Renée Jones examines risks of billion-dollar unicorn startups

Renée Jones, a professor at Boston College Law and former Director of the Division of Corporation Finance at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, has released a new book titled ‘Untamed Unicorns: Why Startup Finance is Broken and How to Fix It’.

Jones defines a ‘unicorn’ as a private startup company valued at $1 billion. Her research indicates there are currently more than 1,500 such companies with a combined valuation exceeding $4 trillion. Jones argues that decades of deregulation have allowed these companies to remain private to avoid the regulatory safeguards and disclosure requirements designed to protect investors and the public from corporate wrongdoing.