After the announcement that the tax free individual savings account (ISAs) will be extended to include peer- to-peer loans, the UK’s government launched a public consultation on the possibility to set up a separate ISA for people who want to lend out money through P2P portals.
After Michigan, New Mexico and eleven other States, Texas joins the Intrastate Crowdfunding Movement, becoming the largest US state adopting a set of rules for equity crowdfunding (California’s law for intrastate crowdfunding got stuck in the State’s senate). Last Wednesday, the Texas State Securities Board approved a law that allows adults resident in Texas to buy shares of private companies through crowdfunding portals. Like in all the other States which joined the Intrastate Crowdfunding Movement, also in Texas the law limits the possibility to use crowdfunding to raise equity capital only to companies incorporated in the State. Today Crowd Valley publishes Crowdfunding Market Report for Q3 2014, unveiling the latest trends of this fast-growing industry, as observed by the company during the last quarter. Since the start of 2014, the international crowdfunding market kept developing fast, with new actors moving the first steps into the arena and many policymakers inserting the topic in their agendas. After the US and Europe, crowdinvesting is slowly developing in Asia as well. Most of the activity is concentrated around equity crowdfunding, with Malaysia’s new crowdfunding regulations and Japan’s crowdfunding bill, allowing companies to raise equity capital through crowdfunding portals. However, little is known about peer-to-peer lending in the area, which in Western countries is instead showing great potential. Last week on October 9th I took part in a roundtable discussion panel on Alternative Financing at the Invest in Photonics event in Bordeaux, France. The event is the primary European conference looking at investment across the photonics industry including applications in environment and energy efficiency, life sciences, consumer electronics, aerospace and transport, 3D printing and advanced manufacturing. I was joined by a sector-specialist serial entrepreneur and angel investor, a partner at a VC firm, B-to-V, with a focus on photonics, and a director of the French growth-stage SME stock exchange, Alternativa. One year has passed since the SEC released Title II, which removed the ban on general solicitation and general advertising for private issuers. Since then the entire US crowdfunding sector has been waiting the famous Title III, which would eventually allow also non accredited investors to invest through equity crowdfunding portals. Nevertheless, even though Title III is still missing, the US market of equity crowdfunding has been flourishing with interesting numbers. Crowdinvesting is a relative recent phenomenon which is growing in many different countries around the world. Several people have heard about equity crowdfunding or peer to peer lending only in the last couple of years. Nevertheless, as young as it may seems, crowdinvesting, especially in the form of P2P lending, has been out in the market for while: some pioneering companies have been operating since the early 2000s, while GrowVC itself - i.e. Crowd Valley’s parent company- has been active in the online investment space since 2009. In the past few days crowdinvesting has reached a new milestone with the IPO filing of one of the most established peer-to-peer lending platform in the US. Securities crowdfunding in Malaysia is developing incredibly fast, pushing the country in a leading position in the area. In fact, in August 2014, the Securities Commission of Malaysia (SC) launched a public consultation on proposed regulations for crowdinvesting. On that occasion, Crowd Valley published an article, explaining the drafted legal framework. Now that the public consultation is over, SC has released a document with the comments received and the changes proposed. |
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