I've been mulling the JOBS Act, and haven't really come up with anything interesting to say about it.  But here's Felix Salmon with a nicely comprehensive view of the good and the (in his view, mostly) bad.  We'll outsource more than we usually do hereabouts:

[in some ways] the JOBS Act comes across rather well:

It’s about to get easier for tech CEOs to ignore the IPO’s siren song. Legislation wending its way through Congress would change SEC rules, meaning no tech company would find itself forced to go public in the way that Facebook has. The bills, which have been supported quite vocally by a number of CEOs at pre-IPO companies in Silicon Valley, as well as VCs who want more control over the timing of their companies’ IPOs, would not count employees toward a company’s 500-investor limit. The legislation would also raise that limit to 1,000 shareholders.

I do think these changes to the 500-shareholder rule make perfect sense. Right now, companies like Facebook (and Google before it) tie themselves up in knots when it comes to giving equity to employees, handing out variations on the stock-unit theme rather than actual equity, just to get around this rule. That benefits no one, really. And ultimately they’re forced to go public anyway, with the timing imposed upon them by SEC regulations rather than being a matter of their own choice.

But this doesn’t mean that I’m a supporter of the JOBS Act more generally, which has been vehemently opposed not only by the usual subjects (Eliot Spitzer, Simon Johnson) but also by the much more centrist editorial board of the New York Times, which almost never saw a bipartisan bill it didn’t like. Even Bloomberg View has come out strongly against the act, in an editorial which, it’s worth remembering, is meant to broadly reflect the views of Mike Bloomberg personally. The SEC opposes it, as do former SEC officials like Arthur Levitt and a long list of consumer organizations.

A lot of the act is very hard to defend. The crowdfunding (a/k/a crowdmuppeting) part, for instance, seems very badly thought out: it’s certain to create a whole new class of startups which raise substantial sums on some Kickstarter-like platform, without having anything like the controls and staffing necessary to do the investor-relations job they’re letting themselves in for. On top of that, of course, there’s enormous scope for outright fraud here, given the lack of real penalties for issuers who lie.

Higher up the food chain, companies going public in an IPO could not only put out incomplete information in glossy sales pitches for themselves; they could also outsource that job to investment-bank analysts hoping their bank will win lucrative mandates down the road. There’s no good reason at all for this: it’s basically a way for unpopular incumbent lawmakers who voted for Dodd-Frank to try to weasel their way back into the big banks’ good graces and thereby open a campaign-finance spigot they desperately need.

What does the JOBS Act do?  Here, let's gank from Dave Lynn:

Late last week, the House of Representative passed H.R. 3606, The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, with strong bi-partisan support. This bill was comprised of a collection of bills that have been introduced in the House over the past year, all of which focus in one way or another on the ability of companies to raise capital and stay private longer. The key measures included in the JOBS Act are:

Title I, Reopening American Capital Markets to Emerging Growth Companies. This portion of the Act is what is most commonly referred to as the "IPO On-Ramp" legislation, and it is meant to encourage smaller companies to go public through a process where public company obligations would be phased in over time (hence the on-ramp reference). This legislation would amend the 1933 Act and 1934 Act to create a new category of issuer referred to as an "emerging growth company," which is an issuer with total annual gross revenues of less than $1 billion, and would continue to have this status until (i) the last day of the fiscal year in which the issuer had $1 billion in annual gross revenues or more; (ii) the last day of the fiscal year following the fifth anniversary of the issuer's initial public offerings; and (iii) the date when the issuer is deemed to be a "large accelerated filer" as defined by the SEC. The legislation provides for scaled regulation to be applied to the emerging growth company for up to five years following the IPO, including breaks on compliance with things like Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, mandatory Say-on-Pay, and the Dodd-Frank CEO pay ratio rules (to come). On the 1933 Act registration front, the legislation would permit greater pre-filing communications, allow for expanded research at the time of the IPO by offering participants, and would provide for pre-filing confidential review of draft registration statements by the SEC Staff.

Title II, Access to Capital for Job Creators. This portion of the legislation would remove the prohibition against general solicitation and general advertising in private offerings under Regulation D, provided that all of the purchasers of securities are accredited investors. Similarly, general solicitation and general advertising would not be prohibited in secondary sales so long as only QIBs are purchasers in the offering. In addition, the legislation would provide that offline and online forums bringing together companies and investors would not be treated as broker-dealers unless they receive transaction-based fees for their activities.

Title III, Entrepreneur Access to Capital. This part of the bill would provide an exemption for crowdfunding, by permitting offerings up to $1 million ($2 million in some cases), provided that investor contributions are limited to $10,000 or 10% of the investor's annual income, whichever is less. Requirements targeted at investor protection are imposed on the issuer and/or the intermediary involved in the crowdfunding effort.

Title IV, Small Company Formation. This part of the legislation is what is commonly referred to as Regulation A reform, raising the limit for Regulation A offerings from $5 million to $50 million. Most importantly, the legislation would exempt Regulation A offering from state securities laws when the Regulation A securities are (i) offered or sold through a broker-dealer; (ii) offered or sold on a national securities exchange; or (iii) sold to a qualified purchaser as defined by the SEC.

Title V, Private Company Flexibility and Growth. This portion of H.R. 3606 increases the 1934 Act registration shareholder of record threshold from 500 to 2,000 (only 500 of which can be non-accredited investors). Employees receiving company securities under employee benefit plans would be excluded from calculating the number of record holders.

Title VI, Capital Expansion. This portion of the Act would increase the shareholder of record threshold from 500 to 2,000 for banks and bank holding companies, and would provide that a bank or bank holding company could terminate 1934 Act registration if the number of holders of record drops to less than 1,200.

Title VII, Outreach on Changes to the Law. This part of the Act requires SEC outreach to certain small and medium-sized businesses informing them of the effect of the law, so that these business are made fully aware of the benefits of the legislation.

Securities | Bookmark

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8345157d569e201676411ffb3970b

Links to weblogs that reference The JOBS Act, A Felix Salmon And Dave Lynn Outsource: