11 May SEC Completes JOBS & FAST Act Rulemakings

Last week the SEC proudly announced the completion of its rulemaking obligations under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act of 2012 and the mini-JOBS Act 2.0 tacked onto the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act. The last rules had to do with implementing the increase in the number of shareholders triggering an obligation to become a full SEC reporting company. They also spent lots of time on the Regulation A+ rules and new Regulation CF for “statutory” crowdfunding which are also complete. CF is just days away from being effective, the Reg A+ rules have been in effect almost a year now.

There is other work still pending under JOBS. For example, the SEC recently put out a 300+ page concept release talking about ideas to modernize some of the disclosure requirements in SEC Regulation S-K. The JOBS Act mandates that they examine this and hopefully implement some changes. One of the most interesting, which I’ve been pushing for years: let’s allow smaller public companies to eliminate burdensome disclosure requirements if they are not material to an investor’s understanding of the company. This is similar to SEC rules for disclosure in private companies to non-accredited investors. But this is still developing.

The last rule change? Per the SEC release, “As a result of JOBS Act and FAST Act changes, an issuer that is not a bank, bank holding company or savings and loan holding company is required to register a class of equity securities under the Exchange Act if it has more than $10 million of total assets and the securities are ‘held of record’ by either 2,000 persons, or 500 persons who are not accredited investors.  An issuer that is a bank, bank holding company or savings and loan holding company is required to register a class of equity securities if it has more than $10 million of total assets and the securities are ‘held of record’ by 2,000 or more persons.” This is good.