If the current 113th Congress is any measure, we can expect the coming 114th Congress to introduce and promote bills seeking, among other matters, to facilitate capital formation, to correct oversights in the original JOBS Act, to make crowdfunded equity offerings a reality and to ease reporting complexity for smaller issuers. Here is a link to our chart discussing the bills currently pending. Most of these bills did not progress very far. For example, of the nineteen JOBS Act related bills we tracked, only two — H.R. 4200, "Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) Advisers Relief Act of 2014," and H.R. 4569, "Disclosure Modernization and Simplification Act of 2013" — were successfully passed in the House. However, regardless of whether they were passed in one chamber, all bills will need to be re-introduced in 2015 There is a reasonable expectation that the new Congress, which will be majority Republican in both Houses, will be able to pass some of these bills and present them to the President for signing. We look forward to an interesting 2015 in securities regulation.
Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.
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