Over the past couple of weeks, there have been further developments on the two House-passed acts (H.R. 2940, Access to Capital for Job Creators Act) (H.R. 2930, Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act) previously blogged about. I have posted links to third party articles about these developments on Twitter and Facebook, so I recommend you click the links on this page to those social media to read those articles.
I will publish here soon a more complete summary of where things stand.
But for now, I just note the following:
- In the House, the bills were folded into a larger piece of legislation dubbed the JOBS Act and rushed to the Senate earlier this month.
- About a week ago, the first pushback to the bills emerged publicly, when Mary Shapiro at the SEC sharply criticized the bills as "deregulating" the framework for investor protection existing under federal securities laws.
- Within a couple of days, a handful of Senators had joined her chorus, and began to attack the bills as "deregulation" efforts and "attacks on the investing public" and using similar buzzwords and politically charged phrases.
- Nevertheless, the Senate today -- March 22 -- did pass its own version of the JOBS Act and the vote was not close.
- The competing versions of the JOBS Act now goes to a conference committee, which will try to work out the differences between the House and Senate versions.