This post was written by Frederick Lah.
This past Wednesday (July 10), the SEC voted 4-1 to approve amendments to Rule 506, lifting the 80-year ban on advertising for hedge funds and certain other investments (See, SEC Votes to Ease 80-Year-Old Ban on Private-Investment Ads.) Rimon previously reported these amendments when they were initially proposed in August 2012, and you can read our earlier analysis, SEC Regs Amended To Allow Hedge Funds To Advertise: Potential Data Privacy Implications.
Under the revised Rule 506, hedge funds and other issuers seeking to conduct private offers may now use general solicitation and advertising to offer their securities, provided that: (1) the issuer takes reasonable steps to verify that the purchasers are accredited investors; and (2) all purchases of the securities fall within one of the categories of persons who are accredited investors, or the issuer must reasonably believe that the investors fall within one of the categories at the time of the sale.
To be an accredited investor, the individual’s net worth must exceed $1 million, excluding the value of a primary residence, or the individual’s annual income must exceed $200,000. According to the SEC, the determination of the reasonableness of the steps taken to verify that the investors are accredited is an “objective assessment” by an issuer. An issuer is required to consider the facts and circumstances of each investor and the transaction. The final rule provides a non-exhaustive list of methods that an issuer may employ for verification.
As noted in our previous analysis, it is unlikely we’ll see hedge funds competing with large consumer brands for prime advertising space. Instead, given the target audience, we’ll likely see more tailored efforts, such as email marketing campaigns, direct phone marketing, and targeted online advertising. We are also likely to see new strategies from issuers such as speaking about funds in public and posting details on websites (which may represent quite a change considering many issuers don’t even have websites). As issuers enter into the world of marketing, they will also have to deal with the reality that the SEC is not the only regulatory agency on their radar; these issuers will need to make sure that they’re not engaging in unfair or deceptive marketing practices and drawing the ire (and an investigation or enforcement action) of the FTC.
The amendments become effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. For more information on this issue, please contact Frederick H. Lah, the author, or Joseph I. Rosenbaum, editor and publisher of Legal Bytes.