Tag: SEC

Intrastate Crowdfunding After Title III

On By crowdfundattnyIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

CF WordclouldOn one hand, the SEC just proposed several changes to Rule 147 that will make intrastate Crowdfunding easier:

  • We used to worry, at least a little, about the language in Rule 147 saying that you couldn’t offer securities to anyone outside the state. How does this work when your offers are made with the Internet, we wondered? The SEC just proposed eliminating that requirement.
  • If you were doing an intrastate offering in Texas, Rule 147 used
    to require using a Texas entity – not Delaware, for example. No more.
  • If you’re doing an intrastate offering in Texas, you have to show you’re doing business in Texas. The new proposals would make that easier.
  • The new proposals would also simplify and rationalize the rules around (1) the “integration” of offerings (combining an intrastate offering with other offerings), (2) verifying that investors are residents of the state, and (3) re-sales of securities purchased in an intrastate offering.

All that is great, and should really help the intrastate Crowdfunding market (although I take to heart Anthony Zeoli’s excellent caveat here.)

On the other hand, the SEC also proposed a $5 million cap on intrastate offerings, which seems very important in light of Title III.

Title III Crowdfunding allows any issuer anywhere to raise up to $1 million from non-accredited investors who live anywhere in the world. With Title III Crowdfunding available, why would an issuer use intrastate Crowdfunding? There are only two possible reasons:

  • You’re allowed to raise more money in the intrastate offering
  • The process of the intrastate offering is faster/cheaper/easier

Once the hi-tech folks get their hands around Title III, I think we’re going to see the process becoming faster, cheaper, and easier than it looks now, making Title III comparable (maybe even superior) to intrastate Crowdfunding from that perspective.

Then it just comes down to how much you can raise. If I am a small issuer – raising less than $1 million, for example – why would I use the intrastate law of my state when I can use Title III instead and appeal to the whole universe of investors? Case in point:  New Jersey enacted an intrastate Crowdfunding law just this week – with a $1 million limit. Why would a New Jersey business use that law, with Title III on the books and the gold and silver of Manhattan right across the Hudson River?

And if I’m a software developer wondering what kind of platform to build, isn’t the scale tipped in favor of Title III?

The scales will tip further that way when Congress increases the limit of Title III from $1 million to something higher. Although the SEC can always raise the limit for intrastate Crowdfunding as well, the future probably belongs to Title III.

Questions? Let me know.

A Regulation A+ Primer

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Featured, Regulation A, Regulation A Plus, Regulation A Plus Primer, SECLeave a comment

Regulation A Plus Women GossipingNo disrespect to Kim Kardashian, but I think the SEC’s Proposed Amendments to Regulation A have come closer to breaking the Internet than the photos I heard about last year – although that could be a function of the circles I travel in.

My contribution started as a blog post but got too long for a blog post. Hence, I’m providing this Crowdfunding Regulation A-plus Primer. Within the primer are links to:

  • Amendments to Regulation A
  • The statements of the SEC Commissioners that accompanied the final regulations
  • Title IV of the JOBS Act, which authorized changes to Regulation A

I am trying to provide not just technical details in the primer – which are important – but also practical advice about the cost of Regulation A+ offerings, the advantages and disadvantages, and examples.

If you have thoughts, as many of you will, I am eager to hear them and plan to supplement the Primer.

Crowdfunding Regulation A-plus PrimerDownload

Questions? Let me know.

Regulation A+ Is Here

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Regulation ALeave a comment

A Plus Walking the Red CarpetWell, that didn’t take long.

It’s been a mere 457 days since the SEC proposed regulations under Title IV of the JOBS Act, aka Regulation A+, and a mere 1,070 days since the JOBS Act was signed into law. Yet the SEC approved final regulations today, with just a few tweaks from the proposed rules. Regulation A+ will go into effect in roughly 60 days.

The most important provisions of the proposed regulations survived intact: companies will be allowed to raise up to $50 million – from anyone, not just accredited investors – without approval from state regulators. You will still have to file a thick offering statement with the SEC, and investors – both accredited and non-accredited – will still be limited to investing 10% of the greater of income or net worth. Nevertheless, I expect Regulation A+ to be used very widely, indeed to transform the Crowdfunding landscape.

I’ll be providing a link to the final regulations shortly (as well as a bunch of other useful links), as well as some thoughts about where Regulation A+ will be most useful.

Title III, anybody?

Questions? Let me know.

Scalability In Crowdfunding

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Crowdfunding Portals, P2P LendingLeave a comment

Growing plant stepThe Crowdfunding market continues to grow rapidly, increasing in deal size, deal volume, and sophistication. The rapid growth will likely continue for the foreseeable future, as more investors and entrepreneurs learn about the opportunities. And the growth will accelerate if and when:

  • The SEC finalizes regulations under Title IV
  • Congress refurbishes Title III
  • Portals move toward pooled assets
  • Portals are created in more vertical markets
  • Deals become standardized across portals
  • Formally or informally, we get a secondary market for Crowdfunded investments

All those things will move the dial toward a larger, more robust Crowdfunding market. But to penetrate the mass market – to truly scale – Crowdfunding needs something more, and that thing is coming.

Like a telescope, a Crowdfunding portal has two ends: an investor end and a deal flow end. Today, the investor end of the telescope is almost infinitely scalable while the deal flow end has proven much more difficult. Even given the best technology and the best people, how do you push more deals through the narrow opening? More exactly, how do you perform effective due diligence on all those deals?

Look at the P2P sites, Lending Club and Prosper. They’re doing Crowdfunding, too, and they pushed more than $5 billion of consumer loans through their due diligence processes during 2014. They did it mainly by reducing due diligence to a series of algorithms. In fact, they perform so little due diligence of the old- fashioned variety that some states don’t allow them to sell securities.

Three factors have allowed Lending Club and Prosper to streamline due diligence and scale up:

  • They started with a built-in technology for determining a consumer’s creditworthiness: namely, a FICO score.
  • Starting with FICO scores, they created their own proprietary scoring systems using their own data. The more data they accumulate the better their scoring systems become, in a virtuous cycle.
  • They have educated their investors. Rather than allocate their entire investment to a single loan, investors diversify, trusting the averages.

In some respects what Lending Club and Prosper have done with consumer debt is no different than what Billy Beane did with baseball players: replacing a traditional process that relied on human expertise (scouts) with a new process that relies on data (sabermetrics).

At first glance, the typical Title II Crowdfunding site, whether real estate sites like Patch of Land and iFunding or venture capital sites like FundersClub, look a lot different than a P2P site. Fundamentally, however, they are in the same business. The question is not whether Title II (and Title III and IV) sites will move toward the P2P model, the question is is how quickly and in what ways.

I believe the convergence will happen from both ends.

First, portals are going to create the equivalent of FICO scores and the scoring systems of Prosper and Lending Club, even for complex real estate projects and hi-tech startups. Living in a world of big data, I believe this is not only possible but inevitable. As we speak, lots of smart people are looking at lots of data and trying to draw meaningful correlations between data and outcomes.

Is there a correlation between the FICO score of a real estate developer and the success of his next two projects? If an entrepreneur has had one successful exit is she more likely to have a second? If an angel has invested in three successful deals is he likely to have a fourth?

The world is flooded with data and fast computers. I believe Crowdfunding portals will crack the code, a little bit at a time, moving from a traditional, hands-on due diligence process to a data-driven, algorithmic process. Like old-time baseball scouts, those comfortable with the traditional processes are likely to cry foul, pointing out the inevitable gaps in statistics. They’ll be right in a narrow sense, but the world will move on nonetheless.

Second, because of the pressure to scale, portals will gravitate toward products that lend themselves to being scaled. It’s not a coincidence that Lending Club and Prosper sell consumer debt! The market suggests that real estate debt is likely to be the next product to scale, with real estate equity going to the back of the line. Going a step further, I’m guessing that the more difficult to crack the code in a given product, the higher the margin and the lower the volume.

If I knew exactly how the market will play out I wouldn’t be a lawyer! Nevertheless, it’s an incredibly exciting time.

Questions? Let me know.

How to Present Investor Disclosures in Crowdfunding Offerings (And How Not To)

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Crowdfunding Portals, Investing, Investor Disclosures, Portals, SEC, Title II, Title II CrowdfundingLeave a comment

Title II Crowdfunding is often referred to, more or less accurately, as “online private placements.” It’s time the industry turned the online, digital, aspect of the offerings more to its advantage.

Remember when newspapers first came online? Remember how interesting they were visually? I’m being sarcastic. They were nothing more than photographs of the paper version, failing to take advantage of the digital platform and its unique capabilities.

Too many (not all) Crowdfunding portals take the same approach to providing investor disclosures. You click through the process and suddenly see an enormous PDF document that is nothing more or less than a paper private placement memorandum, complete with Schedules and Exhibits. You’reOnline document supposed to scroll down and “sign” at the bottom. On some platforms the investor actually has to click I’m Ready to Invest before he sees the disclosures!

There are at least three things wrong with this approach:

• Investors can’t be happy with it.

• It doesn’t convey information effectively.

• The disclosure might be legally ineffective. I think about a plaintiff’s lawyer cross-examining the portal operator, pointing to a disclosure on page 67 and asking “Did you really expect my client to read all that at the end of the click-through process?”

It doesn’t have to be that way! There are much better ways to provide information online. Take a look at today’s online version of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal to see how far we’ve come.

Crowdfunding portals can do the same thing. The first step is to move the mental image of that paper PPM into Trash or the Recycle Bin (depending on whether you’re Mac or PC) and start from scratch. What are we trying to accomplish here? What are the tools at our disposal? Pose that question to some creative people and you’ll get a whole range of possibilities, all of them better for investor, sponsor, and portal.

Questions? Let me know.

Do The Officers Of A Crowdfunding Issuer Have To Register As Broker-Dealers?

On By crowdfundattnyIn Broker-Dealer, Crowdfunding, Crowdfunding Laws, Title II CrowdfundingLeave a comment

thinking woman in jarToday, the most challenging legal question in Title II Crowdfunding is who is required to be a broker-dealer and under what circumstances. The question is most acute for the officers of an issuer, those who direct the issuer’s activities and put the offerings together.

Section 3(a)(4)(A) of the Securities and Exchange Act 1934 generally defines “broker” to mean “any person engaged in the business of effecting transactions in securities for others.” Section 15(a)(1) of the Exchange Act makes it illegal for any “broker. . . .to effect any transactions in, or to induce or attempt to induce the purchase or sale of, any security” unless registered with the SEC.

Simply put, anybody in the business of effecting securities transactions for others must be registered. There is a lot of law around what it means to be “engaged in the business of effecting securities transactions for others.” Based on decided cases and SEC announcements, important factors include:

  • The frequency of the transactions.
  • Whether the individual‘s responsibilities include structuring the transaction, identifying and soliciting potential investors, advising investors on the merits of the investment, participating in the order-taking process, and other services critical to the offering.
  • Whether the individual receives commissions or other transaction-based compensation for her efforts.

Perhaps the most important rule is that the issuer itself – the entity that actually issues the stock – does not have to register as a broker-dealer. The logic is that the issuer is effecting the transaction for itself, not for others.

But what about the President of the issuer, and the Vice President, and all the other employees who send the mailings and put the deal on the website and answer questions from prospective investors? Are they required to register as – or, more accurately, become affiliated with – broker-dealers?

The answer is complicated.

SEC Rule 3a4-1, issued under the Exchange Act, provides a “safe harbor” from registration. Under Rule 3a4-1, an employee of an issuer will not have to register if she is not compensated by commissions, and EITHER:

Her duties are limited to:

  • Preparing any written communication or delivering such communication through the mails or other means that does not involve oral solicitation of a potential purchaser, as long as the content of all such communications are approved by a partner, officer or director of the issuer; or
  • Responding to inquiries of a potential purchaser in a communication initiated by the potential purchaser, as long as her response is limited to providing information contained in an offering statement; or
  • Performing ministerial and clerical work.

OR

  • She performs substantial services other than in connection with offerings; and
  • She has not been a broker-dealer within the preceding 12 months; and
  • She does not participate in more than one offering per year, except for offerings where her duties are limited as described above.

Consider the President of the typical Title II portal offering borrower-dependent notes to accredited investors. Her duties are certainly not limited as described above, and she might participate in – actually direct – dozens of offerings per year. Does that mean she has to register as a broker-dealer?

Not necessarily. Rule 3a4-1 is only a safe harbor. If you satisfy the requirements of Rule 3a4-1 then you are automatically okay, i.e., you don’t have to register. But if you don’t satisfy the requirements of Rule 3a4-1, it doesn’t automatically mean you are required to register. Instead, it means your obligation to register will be determined under the large body of law developed by the SEC and courts over the last 80 years.

Courts and the SEC have identified these primary factors among others:

  • The duties of the employee before she became affiliated with the issuer. Was she a broker-dealer?
  • Whether she was hired for the specific purpose of participating in the offerings.
  • Whether she has substantial duties other than participating in the offerings.
  • How she is paid, and in particular whether she receives commission for raising capital.
  • Whether she intends to remain employed by the portal when the offering is finished.

Within the last couple years, a high-ranking lawyer in the SEC spoke publicly but informally about broker-dealer registration in the context of private funds, an area similar to Crowdfunding in some respects. He expressed concern at the way that some funds market interests to investors and suggested that some in-house marketing personnel might be required to register. At the same time, he suggested that an “investor relations” group within a private fund – individuals who spend some of their time soliciting investors – wouldn’t necessarily be required to register if the individuals spend the majority of their time on activities that do not involve solicitation. On one point he was quite clear: the SEC believes that if an individual receives commissions for capital raised, he or she should probably be registered.

Whether an officer or other employee of a Crowdfunding issuer must register as a broker-dealer will be highly sensitive to the facts; change the facts a little and you might get a different answer. With that caveat, I offer these general guidelines:

  • If an employee receives commissions, he has to register no matter what.
  • If an employee performs solely clerical functions, he does not have to register.
  • If an employee participates in only a handful of offerings, he does not have to register.
  • If an employee spends only a small portion of his time soliciting investors, he does not have to register.
  • If an employee advises investors on the merits of an investment, he’s walking close to the line. Describing facts, especially facts that are already available in an offering document or online, in response to an investor inquiry, doesn’t count as advising investors on the merits of an investment.

Here are two corollaries to those guidelines.

  • As long as he’s not paying himself commissions, the Founder and CEO of an issuer that is a bona fide operating company (not merely a shell to raise money) doesn’t have to register.
  • If the CEO hires Janet to solicit investors, and that’s all Janet does, and she speaks regularly with investors over the phone and helps them decide between Project A and Project B, the SEC is probably going to want Janet to be registered.

Of course, the most conservative approach for Crowdfunding issuers to run every transaction through a licensed broker-dealer. However, that adds cost and most issuers are trying to keep costs down.

This area is ripe for guidance from the SEC, and maybe even a new exemption for bona fide employees of small issuers. Stay tuned.

NOTE: I want to give a shout-out to Rich Weintraub, Esq. of Weintraub Law Group in San Diego. He and I had several very stimulating and thought-provoking conversations on this topic. If there are mistakes in the post, they’re all mine.

Questions? Let me know.

Wells Fargo Withdraws From Crowdfunding Space

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, P2P LendingLeave a comment

takeoffWells Fargo has been an active player in the Crowdfunding space, serving as the indenture Trustee for both Lending Club and Prosper and owning a chunk of Lending Club through its venture capital arm, Norwest Venture Partners X. Recently, however, Wells Fargo decided it is no longer comfortable with the “risk profile” of retail Crowdfunding. Wells Fargo has been replaced by CSC Trust Company of Delaware as indenture Trustee for both P2P lenders.

To me it’s an interesting move, coming just as institutional investors begin pouring into the space.

Its possible Wells Fargo views the P2P lenders as competitors and isn’t interested in helping cannibalize its own consumer lending business, but that horse is out of the barn. Or maybe, with all its experience in the space, Wells Fargo is planning a more significant move.

I’ve contacted a few large institutional trustees recently and haven’t found a huge appetite for exposure to the Crowdfunding space, so I’m happy to see CSC step up to the plate.

Questions? Let me know.

Crowdfunding And Fiduciary Obligations

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, Crowdfunding Laws, Fiduciary Obligations, JOBS ActLeave a comment

The term “fiduciary obligations” sends a chill down the spine of corporate lawyers – although some may object to using the word “spine” and “corporate lawyer” in the same sentence.

A person with a fiduciary obligation has a special legal duty. A trustee has a fiduciary obligation to the beneficiaries of the trust. The executor of an estate has a fiduciary obligation to the beneficiaries of the estate. The fiduciary obligation is not an obligation to always be successful, or always be right, but rather an obligation to try your best, or something close to that. A trustee who fails to anticipate the stock market crash of 2008 has not breached her fiduciary obligation. A trustee who fails to read published reports of a company’s impending bankruptcy before buying its stock probably has.

A person with a fiduciary obligation is required to be loyal, to look out for the interests of those under her care, to put their interests before her own.

By law and longstanding principle, the directors of a corporation have a fiduciary obligation to the corporation and its shareholders. In the classic case, a director of a corporation in the energy business took for his own benefit the opportunity to develop certain oil wells. Foul! cried the court. He has breached his fiduciary obligation by failing to pass the opportunity along to the corporation, to which he is a fiduciary.

Modern corporate statutes allow the fiduciary obligations of directors to be modified, but not eliminated, even if all the shareholders would sign off. If the corporation is publicly-traded, the exchange likely imposes obligations on the director (and the President, and the CEO, etc.) in addition to the fiduciary obligations imposed by state corporate law.

Which takes us to Crowdfunding. crowd funding word cloud

Most deals in the Crowdfunding space are done in a Delaware limited liability company. The Delaware Limited Liability Company Act allows a manager – the equivalent of a director in a corporation – to eliminate his fiduciary obligation altogether. If I’m representing the sponsor of the deal then of course I want to protect my client as fully as possible. And yet, I’m not sure that’s the best answer for the industry overall.

The U.S. public capital markets thrive mainly because investors trust them, just as the U.S. consumer products industry thrives because people feel safe shopping (that’s why securities laws and consumer-protection laws, as aggravating as they can be, actually help business). My client’s investors may or may not pay attention to the fiduciary duty sections of his LLC Agreement, but I wonder whether the Crowdfunding market as a whole can scale if those running the show regularly operate at a lower level of legal responsibility than the managers of public companies. Will it drive investors away?

Part of my brain says that it will, and yet, over the last 25 years or so, as corporate laws have become more indulgent toward management and executive pay has skyrocketed, lots of people have wondered when investors will say “Enough!” It hasn’t happened so far.

Questions? Let me know.

Crowdfunding And The Trust Indenture Act Of 1939

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, JOBS Act, Regulation A, Trust Indenture Act of 1939Leave a comment

Handing over moneyThe Securities Act of 1933. The Exchange Act of 1934. The Investment Company Act of 1940. Those are the pillars of the U.S. securities laws, as relevant today as they were 80 years ago. And here’s one more old law relevant to Crowdfunding: the Trust Indenture Act of 1939.

Here’s the idea. A company issues its promissory notes (obligations) to a large group of investors. If the company defaults on one or two notes, it might not be financially feasible for those particular investors to take legal action. Even if the company defaults on all the notes it will be a mess sorting out the competing claims. Which investor goes first? If there is collateral, which investor has priority? At best it’s highly inefficient, economically.

The Trust Indenture Act of 1939 imposes order and economic efficiency. It provides that where a company issues debt securities, like promissory notes, it must do so pursuant to a legal document called an “indenture” and, most important, with a trustee, normally a bank, to represent the interests of all the investors together. The TIA goes farther:

  • It provides that the indenture document must be reviewed and approved by the SEC in advance.
  • It ensures that the trustee is independent of the issuer.
  • It requires certain information to be provided to investors.
  • It prohibits the trustee from limiting its own liability.

Why don’t Patch of Land and other Crowdfunding portals that issue debt securities comply with the TIA? Because offerings under Rule 506 are not generally covered by the law. Conversely, because Lending Club and Prosper sell publicly-registered securities (their “platform notes”), they are covered, and have filed lengthy indenture documents with the SEC.

The real surprise is with Regulation A+. If a Regulation A+ issuer uses an indenture instrument to protect the interests of investors then it will be subject to the TIA and its extensive investor-protection requirements. If the issuer does not use an indenture, on the other hand hand, it will not be subject to the TIA as long as it has outstanding less than $50 million of debt. That’s a strange result – giving issuers an incentive not to use an indenture even though indentures protect investors.

That’s what happens sometimes when you apply very old laws to very new forms of economic activity. Welcome to Crowdfunding.

Questions? Let me know.

How To Do It Wrong In Crowdfunding

On By crowdfundattnyIn Crowdfunding, SECLeave a comment

Missed chancesAn SEC enforcement order came across my desk that illustrates how to operate a Crowdfunding portal if you want to meet people who work for the government. The order, with names removed, is available here.

As a preface, everything I know about this portal comes from the SEC’s enforcement order. It is possible that the SEC’s allegations are false – even though the portal agreed to a settlement, without admitting wrongdoing – and that the portal actually was in full compliance with all applicable laws.

With that said, here’s what the portal did, or is alleged to have done:

  • In May 2013, before “general solicitation” was legal, it established a website that listed investments for anyone to see, i.e., not behind a firewall.
  • Although the site included a disclaimer that investments were not available to U.S. persons, the portal did not take steps – for example, using IP addresses – to enforce this rule. In fact, more than 50 individuals who listed the U.S. as their place of residence were allowed to register, and several actually invested.
  • The portal allowed at least some of the U.S. investors to self-certify that they were “accredited investors,” without even explaining what that meant.
  • The portal charged a commission for raising capital without being registered as a broker-dealer.

The violations alleged by the SEC do not fall within an ambiguous gray area. They are just flat-out over the line. And note the timing: May 2013, after the no-action letters to FundersClub and AngelList, in which the SEC gave the world a road map for legal Crowdfunding.

I can only guess this portal was represented by one of my competitors. 🙂

That’s a joke, of course. Much more likely, the company wasn’t represented by anybody and just did what seemed to make sense, without knowing they were violating anything.

The portal was incorporated and operated offshore. Nevertheless, it was subject to U.S. securities laws because it solicited U.S. investors.

Fortunately, everything this company wanted to do can be done legally and at a very low cost. If you want to raise money exclusively offshore, then exclude U.S. investors. If you want to raise money from the U.S. and offshore, use Regulation S. If you’re raising money from U.S. investors use VerifyInvestor.com or Crowdentials to verify they’re accredited. If you’re going to charge a commission use an online broker-dealer. If you want to allow investors to self-certify, then use Rule 506(b) and hide your deals behind a firewall. Spend just a little money on a lawyer and stay off the SEC’s Christmas card list.

Questions? Let me know.