This essay, based on the author's presentation last September to the annual meeting of the North American Securities Administration Association (NASAA), addresses several issues related to Rule 506, the most widely-used of the SEC's transactional exemptions from federal registration of...

This paper considers the issue of when venture capitalists (VCs) make a partial, as opposed to a full exit, for the full range of exit vehicles. A full exit for an IPO involves a sale of all of the venture capitalist's holdings within one year of the IPO; a partial exit involves sale of only...

Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) are publicly traded venture capital companies in the UK. Since their inception in 1995, 71 VCTs have been launched, collectively raising more than 1.4 billion pounds (as at November 2002). Investors have tax incentives to contribute capital to VCTs; in exchange,...

This paper considers the structure, governance and performance of a unique class of mutual funds that receives capital only from individuals, and reinvests this contributed capital in private companies, as opposed to traditional mutual funds that invest in publicly traded companies. It considers...

This paper provides theory and evidence relating information asymmetries and agency costs to exit outcomes in venture capital backed entrepreneurial firms. Where venture capitalists are able to better mitigate information asymmetries and agency costs faced by the new owners of the firm, they...

“Decoupling” - the unbundling of the rights and obligations of equity and debt through derivatives and other means - has posed unique challenges for corporate and debt governance. Corporate governance mechanisms, including those related to shareholder voting and blockholder disclosure in...

The aim of this study is to explore the previously unresearched outcomes of firms funded through equity crowdfunding, a novel type of entrepreneurial finance. We study the outcomes of a sample of 337 firms funded on equity crowdfunding platforms in Europe between 2009 and 2014. By incorporating...

In 2005, the Government of Ontario, Canada, announced the phase out of the Labour Sponsored Venture Capital Corporation (LSVCC) tax credit, which will be become effective in 2011. Some media attention has suggested this might lead to difficulty for Ontario entrepreneurs and emerging firms in...