I own a couple shares of another entity that pulled off something similar last year. The public company was smaller and they merged with a larger private company and simulataneously did a reverse split (1 for 5 I believe) and the combined entity is now on the Nasdaq. The smaller (and stagnant) public company became part of a larger and growing enterprise, and the private company was able to become public etc... As I have mentioned before there are instances when reverse splits work.