Initial public offerings used to be an important milestone that generations of entrepreneurs and business owners strived hard to achieve. Taking your company public was the ultimate reward for decades of hard work and an embodiment of the American dream. Unfortunately, times have changed and the IPO has lost its luster — as evidenced by the plummeting number of companies choosing to go public over the last 20 years.

According to the World Bank, the United States has about half as many public companies today as it did in 1996. Over the last two decades several new dynamics have convinced private CEOs to steer away from listing on the stock exchanges, ranging from easier access to private capital to the exponential growth in the number and ferocity of activist investors. Further, there has been an unusually high number of firms that have delisted as public companies as a result of the changing dynamics.