Great article Matt. However, a "market cap" of $75 million is very, very small no matter how you measure it. Still, how you measure it does matter with respect to if this relief (which is welcome) will result in quality deals getting out the door. If its number of shares outstanding X offering price (or bid price), it may make a nice space for biotech companies that have lost favor with private money but need to buy time, but not a lot of other companies relying on the venture model (even with NASDAQ small cap requirements, it’s a tight range of value before all of a sudden their audit and legal fees double). As a result, the costs of going public for these companies (which also impacts value) probably won’t change materially. If the market cap ceiling is based on the value of shares held by the public (or the float * offering or bid price), that would of course open the door to a lot more companies and provide meaningful financial relief. Either way, this is progress. But the beneficiaries (for better or for worse) are probably very, very small pubicly traded companies with little or no real trading volume. Perhaps the Senate will increase the limit to under $200 million :)

Also, I just read the proposed legislation. This isn't really changing anything - the exemption relates to 404(b) - which in its simplest is additional auditing of management's assertions [404(a)] concerning internal controls. Small companies have effectively been exempt from that provision [404(b)] (but are and will remain subject to all of the other costly provisions).