Making an EB-5 Investment Choice: Considerations for Investors and Agents in the New Era
Wednesday, June 14, 2023
2:00PM – 4:00PM ET
Online (hosted by Zoom)
Those who can’t attend live can still RSVP to receive access to the webinar recording once it’s available. A translated version will soon be made available for non-English-speaking viewers.
Speakers set to appear at the webinar include:
Michael Goldberg, Partner, Bankruptcy and Reorganization, Akerman LLP
Reid Thomas, Group Head of Client Solutions, JTC Group
Michael Bailkin, Of Counsel, Real Estate, Akerman LLP
Abteen Vaziri, Managing Director, Brevet Capital Management
Nima Korpivaara, Partner, KLD, LLP
Robert C. Divine, Shareholder, Baker Donelson
Jill Jones, General Counsel – USA, JTC Group
Matthew Klauer, Senior Vice President, CBRE
Scot O’Brien, Office Managing Partner, Akerman LLP
To learn more and reserve a spot, click here.
When making a substantial investment of capital, due diligence is an important part of the process for investors and their representatives. You have to properly vet both the project and the fund managers with whom you’re working to ensure the investment is financially sound and aligns with your values.
This kind of due diligence is especially important in EB-5, as investors have more at stake than just their invested capital. More than returns, these investors want to ensure their capital is going toward a project that will reliably help them meet the requirements for their visa applications. Choosing a project that fails to create enough jobs or that violates USCIS rules could be disastrous for investors and their families. Many foreign investors are also understandably skittish about the security of their funds following the trouble some regional banks have faced this year.
To gain investor trust, Regional Centers must properly communicate the value of their projects as investments, how they can help investors complete the job creation and documentation requirements necessary for their visa applications, and the advantages the Regional Center offers in terms of security, project and transaction transparency, and regulatory compliance.
With EB-5 investors coming from all over the world and facing both language barriers and a lack of familiarity with US investing, this can be a real challenge. Those in the industry may remember the mass confusion that resulted from the passage of the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 due to its sometimes vague and ill-defined rules. Imagine how confusing those rules must be to investors who’ve never tried to navigate EB-5 before. Many potential investors may have no idea what the RIA is, what its rules mean, or that some of its changes could actually be beneficial to them.
As a global company with a worldwide private client business in addition to being a leader in EB-5 fund administration, JTC is in a perfect position to understand the needs of both EB-5 investors and Regional Centers. That’s why on June 14th, we’re hosting a free virtual event to help investors better understand what to look for in an EB-5 project so they can connect with Regional Centers that offer what they need.
Sponsored by Akerman LLP, Brevet Capital Management, and JTC Group, Making an EB-5 Investment Choice: Considerations for Investors and Agents in the New Era will include an array of expert speakers and panel discussions on subjects related to EB-5 investment in the RIA era. After this free online event, portions of the recording will be translated into other languages to benefit investors from around the world.
The goal is to discuss EB-5 at an investor level, keeping in mind the objectives and concerns of today’s EB-5 investors. These immigrant investors have a lot at stake, and by offering clear explanations of current issues, this webinar can help them better understand the most important considerations when deciding whether to invest. It can also give agents insight into investor concerns and how the new rules affect their activities, as well as provide issuers with tools to better communicate with potential investors. The result should be an increased understanding among all parties of what EB-5 can be. Here are just a few of the topics that will be covered at the webinar:
How EB-5 funding works and the role of impact
Impact is an important component of EB-5 projects not only because it provides the community benefits that make EB-5 a policy success, but because job creation is essential for successful visa applications. Investors need to understand how to evaluate projects not only based on financial risk/reward, but impact as well.
A panel discussion titled What Does an EB-5 Project Look Like? will feature experts from across the industry talking about the different forms and structures EB-5 projects can take. The discussion will include a summary of current EB-5 funding frameworks, capital stacks, key players, and goals, as well as the key issues for investors, agents, issuers, and developers. This will give investors a better understanding of how to evaluate an EB-5 project and the cutting-edge approaches being used to enhance the investor risk/reward ratio.
How RIA rule changes can benefit certain investors
The question of whether to pursue an EB-5 investment is a complex one that involves personal decisions, but it can be greatly affected by the program’s popularity. For example, investors from countries like China and India have faced long wait times because of visa allocations. However, some recent rules changes have made EB-5 more advantageous for investors from those countries.
Thanks to the Reform and Integrity Act’s reserved visas for rural projects, investors from countries with long wait times could effectively “skip the line” by investing in rural projects. This makes these projects extremely valuable and means investors from those countries will want to understand how to find and evaluate rural projects. By understanding the RIA rules regarding reserved visas, some investors could greatly speed up visa adjudication.
Attendees will also hear about other key elements of the current iteration of the Regional Center program, including how the RIA’s fund administration requirement can help cut down on fraud and abuse. Investors concerned about USCIS compliance and the security of their invested funds can also learn a lot from the second panel at the webinar.
Keeping funds secure in EB-5
It’s been hard to ignore the well-publicized problems at several regional banks in 2023. Investors who’ve read certain news items may be concerned about the security of their investments and whether or not it’s safe for them to put their capital (and their immigration applications) on the line.
At a panel called How Do I Protect My Investment? Understanding the Meaning of “At Risk,” panelists will discuss the fallout from the recent issues at regional banks and how investors can avoid getting caught up in any future bank failures.
EB-5 investors risk more than just their capital when they make an investment: their visa applications are also at stake, so it’s important to understand what can go wrong and what can be done about it. This discussion will cover best practices in fund security, why transparency and project visibility are crucial for immigrant investors, and what investors can do if faced with either a loss of capital or a failure to fully meet job creation requirements.
With properly educated issuers, agents, and investors, EB-5 can function as intended and impact communities while also generating returns and helping investors gain permanent US residency. This webinar will be a great first step toward better communication across the EB-5 world.
