We saw the world came together to watch the 2014 Brazilian FIFA World Cup from June 12 to July 13. As over a million fans from all over the world poured into Brazil to cheer for their home team, the Brazilian economy was injected with $15 million. However, economists cannot seem to agree whether the Cup has overall been negative or positive towards the Brazilian economy. We are asking how the World Cup has impacted the nation's crowdfunding industry.
It's almost a year since Title II of the JOBS Act made its way into law July 10th, 2013 . Despite the ground breaking amendments to allow public solicitation of investment offerings and changes to offerings of securities sales, it still seems the industry is eagerly anticipating taking it to the next level. It has been over two years since the JOBS Act was passed, but famous Title III, which would allow crowdinvesting, has not yet been approved. While the entire US crowdfunding scene waits for the SEC to release the final rules, some states decided, in the meantime, to enable crowdinvesting within their borders. In a previous blog entry, Crowd Valley explained how Canada is moving towards a unified regulation for securities crowdfunding. In fact, the provinces of Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Quebec and New Brunswick started looking into a proposed regulation draft for this new source of finance (i.e. Crowdfunding Exemption). Shortly after, British Columbia, that voluntarily stayed out of the group of Canadian provinces which was drafting a regulation for securities crowdfunding, asked its citizens whether it should backtrack and consider a specific regulation as well. The change of decision has been taken as a consequence of growing pressures by SMEs and start-ups, for which the current regime requires expensive compliance considerations. In July 2013, Ontario took a big step towards opening the market to equity crowdfunding, as Crowd Valley reported in this article, allowing a company to run an equity crowdfunding portal for social or environmental issuers. Eight months later, in March 2014, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), together with other provincial financial authorities (Alberta, Quebec, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick), published a joint proposal for regulations for securities crowdfunding (i.e. the Crowdfunding Exemption). At the invitation of the State Department of the United States of America, Crowd Valley presented and advised institutional investors in Washington DC on efficient capital allocation and how crowd investing is changing the landscape with funds and institutions. Silicon Valley Crowdfund Ventures hosted the second crowdfunding gathering in Palo Alto, California, April 3 & 4. Crowd Valley was present with chairman Jouko Ahvenainen on two panels at the event. The depth and breadth of the equity and debt capital markets in the United States has been a key driver of the country's economic success. By making capital available to companies of all sizes, from start-ups in Silicon Valley to blue chips on Wall Street, the U.S. system has helped fuel innovation and often given US companies an edge internationally. Through the creation of Rule 506(c) (defined below) and other changes to the rules governing capital raisings in the United States, lawmakers in the United States have sought to open the capital markets even further. Last week, the public comment period on the regulation of equity crowdfunding proposed by SEC ended after 90 days. Several comments were provided by experts, platform managers, investors and other professionals, concerning issues for which a convincing and definite solution has not been found yet. During the first Global Crowdfunding Expo, which took place in San Diego, California, last week, some interesting data on the sector were presented. We have written out a few highlights from those data, which might be useful in complementing the information included in the Global Crowdfunding Market Report that will be published shortly by Crowd Valley. |
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