Why go public? The Aussie firms ditching the ASX in favour of private power plays
A growing number of Australian startups and scale-ups is skipping the stock exchange — not out of fear, but by design.
For decades, a public listing was seen as the holy grail of company growth. But Steven McLean, director at FCX – a platform enabling private market liquidity – says that playbook is rapidly changing.
“Public markets are excellent,” McLean tells InDaily. “But for a lot of companies, they’re just not fit for purpose.”
The shift is being driven by platforms like FCX locally, and Carta or Nasdaq Private Markets in the US, which allow private companies to offer shareholders and employees liquidity without the heavy scrutiny or limitations of going public.
McLean says these tools are giving founders options – and they’re using them.
“Companies are staying private for longer and being more discerning about the decision to go public,” he said. “If you’re a small company and you’re going into the ASX ecosystem purely to manufacture a liquidity event, that might look like a good idea — but, once you’re in that environment, if you’re not growing and don’t have the opportunity to be incorporated into one of the better tracked indices, public market life can be pretty tough.”
The result? Private markets are booming.
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At a recent Tech Council event in Canberra, McLean says almost every exhibitor – ranging from AI to drone tech – was private. “Maybe one or two were public. The rest were start-ups or mature private companies, and they’re transforming Australia’s economy.”
The liquidity game has changed
Traditionally, employee equity schemes like ESOPs (employee share ownership plans) were only meaningful if a company exited or went public. That’s no longer the case.
“It’s just paper money unless you can monetise it,” McLean says. “We built FCX in part to solve that — and in tech, where there’s always a war for talent, ESOP monetisation is now a real competitive edge.”
Rethinking Australia’s super system
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McLean also wants to see more Australians access private market opportunities — not just start-up insiders or wealthy self-managed super fund holders.
“One of the things that would be great to see is a broadening of the mandates for superannuation,” he said. “It doesn’t seem fair that a 24-year-old nurse with a super fund from a larger company doesn’t get exposure to growing private companies, simply because of mandate restrictions.
“Some of the better companies in Australia are never going to list on the public market. It doesn’t seem fair that a big part of the Australian community can’t get access to those types of investments. Why should only a handful of investors benefit?”
He argues that broadening super fund mandates to include private assets would not only improve returns over time — it would level the playing field.
And younger Australians aren’t waiting. “That nurse is out there buying crypto and Microsoft stock through low-cost brokers, because she knows she probably won’t own a home any time soon. She’s making 30 per cent on her own, then sees her super did a single digit — and starts asking questions.”
McLean says that shift in mindset — from passive to active, from blind trust to critical oversight — is already reshaping the investor landscape.
“The job now is for industry super funds to modernise,” he said. “They can’t just sit still. They need to innovate, accommodate new investor behaviours and rethink how and where they allocate capital.”
For McLean and FCX, that future is private — and it’s already arrived.
FXC is a sponsor of the South Australian Business Index lunch and networking event on Friday, 17 October at the Adelaide Convention Centre. Submissions for SA’s most important business event of the year close on Sunday, August 17. Purchase your individual ticket or table of 10 now.
