Privatization decisions of Australian firms: An empirical investigation

• The financial crises, less salient and excess internationalization are significant factors.
• The significance of above factors is present at the time of the IPO.
• It takes on average about thirteen and a half years for a firm deciding to go private.

This study revisits the determinants of Australian public firms that choose to go private. The new determinants hypothesized in this study - the presence of financial crises, stock salience and excessive foreign operations - are found to be crucial to a firm's decision to go private. While these determinants are found to be present at the time of the Initial Public Offering (IPO), it still takes an average of thirteen and a half years post-IPO for a public firm to back to being private.