Marina Nehme

The rise of crowd equity funding: where to now?

Crowd equity funding is a type of crowdfunding that allows companies to obtain seed or other capital through small equity investments from a large range of investors via an online portal. This form of finance has been viewed as a way to remedy the shortfall of capital for small and medium enterprises. As a result, a number of countries such as the US, Italy and New Zealand have promoted this form of finance. Accordingly, the paper first considers the reasons behind the rise of crowd equity funding on government agendas around the world. It then focuses on the Australian setting, by highlighting the different proposals that have been put forward to introduce legislation friendlier to crowd equity funding. The aim is to view the extent to which the proposed models provide the right balance between investor protection and entrepreneurship.

Community store licensing regime: Potential of the new penalty regime for the promotion of greater compliance?

The community store licensing regime was first introduced as part of the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 (Cth) and subsequently expanded under the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory Act 2012 (Cth). The legislation introduced a new penalty regime with a range of sanctions that may be imposed if community stores have not complied with their licence conditions. It is the penalty regime that is the focus of this paper, as a credible sanctioning strategy to deal with breaches of the licensing regime is not currently in place. Such a strategy is essential to ensure that the penalty regime leads to greater compliance with the spirit of the law — ensuring food security — and not just the letter of the law — ensuring that the terms of community store licence conditions are met. Consequently, the article considers the strengths and weaknesses of the new penalty regime and proposes a regulatory approach that may be used by the Secretary to deal with breaches of licence conditions.