

The company may decide that they have no need for selling shares to outside investors, beyond their ability to sell to a small number of investors as a private company.

Once they have people invested that have no other linkage to the company, many of those investors want the stock to pay dividends. Many of those investors want to be able to sell anytime for a profit, so they want the numbers released every quarter to show growth so that new investors will pay more for the shares.

The focus of the company can shift. They decisions they make may focus on short term numbers instead of long term numbers.

Once they sell the shares to the public, then company doesn't get more money for the reselling of those shares. All the other trades on the markets involve trades between investors. If they need more cash they have to sell more chunks of the company.

In the US there are millions of businesses. Most don't have investors outside of friends and family. Very few companies sell shares on one of the US stock markets. The required paperwork once they are no longer private is significant.

A company that goes public receives money from investors but then becomes partly owned by those investors, including possibly sharing the profit with them. If you don't need a large investment of money to expand your business, then why would you give up your complete ownership and control of the company? Being public also brings lots of regulations to abide by, necessitating more lawyers and accountants etc.

For example, think of a local independent grocer, or a Twitch streamer, or an independent carpenter? What would taking their private companies public on the stock market offer anyone? What prospects would they offer to potential investors? How would investing $10M into their small businesses actually help them grow? Sure they could easily find ways to burn that money in Super Bowl ads or hiring lots of unnecessary staff, but that wouldn't guarantee growth.

Almost every company that goes public would first go through a period of getting private investors, and the same logic applies to them. A successful small business will seek to become profitable, and then to slowly grow. Maybe that small independent grocer thinks they can open a new store in a neighbouring housing development. Do they have the cash to pay for outfitting a store and paying 6 months of rent and employee wages? If so, then they might not need an investor. If they don't (and they can't get a big enough loan) then they'll look for investors and make a case that investing with them has a decent chance of paying off well.

Once that grocer has 100 stores they can probably easily open one or two new stores each year from their cash account. But what about if an unexpected opportunity presents itself, like a national grocery store chain going bankrupt? This might bring the opportunity to open 50 stores, but they don't have the cash for that (and can't secure a loan of the required size etc). So they'll go looking for investors, who'll give them the money, in return for a third of the company's value. It's a great opportunity where everyone can make money, as long as the company's management is as good as it says it is. There's always a risk, which is why the investors will ask for a bigger proportion of the company than the company owners would ideally be wanting to part with.

Cynically, it seems like a lot of the time that a private company goes public, called an IPO, an Initial Public Offering, it is actually an opportunity to con the public. The company's management will do a big song and dance about how amazing their company is, and lots of people will buy shares, only for the share price to lose value soon after. There have been many managers who have made the big bucks, but at the cost of mum and dad's savings.