Status of JOBS Bill

By Cydney Posner

This New York Times article reports that the Senate is scheduled to vote today on two amendments to the JOBS bill. If either amendment is adopted, the bill would go back to the House for further consideration. The amendments and the final bill require only a majority vote. <br> <br>According to the article, one of the amendments, sponsored by Senators Jeff Merkley, D-OR, and Scott Brown, R-MA, "would set stricter limits on how much small investors can invest in a so-called crowd-funding offering."

"Both the House bill and the Senate amendment would allow a business to raise up to $1 million from an unlimited number of investors through crowd-funding, an online sale of small amounts of shares to individuals."

"The Merkley-Brown amendment would require companies to provide tax returns or financial statements to investors before the offering. In contrast, the House bill would allow companies to raise $1 million without providing any financial statements to potential investors."

"The House bill would allow individual investors to invest up to $10,000 or 10 percent of their annual income per year, whichever was less. The Merkley-Brown amendment would limit those investments to the greater of $2,000 or 5 percent of either annual income or net worth, if either figure was less than $100,000."

"Investors with annual income or net worth of more than $100,000 could invest up to $100,000 or 10 percent of annual income, the amendment states. The amendment also requires greater disclosure of financial results as the amount that the company intends to raise goes up."

The other amendment is sponsored by Senator Jack Reed, D-RI. That amendment would revise the definition of the term "held of record" under Exchange Act section 12(g)(5) to include beneficial owners for purposes of calculating whether the threshold for Exchange Act registration has been exceeded.

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