The Economist – Tobacco and alcohol brands face heavy restrictions when it comes to advertising. Hedge funds and other purveyors of alternative investments have suffered similar prohibitions on marketing their products. That ban may soon be lifted in America. (Europe’s pending new regime for alternative investments is stricter, although it has lots of loopholes.) Long consigned to silence, the money men are starting to practise their sales pitches.
Change is expected as part of the JOBS act, a 2012 bill designed to make it easier for smaller American businesses to raise cash. Hedge funds, private-equity firms and others piggybacked on the reforms in the hope of widening the pool of investors they can pitch to. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is busy writing the rules that would put the bill into practice. That process has been bedevilled by delays but it seems inevitable it will overturn a Depression-era ban on “general solicitation”.
