Oxford Business Law Blog

Will crowdfunding ‘democratize’ investing and make startup capital available to a wider range of founders? Our preliminary study suggests that equity crowdfunding is not providing its expected...

‘Equity crowdfunding’—small Internet-based public securities offerings exempt from the usual regulations for such transactions—is an exciting new source for entrepreneurial finance, and New Zealand...

Debt-based crowdfunding (‘crowdlending’ or ‘peer to peer lending’) is growing as an alternative finance market within the EU. Yet it has many risks for investors. A lack of regulation of the emerging...

Reward crowdfunding (RC) is fundamentally different from both debt and equity crowdfunding, because the provider of funds does not buy a financial security. However, it is also different from charity...

Governments worldwide are increasingly recognizing that assisting the development of start-ups and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) is critical to fostering job creation and economic growth. As...

Crowdfunding is a buzzword that identifies a sub-set in the new forms of finance facilitated by advances in information technology usually categorized as fintech. In contrast to financial innovation...

Crowdfunding—the aggregation of numerous but modest individual contributions through specialized online platforms—is a relatively new finance method. In the last few years, it has started its...

Until recently crowdfunding activities in Switzerland were severely restricted by banking regulations. An exuberant legal bank monopoly for the deposit taking business limited both the possibilities...

Crowdfunding - an outcome of the modern sharing economy - has experienced rapid growth in some EU Member States, notably the UK, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. However, home bias by...

Hyperfunding is the fundraising of large sums of money in a brief campaign by a company that directly targets consumers or investors via the Internet. In my latest research paper, Hyperfunding, I...

The Platform of the Future? The survival of any organization depends on its ability to outperform competitors and marketplaces in attracting and rewarding talent, ideas and capital. As communication...

The Belgian Law of 18 December 2016 on crowdfunding will enter into force on 1 February 2017.* The crowdfunding law creates a specific status for equity and debt crowdfunding platforms (referred to...

Democratizing access to capital means offering women and minorities the same opportunities that white men enjoy when trying to raise money to start a business. Traditionally, businesses raised money...

Given the well-documented problems of entrepreneurial moral hazard, the recent popularity of crowdfunding, with its defining feature that there is no active financial intermediary who demands partial...

Recent legal reforms have authorized the “crowdfunding” of securities, which is where a company offers stock, bonds or other securities over the Internet, without having to comply with the usual (and...

For over eighty years, US security laws have focused on mandating disclosures to protect investors. The efficacy of this strategy has been hotly debated for decades. Equity crowdfunding as it was...

When the first part of New Zealand’s Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 (‘the FMC Act’) came into force on 1 April 2014, a new regime for equity crowdfunding was introduced into New Zealand law,...

Much has been written about the regulation of crowdinvesting, and what determines funding success. However, relatively little is known about the contracts that form the basis of crowdinvesting. This...

The first crowdfunding investment offerings in the US include six types of investments: common stock, preferred stock, interest-bearing loans, revenue-sharing arrangements, convertible debt, and...

As a result of the 2008 financial crisis, major credit providers such as banks have become increasingly cautious about making loans for worthy investment projects, particularly to small and medium...