Business Development Company

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A Business Development Company ("BDC") is a form of unregistered closed-end investment company in the United States that invests in small and mid-sized businesses. This form of company was created by the US Congress in 1980 in the amendments to the Investment Company Act of 1940. Publicly filing firms may elect regulation as BDCs if they meet certain requirements of the Investment Company Act.^[1]

BDCs were created to provide small and growing companies access to capital and to enable private equity funds to access public capital markets. Under the legislation, a BDC must invest at least 70% of its assets in nonpublic US companies with market values of less than $250 million. Moreover, like REITs, as long as 90% or more of the BDC's income is distributed to investors, a BDC is not taxed at the corporate level. Although BDCs are allowed to invest in the capital structure, the vast majority of the investment has been debt because BDCs typically leverage their equity with debt (up to 2X their equity^[2]), and fixed-income investing supports their debt obligations.