Title III includes two definitions about related parties, similar but not identical.

The first definition dictates who is subject to the $1 million-per-year limit on raising money. There, the regulations provide that the limit applies not only to the issuer itself (the company raising money), but also to “all entities controlled by or under common control with the issuer and any predecessors of the issuer.” To determine who controls whom, the regulations borrow the definition from SEC Rule 405:

The term ‘control’ means the possession, direct or indirect, of the power to direct or cause the direction of the management and policies of the entity, whether through the ownership of voting securities, by contract or otherwise.

This means, for example, that if Company X is raising money using Title III, then Company X and all members of the same corporate family are subject to the same $1 million cap, even if other members of the corporate family are engaged in very different businesses.

(Don’t even think about having your husband or girlfriend or best friend from college own the other businesses get around the rule. It doesn’t work.)

This is a very broad rule and, like so much of Title III, very different than anything we’ve seen before in the U.S. securities laws. For example, while Issuer X may include only 35 investors in an offering under Rule 506(b), Issuer X is allowed to have multiple offerings – an apartment building in this offering, an oil and gas development in this offering, a social media app in a third offering – and include 35 non-accredited investors in each.

Similarly, in Title IV an issuer can raise up to $50 million for a mortgage REIT. Nothing stops a company under common control with the issuer from raising another $50 million for a REIT that buys office buildings.

Why the stricter rule for Title III? I would say that, consistent with the whole Title III paradigm, the goal was to reserve Title III for little guys, the neighborhood businesses, while keeping the professional financiers from Wall Street and Silicon Valley out. It’s part of the big compromise that allowed enactment of Title III in the first place.

The second definition around related parties in Title III dictates who on the portal side may own securities of the issuer. The rule is that:

• The portal itself may own a financial interest in the issuer only if (1) the portal received the financial interest as compensation for the services provided to or for the benefit of the issuer, and (2) the financial interest consists of the same securities that are being offered to investors on the portal’s platform.
• No director, officer, or partner of the portal, or any person occupying a similar status or performing a similar function, may own a financial interest in an issuer.

The term “financial interest in an issuer” means a direct or indirect ownership of, or economic interest in, any class of the issuer’s securities.

This rule means, for example, that:

• A portal may not raise money for itself on its own platform.
• Neither the portal nor any of its directors, officers, or partners may invest in an issuer before it raises money on the portal (they could invest afterward).
• Purely contractual arrangements, not relating to the securities of the issuer, are okay.

The rule about financial interests doesn’t use the words “common control” but, because a portal is controlled by its directors, officers, and partners, the result is nearly the same. But not identical. In a typical Crowdfunding structure, for example, the Title III portal is owned in a separate company. Key contributors to other parts of the corporate family who are not directors, officers, or partners of the portal itself should be allowed to invest without violating the rule, even where all the companies are under common control.

Questions? Let me know.