The Minister for Small Business and Assistant Treasurer, the Hon Kelly O'Dwyer MP, today released draft regulations that provide additional detail to Australia's new crowd‑sourced equity funding (CSEF) framework.
"CSEF is an emerging way for start-ups and early stage businesses to access the funding and investors they need," Minister O'Dwyer said.
"The Turnbull Government's framework, which is a feature of the Innovation and Science Agenda, enables greater access to funding while ensuring retail investors who wish to share in the risks and successes of these businesses are adequately protected."
The draft regulations provide additional detail on a range of matters, including:
- the class of securities that may be offered;
- the minimum requirements for what a CSEF issuer must include in their offer document;
- the prescribed checks intermediaries must undertake before allowing an offer to be made on their platform; and
- wording of the mandatory risk warning and retail investor risk acknowledgment that investors must agree to before they may invest in CSEF products.
- "These draft regulations provide important detail about the obligations of issuers and intermediaries in ensuring retail investors understand the nature of the products they are investing in, and make informed decisions," Minister O'Dwyer said.
"The Government introduced legislation to the Parliament on 3 December 2015 to provide a framework for crowd-sourced equity funding in Australia, encouraging Australians to innovate and invest."
Submissions on the draft regulations will be accepted until 29 January 2016, and can be made via the Treasury website. The text of the Corporations Amendment (Crowd-Sourced Funding) Bill currently being considered by Parliament is also available on the website.