Voluntary Delisting
A company's decision to withdraw its shares from a stock exchange at management's initiative rather than due to exchange sanctions.
What is Voluntary Delisting?
Voluntary delisting is the decision by a publicly listed company's board of directors and management to withdraw the company's shares from trading on a stock exchange, initiated by the company rather than mandated by the exchange for failure to meet listing standards (which is involuntary or forced delisting). Common reasons include: completing a going-private transaction (typically via a leveraged buyout or squeeze-out merger), consolidating from a dual-listing to a single primary exchange, reducing the ongoing cost and regulatory burden of public company reporting, or following an acquisition that makes the subsidiary's separate listing redundant. In the US, voluntary delistings require filing Form 15 with the SEC to deregister securities, and companies must comply with exchange-specific advance notification requirements.
Example
In October 2013, Dell Inc. voluntarily delisted its shares from the NASDAQ Global Select Market following the completion of its $24.9 billion going-private transaction led by Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners. Dell's shareholders voted to approve the transaction in September 2013, receiving $13.88 per share in cash. The company filed Form 15 with the SEC to deregister, ending over a decade of public company obligations. Dell subsequently relisted on the NYSE in 2018 through a reverse merger with its publicly traded VMware tracking stock.