The House Financial Services Committee tweaked H.R. 2930 in markup last week, gaining Democratic support in the process. The “Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act”, aka the Crowdfunding Act, was passed on to the full House by a voice vote. This suggests at least a modicum of bipartisan support, a rare sight in the 112th Congress.
The amended bill allows issuers to generally solicit up to $1 million (or $2 million if they provide investors accredited financial statements) from small investors without triggering registration requirements. That’s less than the $5 million in Rep. McHenry’s original bill, but still a lot more than the $0 companies can currently raise through general solicitation. The amended version also requires providing the SEC some extremely basic information: the issuer’s name, address, website and what it plans on doing with the money it raises. These amendments seem to have appeased Democratic lawmakers who were concerned about the possibility of shysters preying on the naiveté of small retail investors.
The bill goes down the floor of the House for a vote later this week. Unless political intransigence rears its ugly head, the bill should sail through the House with nothing but self-congratulatory speeches on bipartisanship slowing it down. And then, with any luck, we will see a Senate version start making its way through that august hall’s byzantine cooridors sometime in the near future.