PRIVATE PLACEMENTS, FINDERS FEES AND THE RISKS OF USING UNREGISTERED BROKER-DEALERS

Last month a friend reached out and in passing told me things were going great with the technology he was developing. He also mentioned that he was in the process of raising $5M in exchange for an equity interest in his company. “Great”, I said and casually asked if he had filed anything with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). My friend told me, “No, this is a private placement so I don’t need to register.” I then asked him how he found the investor. The response- “I used a consultant and he gets a small percentage of the money raised.”

This short conversation raises two of the most common mistakes made by early stage companies when they try and raise money. First, a company may not offer or sell its securities to third parties unless the securities have first been registered with both the SEC or there is an exemption from registration that applies. If you don’t make the required filings, you are exposing yourself to serious consequences that include not only an investor’s right to rescission (get their money back) but also fines, penalties and criminal actions against you on an individual basis. Most start-up or early stage companies can avoid this by making the appropriate filing under Section 4(2) of the Securities Act of 1993 and the corresponding safe harbor provisions under Regulation D. There are also corresponding state law security filings too under state “Blue Sky” laws. The point here is that the security laws are complicated and you should not play “security lawyer.”

The second problem mentioned in the scenario described above is that my friend paid a finders’ fee to an unregistered broker-dealer. If the “consultant” was a registered broker-dealer and my friend otherwise made the appropriate Reg D filings he would have been fine. However, by providing compensation to an unregistered broker-dealer, my friend was also violating Section 29 of the Exchange Act which also provides for among other things, the right of rescission. Paying finders’ fees to unregistered broker-dealers has been a recent hot topic for the SEC and the Reg D form filing was updated in 2008 to specifically request information directly to this point (See Item 12 of Form D).

The take away here is that raising capital requires compliance with complicated securities laws. Entrepreneurs can avoid running into these issues by focusing on what they know best, their company, and allowing their lawyers to assist them so they do not make mistakes that are all too common in the capital raising world. If you have any questions regarding this or any other aspect affecting your business, please feel free to contact us at Danziger Shapiro.

This entry is presented for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice.