More and more national regulators are working to provide a legal framework to allow securities crowdfunding. After many Western countries, like the US, the UK, France and Italy, securities crowdfunding entered in the agenda of some Eastern countries’ financial authorities too, like Japan’s and Australia’s. It is now the turn of India, where the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has launched in the past week a public consultation on the drafted rules for securities crowdfunding.
May 2014 ended to be a record-breaking month for UK crowdfunding. A grand total of £270 million of equity crowdfunding was invested, making May the highest recorded month to date. The analytics came from data company, Beauhurst, who has been watching the equity crowdfunding industry since 2010. In September 2013, the Corporations and Capital Markets Advisory Committee (CAMAC) – the Australian financial market authority – released a discussion paper about equity crowdfunding and its current regulation, to evaluate it and understand whether there is need to intervene. A few months later, CAMAC is now calling for the government to pass a regulation that would allow every adult in Australia to invest through equity crowdfunding. 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. A vast branch of the academic research focuses on gender differences in entrepreneurial initiatives and access to finance. Women have been identified as a large untapped pool of entrepreneurial talent. In fact, worldwide, the number of female entrepreneurs is considerably lower than men. Just by looking at the UK, for example, the number of women-owned businesses is only 15%, while 35% is co-owned by men and women. Doing the math, the remaining 50% is owned by men. March 27th 2014 was a triumphant day in the world of crowdfunding when the European Commission (EC) issued “Unleashing the potential of Crowdfunding in the European Union”; the first Communication publishing of its nature within the EU. We first introduced this topic issue March 31st (link here), and we will now take a closer look into the implementation of regulations by the EC. Almost five months have passed since the beginning of the year and it is quite natural to ask: how is the market evolving this year? A recent report published by research firm, TABB Group shows that the hockey stick growth of the global crowdfunding market continues, with the number of online platforms multiplying and the amount of raised funds growing at fast pace. 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). |
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