Research On Equity Crowdfunding Investor Rights Protection

Equity crowdfunding was first introduced into China in 2011,through the convenient and efficient Internet carrier,equity crowdfunding has developed rapidly in China.Different from the traditional investment and financing mode,equity crowdfunding has the characteristics of “small,open and popular ”,which reduces the entry threshold of ordinary investors to a certain extent,and also facilitates the financing needs of small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups,which is of great significance to alleviate the problem of “financing difficulties” of small and medium-sized enterprises.However,due to the relatively short development time of equity crowdfunding in China,the relevant legal norms are not clear enough,the system is not mature enough,and the policy is also in constant change,which makes equity crowdfunding face regulatory difficulties.Among them,equity crowdfunding investors’ equity damage is particularly prominent.In many cases,the legitimate rights and interests of investors are difficult to obtain effective protection and relief.First of all,from the level of legal norms,there are still legal risks such as “illegal public issuance of securities” and “illegal fund-raising ”,and investors’ rights and interests can not be protected by law;Secondly,from the operational mechanism level,QFII access standards,exit mechanism and so on are not perfect,investors’ rights and interests are vulnerable to damage;finally,from the institutional security level,there is a lack of supervision in the stock raising market,information disclosure mechanism,dispute resolution mechanism and so on,which makes stock raising easy to produce fraud and other bad behavior,and investors’ rights and interests relief difficulties.The existence of these problems,while causing security risks to investors,is also not conducive to the long-term and healthy development of equity crowdfunding industry.As a new form of business in capital market,it is necessary to take investor protection as the center and perfect the legal system and system of investor rights protection.Based on the analysis and research on the present situation and existing problems of the stock raising industry,this paper puts forward some legal suggestions to improve the protection of the rights and interests of the stock raising investors in our country bydrawing lessons from the advanced system and legislative experience.The first part of the paper introduces the basic meaning and characteristics of equity crowdfunding,analyzes the openness of equity crowdfunding issuance,the securities attributes of the issuing object and other legal properties,on the basis of which the legal relationship between equity crowdfunding platform,investors,financiers and third parties is explained,and combs the legislative status and legislative trend of equity crowdfunding in China.The second part analyzes the main problems existing in the protection of investors’ rights and interests in current practice,including: the legal risk of illegal public issuance of securities and illegal fund-raising;the imperfect mechanism of investors’ access and withdrawal;the lack of effective information disclosure and the difficulty of investor’s rights and interests relief.Chapter three examines the legal systems of stock raising in the United States,the United Kingdom and Japan,and studies the contents of the JOBS Act,the Rules of the United Kingdom and the Financial Commodity Trading Act on the protection of the rights and interests of investors.The fourth part,on the basis of drawing lessons from the experience of extraterritorial system,based on the problems existing in the practice of our country,puts forward the corresponding suggestions on how to perfect the legal system of protecting the rights and interests of investors in stock raising.On the legislative side,it is proposed that the relevant provisions in the Securities Law,the Company Law and other laws should be amended,and the Measures for the Administration of Pilot Equity Crowdfunding should be issued as soon as possible;In the aspect of supervision,it is pointed out that the responsibility and obligation of platform supervision should be clarified,the information disclosure system of financiers should be perfected,the rules of third-party fund custody should be set up,and the mechanism of investor participation in enterprise management should be improved.