The Tortured Regulations Department: SBA’s New Rule and Its Effect on Investments

In a lengthy and complex effort, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) issued a final rule on December 17, 2024, that amended many requirements related to small business contracting. As with most rules, there are some good, some bad and some unknown factors. In this first post on the new regulations, we focus only on the changes with the greatest effects on investments in and M&A transactions of small businesses: (1) updates to permissible minority shareholder controls and (2) a substantial rewrite of post-acquisition recertification rules. We previously discussed the proposed version of this rule. The final rule takes effect on January 16, 2025, although some (but not all) requirements related to recertifications on multiple-award contracts will not take effect until one year later, on January 17, 2026.

Read the full blog post.