The capital markets aren’t only about ensuring returns for individual investors.

In fact, the role that they play in making sure that American companies achieve their goals has never been more important.

At this year’s SIFMA Annual Meeting, a distinguished panel of commercial company chief financial officers and treasurers took the stage to discuss why market activity is so important to their organizations’ missions.

A stable market helps established corporations succeed.

The improved American economy is driving companies and their officers to more deeply examine the ways in which the capital markets can work for them.

When it comes to recent economic progress, “there has been lasting impact,” explained Laurence A. Tosi, Chief Financial Officer of Blackstone.

Echoing those comments, Jim Duensing, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation, explained that a deep market is enabling his organization to bolster their financial standing.

Caterpillar has “found the markets overall, for funding to financing asset portfolios, to be very favorable,” Duensing said.

For younger companies, the time is right to go public.

K2M, Inc., a Virginia-based company that designs and develops technologies for spinal surgeons who treat challenging pathologies, had been itching to go public since 2008. But according to K2M’s Chief Financial Officer, Gregory S. Cole, the timing just wasn’t right – until now.

“In 2014, it looked like the windows were reopening,” explained Cole.

Thanks to a robust market, Cole and K2M now had options. K2M needed to make sure they had a group of happy investors and built long-term relationships with their initial public offering. Thanks to the recovery, the company had a large selection of banks to choose from, and was able to engage with financial advisors both internal and external to share their story in a crowded market. These traditional capital market-funding mechanisms are doubly important for companies hoping to go public, as other sources of funding remain less reliable for smaller firms.

“When you are a small business, it is challenging to find an alternative capital funding option,” explained Cole.

Now is the time for companies to ensure new regulations work for them.

“Clearly, we needed some level of increased regulation – the question is always how far you go with it,” said Duensing.

It seems to have gone fairly well. At Caterpillar, Duensing shared, the company uses tools like derivatives to manage risk. Like Cole and K2M, Caterpillar has also taken advantage of increased diversity in banks in order to identify the most competitive offerings. While there are still concerns like bond market volatility, Duensing says his firm hasn’t seen any regulatory impact on their ability to execute.

“Overall, we’ve been okay with where things are going,” Duensing shared.

Of course, there is room for improvement in regulation that would help companies to succeed – for example, in the amount of time it takes for banks to close on capital lending projects.

“I would focus on how it takes 17 days to clear a bank loan,” explained Tosi. “Regulation should be addressed at issues that can solve issues of the slow flow of capital.”

Overall, choice in the markets is vital to ensuring companies succeed.

“More options out there are good,” explained Tosi. “It is critically important that there are options.”

Whether those options come in the form of increased options for companies in search of funding to grow, or advice from a more diverse set of financial professionals, the key is making sure the progress continues. Whether that is through regulation or organic market growth is the question – one that financial officers around the corporate world are waiting to see answered with anticipation.

As Cole asked, “the gauge now is: what happens next?”

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Project Invested, a new resource, unveiled at the SIFMA Annual Meeting, focuses on local stories, and provides a forum to explore and discuss key concepts that underlie the market economy. By doing so, our hope is that this project will spark a conversation about the importance of capital markets in both private and public enterprises. We believe that’s a story worth telling.