28 Oct M&A Brokers Closer to Congressional Relief

As reported by my friend and attorney Scott Gluck, the House last week started hearings on the next generation of JOBS-type relief for smaller companies, fashioned after the original Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012. The “JOBS 2.0” hearing discussed a number of different potential pieces of legislation which can be briefly summarized as follows:

1. Offering more flexibility in investments by “business development companies” (BDCs).

2. Much simplified broker-dealer registration for merger & acquisition brokers.

3. Allowing emerging growth companies (generally under $1 billion in revenues) to designate a minimum “tick” spread between the bid and ask prices of their stock while trading.

4. Allowing emerging growth companies and “non-accelerated filers” (ie smaller public companies) to opt out of providing expensive tagging of financial data under the XBRL system.

5. Offering greater flexibility in IPOs of emerging growth companies to maintain their prospectus as confidential longer, wait to file financial information while the filing is confidential, and to submit filings for public offerings after the IPO confidentially as well.

Pretty much all these items have been on the wish list of we active advocates on behalf of smaller public companies for a number of years. It’s nice to see them making it to the point of actual draft legislation. Of course there is quite a ways to go through the committee, House, Senate and President, but we will keep an eye on these!