Jan 17, 2018
Happy New Year! I hope you had a good break and you're back refreshed for a great 2018.
What better news could I bring to you but to be able to advise that crowd-sourced funding has finally started in Australia! Yes, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission has announced the first seven crowd-sourced funding intermediaries. Seven companies which will be able to be the 'gatekeepers' for this programme. They will be the organisations which will be able to check the documentation and then place the Crowd-Sourced Funding Offer Document onto their websites so the public can go and visit and read the material and, hopefully, invest.
The seven companies which have been appointed are:
Big Start
Billfolda
Birchal Financial Services
Equitise
Global Funding Partners
IQX Investment Services
On – Market Bookbuilds
It's expected that there will be more announcements by ASIC over the next few weeks whereby they announce other companies appointed as intermediaries.
This means that private companies, which are prepared to convert to unlisted public companies, will be able to raise money from the public up to $5M, but also as low as $50,000, if that is what they want to do, every twelve months.
This is a far better arrangement than Section 708 of the Companies Act, which has been there for the last thirty years. It's continuing, but crowd-sourced funding is opening up market investment opportunities to thousands of individual Australians who will be able to invest up to $10,000 per company every twelve months, if they wish.