500 Shareholder Threshold

  

Facebook ran into this problem. It stayed private for so long, and raised money from so many investors, that it pierced the 500-investor maximum rule...or at least got very close to hitting it. As a result, it encouraged aggregation, i.e. existing investors were encouraged to buy out smaller investors. At over 500 investors, a company is required by the SEC to, more or less, behave—and file—like it's a publicly traded company subject to all of the regulatory pains that go with it. Having over $10 million in assets is another hurdle companies jump to, and then require the filing garroting, with all efforts having to be fully filed within 120 days of the end of that company's fiscal year. Ouch.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is a Liquid Market?17 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop What is liquid market Well it's one

00:07

that trades Ah lot High volume Lots of buyers Lots

00:11

of sellers Liquid lots of cash sloshing this way In

00:15

that way Go this way and that Did you ever

00:17

see a liquid market go this way and that That

00:20

little song Did you ever see a lassie Never mind

00:23

All right Weir Liquid markets Good Well because they implied

00:26

there's Lots of cash ready willing and able to be

00:29

put to work And that's usually a sign of a

00:31

healthy risk seeking active market versus risk averse one which

00:36

is you know hiding Ah liquid market means that investors

00:40

want to put their cash toe work that they have

00:43

actually saved cash along the way and or that they

00:46

have relatively easy access to credit And you can think

00:49

about it from the perspective of your kindly loving realtor

00:53

who wants a world where lots of people are buying

00:56

homes But in orderto have that happen you have to

00:58

have lots of people who are also selling homes at

01:01

the same time Otherwise prices just go higher and higher

01:04

with no supply to meet demand And at the end

01:06

of the day in real estate and it's in the

01:08

stock market while the most important thing yes that the

01:11

brokers get pays So that's a liquid market one that

01:15

trades a lot like it's Wet trading back and for

01:18

sloshing around not ice Where everything's you know all jammed 00:01:22.109 --> [endTime] up No needs heat or an animal or something

Up Next

Finance: What is Regulation A?
7 Views

Reg A is an exemption for the sale of securities. We wonder if it has any sweet steel drums in the background.

Finance: What is Reg G?
5 Views

What is reg G? No, it's not an up-and-coming rap star...though we know what our rapper name is now. Hit play to find out.

Finance: What are Pink Sheets?
4 Views

What are pink sheets? And can we bleach them to make them white again?

Finance: What is Reg T?
3 Views

Reg T, or Regulation T, is a federal regulation that covers the form and manner in which brokers, or brokerages, can extend credit to customers.

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)