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.