The main message from the sessions was that despite amendments to rules such as 506, the JOBS Act, Regulation D and Regulation A—meant to protect investors, verify investor accreditation and jumpstart job creation within the securities sector—change is still in process and will take some time before it is evident. According to Martin Murphy of the SEC, “We need to find a mechanism to allow legitimate business people to easily raise capital and separate out people whose goal is fraud.”

Patricia Loutherback of Texas State Securities Board said that like the SEC, the States' ultimate goal is investor protection and its priority is to focus on issuers and brokers selling to the public.

Crowd funding—permitting funding by unaccredited investors—was also discussed, and Joe Price of FINRA said that it is already being done even though it is not yet allowed. Steve Meier of Jenner & Block added that crowd funding was “not an effective way to raise capital since there are limits on investing. It's untenable because of the caps” on investing by the individual investor as well as for each transaction (up to $1 million).

Price spoke considerably during the Symposium about red flags that FINRA uses to question private placement (a.k.a., PPM, or the issuance and sale of stock of a company to an institutional investor, accredited and/or non-accredited investor to procure financing and raise capital) in order to protect investors from fraud. Some of these red flags include PPMs calling a distribution a yield—“Distribution isn't yield, so don't call it that. Don't market it like a fixed-income investment; it's not a bond.” Also subject to further examination are reps calling an investment vehicle a REIT when it has been in existence for less than a year, not disclosing that REITs are not direct investments in real estate, cherry-picked performance information and lies about principals.

The need for increased communication was emphasized, particularly between fund sponsors and broker/dealers, and between reps and the investors. Brandon Reif of Winget, Spadafora & Schwartzberg stressed the importance of the rep “taking the customer through the document” so that the customer understands the potential risks of his investment. The problem of inadequate rep training was also an issue discussed.

Also on the communication front was the dichotomy between business privacy and the transparency of social media—how, in the age of lightning-fast digital communication, and personal vs. private Facebook pages, do firms separate business disclosures from executives' private social-media accounts? John Grady of Realty Capital Securities put it, “Prior approval and social media is not a good mix in advertising proposals.”