Law Commons^™

What's Wrong With Jumpstart(Ing) Our Business Startups (Jobs) Act?, Lynnise E. Pantin

Faculty Scholarship

Lack of access to financial capital is a barrier for many entrepreneurs who seek to grow their business venture. In an effort to democratize the entrepreneurial ecosystem, Congress and the Obama Administration enacted the JOBS Act, which implements and regulates crowdfunding. The democratic nature of the online crowdfunding platforms is a seemingly attractive solution to structural and institutionalized barriers to fundraising within the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Although the JOBS Act is a laudable step, the legislation does not in practice help entrepreneurs and herein lies one of its greatest shortcomings. The JOBS Act is unduly burdensome and is yet another barrier …

Legislative Proposals To Modernize Business Development Companies And Expand Investment Opportunities, Testimony Before The House Subcommittee On Capital Markets And Government Sponsored Enterprises, J. Robert Brown Jr.

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This testimony discusses proposed legislation to amend the definition of accredited investor. It also discusses proposed legislation designed to reform the regulatory framework for business development companies. Among other things, the regulatory regime for BDCs would change to allow these companies to invest a greater portion of their assets in financial companies, potentially reducing the percentage of assets invested in operating companies.

Securities Law's Dirty Little Secret, Usha Rodrigues

Scholarly Works

Securities law’s dirty little secret is that rich investors have access to special kinds of investments—hedge funds, private equity, private companies—that everyone else does not. This disparity stems from the fact that, from its inception, federal securities law has jealously guarded the manner in which firms can sell shares to the general public. Perhaps paternalistically, the law assumes that the average investor needs the protection of the full panoply of securities regulation and thus should be limited to buying public securities. In contrast, accredited—i.e., wealthy— investors, who it is presumed can fend for themselves, have the luxury of choosing between …

In Search Of Safe Harbor: Suggestions For The New Rule 506(C), Usha Rodrigues

Scholarly Works

I devote most of this essay to exploring how, exactly, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) should go about providing guidelines to implement the statutory requirement that issuers have a reasonable belief that a purchaser is accredited. The SEC has proposed rules, but these rules merely restate what Congress has already required, thus sidestepping Congress’s direction that the agency itself articulate some verification methods. Taking the SEC’s decidedly amorphous proposal to task, I recommend that the SEC offer two nonexclusive safe harbors for issuers to guide them in determining whether a natural person is an accredited investor. The paragraphs below …

Crowdfunding Securities, Andrew A. Schwartz

Publications

A new federal statute authorizes the online "crowdfunding" of securities, a new idea based on the concept of "reward" crowdfunding practiced on Kickstarter and other websites. This method of selling securities had previously been banned by federal securities law but the new CROWDFUND Act overturns that prohibition.

This Article introduces the CROWDFUND Act and explains that it can be expected to have two primary effects on securities law and capital markets. First, it will liberate startup companies to use peer networks and the Internet to obtain modest amounts of capital at low cost. Second, it will help democratize the market …