Law Commons^™

The Big Crowd And The Small Enterprise: Intracorporate Disputes In The Close-But-Crowdfunded Firm, Martin Edwards

Journal Articles

Equity crowdfunding is a financial innovation that allows small businesses and startups to access capital through soliciting investment over the Internet. The current literature on crowdfunding has focused on its theoretical background and on the development of crowdfunding exemptions from the securities laws permitting the practice. There is less discussion of the impact of crowdfunding on corporate governance. This article fills that gap by outlining the potential for a panoply of intracorporate disputes between and among majority shareholders and “crowd” minority shareholders, placing the discussion within the longstanding—if uneasy—divide in judicial treatment of disputes in public corporations and close corporations. …