On January 18, 2018, the Small Business Credit Availability Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. The Act would amend the Investment Company Act of 1940 to change certain requirements relating to the capital structure of business development companies (BDCs) and direct the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to revise certain rules to allow BDCs to take advantage of securities offering and communication exemptions currently available to other companies.
In particular, the Act would decrease the asset coverage requirement applicable to BDCs from 200% to 150%. BDCs would be permitted to employ leverage up to two-thirds of their total equity. Increasing the leverage limit may allow BDCs, which are a significant source of capital for small and medium-sized businesses, to deploy additional lower risk senior capital to borrowers and potentially increase their total returns without needing to deploy higher risk junior capital in order to obtain higher yields due to the lower leverage limit.
The Act would also direct the SEC to remove the application of various securities law administrative burdens on BDCs to align with reforms currently available to other companies. Specifically, BDCs would be included in the SEC’s definition of “well-known seasoned issuer” and permitted to file automatic shelf registration statements to expedite the securities offering process. Additionally, BDCs that would otherwise meet the requirements of Form S-3 would be permitted to incorporate by reference their publicly filed periodic reports into the BDC’s Form N-2 registration statement.
The Act will be considered by the Committee before it is possibly sent to the full Senate for review. A companion bill that would similarly update rules governing BDCs was advanced with bipartisan support by the U.S. House Financial Services Committee in November 2017.