Annemarie Tierney is General Counsel for SecondMarket, an online marketplace for buying and selling illiquid assets in the United States. SecondMarket burst onto the scene during the run-up to the Facebook IPO by facilitating transactions in Facebook shares sold by Facebook employees to members of the public.
For anyone interested in more information on SecondMarket’s history with Facebook, I’d strongly encourage checking out this amazing infographic, which provides a historical perspective on Facebook share pricing and the site’s featureset.
Tierney recently took to Quora to explain how SecondMarket can operate in the way it has without wading into the contentious waters of general solicitation. General solicitation is illegal for most private securities, although a recent regulatory change via the JOBS Act resulted in the implementation of Rule 506(c), specifying a framework under which private issuers can generally solicit.
Read her answer below…
