(a) The following securities are exempted from §§7304, 7309A, and 7312 of this title:

(1) Any security (including a revenue obligation) issued or guaranteed by the United States, any state, any political subdivision of a state, or any agency or corporation or other instrumentality of one or more of the foregoing, or any certificate of deposit for any of the foregoing;

(2) Any security issued or guaranteed by Canada, any Canadian province, any political subdivision of any such province, any agency or corporate or other instrumentality of one or more of the foregoing, or any other foreign government with which the United States currently maintains diplomatic relations, if the security is recognized as a valid obligation by the issuer or guarantor;

(3) Any security issued by and representing an interest in or a debt of, or guaranteed by, any bank organized under the laws of the United States, or any bank, savings institution, or trust company organized and supervised under the laws of any state;

(4) Any security issued by and representing an interest in or a debt of, or guaranteed by, any federal savings and loan association, or any building and loan association organized and supervised under the laws of any state and authorized to do business in this State;

(5) Any security issued by and representing an interest in or a debt of, or guaranteed by, any insurance company organized under the laws of any state and authorized to do business in this State;

(6) Any security issued or guaranteed by any federal credit union or any credit union, industrial loan association, or similar association organized and supervised under the laws of this State;

(7) Any security issued or guaranteed by any railroad, other common carrier, public utility, or holding company which is subject to the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission; a registered holding company under the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 or a subsidiary of such a company within the meaning of that Act; regulated in respect of its rates and charges by a governmental authority of the United States or any state; or regulated in respect of the issuance or guarantee of the security by a governmental authority of the United States, any state, Canada, or any Canadian province;

(8) Any security listed or approved for listing upon notice of issuance on the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, the Midwest Stock Exchange, or the Philadelphia-Baltimore-Washington Stock Exchange or any other exchange which the Commissioner deems to have substantially the same standards for listing as required by the above mentioned exchanges; any other security of the same issuer which is of senior or substantially equal rank; any security called for by subscription rights or warrants so listed or approved; or any warrant or right to purchase or subscribe to any of the foregoing;

(9) Any security issued by any person organized and operated not for private profit but exclusively for religious, educational, benevolent, charitable, fraternal, social, athletic, or reformatory purposes, or as a chamber of commerce, local industrial development corporation, or trade or professional association;

(10) Any commercial paper which arises out of a current transaction or the proceeds of which have been or are to be used for current transactions, and which evidences an obligation to pay cash within 9 months of the date of issuance, exclusive of days of grace, or any renewal of such paper which is likewise limited, or any guarantee of such paper or of any such renewal;

(11) Any investment contract issued after the effective date of this act in connection with an employee’s stock purchase, savings, pension, profit-sharing, or similar benefit plan if the Commissioner is notified in writing 30 days before the inception of the plan, or, with respect to plans which are in effect on July 1, 1973, within 60 days, thereafter (or within 30 days before they are reopened if they are closed on July 1, 1973);

(12) Any security issued by a bona fide agricultural cooperative operating in this State that is organized under Chapter 85 of Title 3 of this Code or as a foreign cooperative association organized under the law of another state that has been duly qualified to transact business in this State;

(13) Any security traded pursuant to the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations System for which the Commissioner by rule has determined that registration is not necessary for the protection of investors.

(b) The following transactions are exempted from §§7304, 7309A, and 7312 of this title:

(1) Any isolated non-issuer transaction, whether effected through a broker-dealer or not;

(2) Any nonissuer transaction by a registered agent of a registered broker-dealer, and any resale transaction by a sponsor of a unit investment trust registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, in a security of a class that has been outstanding in the hands of the public for at least 90 days, provided, at the time of the transaction:

a. The issuer of the security is actually engaged in business and not in the organization stage or in bankruptcy or receivership and is not a blank check, blind pool or shell company whose primary plan of business is to engage in a merger or combination of the business with, or an acquisition of, an unidentified person or persons;

b. The security is sold at a price reasonably related to the current market price of the security;

c. The security does not constitute the whole or part of an unsold allotment to, or a subscription or participation by, the broker-dealer as an underwriter of the security;

d. A nationally recognized securities manual designated by rule or order of the Commissioner or a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that is publicly available through the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering and Retrieval System (EDGAR) and contains:

1. A description of the business and operations of the issuer;

2. The names of the issuer’s officers and directors, if any, or, in the case of an issuer not domiciled in the United States, the corporate equivalents of such persons in the issuer’s country of domicile;

3. An audited balance sheet of the issuer as of a date within 18 months or, in the case of a reorganization or merger where parties to the reorganization or merger had such audited balance sheet, a pro forma balance sheet; and

4. An audited income statement for each of the issuer’s immediately preceding 2 fiscal years, or for the period of existence of the issuer, if in existence for less than 2 years or, in the case of a reorganization or merger where the parties to the reorganization or merger had such audited income statement, a pro forma income statement; and

e. The issuer of the security has a class of equity securities listed on a national securities exchange registered under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, or designated for trading on the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System (NASDAQ), unless:

1. The issuer of the security is a unit investment trust registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940;

2. The issuer of the security has been engaged in continuous business (including predecessors) for at least 3 years; or

3. The issuer of the security has total assets of at least $2,000,000 based on an audited balance sheet as of a date within 18 months or, in the case of a reorganization or merger where parties to the reorganization or merger had such audited balance sheet, a pro forma balance sheet.

(3) Any nonissuer transaction effected by or through a registered broker-dealer pursuant to an unsolicited order or offer to buy; but the Commissioner may by rule require that the customer acknowledge upon a specified form that the sale was unsolicited, and that a signed copy of each such form be preserved by the broker-dealer for a specified period;

(4) Any transaction between the issuer or other person on whose behalf the offering is made and an underwriter, or among underwriters;

(5) Any transaction in a bond or other evidence of indebtedness secured by a real or chattel mortgage or deed of trust, or by an agreement for the sale of real estate or chattels, if the entire mortgage, deed of trust or agreement, together with all the bonds or other evidences of indebtedness secured thereby, is offered and sold as a unit;

(6) Any transaction by an executor, administrator, sheriff, marshal, receiver, trustee in bankruptcy, guardian, or conservator;

(7) Any transaction executed by a bona fide pledgee without any purpose of evading this chapter;

(8) Any offer or sale to a bank, savings institution, trust company, insurance company, investment company as defined in the Investment Company Act of 1940, pension or profit-sharing trust, or other financial institution or institutional buyer, or to a broker-dealer, whether the purchaser is acting for itself or in some fiduciary capacity;

(9) Any transaction pursuant to an offer directed by the offerer to not more than 25 persons [other than those designated in paragraph (8)] in this State during any period of 12 consecutive months, whether or not the offerer or any of the offerees is then present in this State, if the seller reasonably believes that all the buyers in this State, other than those designated in paragraph (8), are purchasing for investment; but the Commissioner may by rule or order, as to any security or transaction or any type of security or transaction, withdraw or further condition this exemption, or increase or decrease the number of offerees permitted, or waive the condition relating to investment intent; provided, however, the Commissioner may by rule or order exempt transactions that are exempt under federal securities laws or regulations;

(10) Any offer or sale of a preorganization certificate or subscription if no commission or other remuneration is paid or given directly or indirectly for soliciting any prospective subscriber, the number of subscribers does not exceed 10, and no payment is made by any subscriber;

(11) Any transaction pursuant to an offer to existing security holders of the issuer, including persons who at the time of the transaction are holders of the convertible securities, nontransferable warrants, or transferable warrants exercisable within not more than 90 days of their issuance, if no commission or other remuneration (other than a standby commission) is paid or given directly or indirectly for soliciting any security holder in this State, or the issuer first files a notice specifying the terms of the offer and the Commissioner does not by order disallow the exemption within the next 5 full business days;

(12) Any offer (but not a sale) of a security for which a registration statement has been filed under this chapter if no stop order or refusal order is in effect and no public proceeding or examination looking toward such an order is pending, and if the offerer complies with §7306(d) of this title;

(13) Any offer or sale of a security by or through a registered broker-dealer if such offer or sale is not directly or indirectly for the benefit of the issuer or a person who is known or should reasonably be known to such broker-dealer to be the record or beneficial owner of 10 percent or more of the outstanding voting securities of the issuer; the security is not part of an unsold allotment or subscription taken by a participant in a distribution directly or indirectly for the benefit of the issuer or a person who is known or should reasonably be known by such broker-dealer to be the record or beneficial owner of 10 percent or more of the outstanding voting securities of the issuer; and no administrative stop order or similar order or permanent or temporary injunction of any court of competent jurisdiction is in effect under this subtitle or under any federal or state act against the offering or sale of the security or any security of the same class.

(c) The Commissioner may by rule or order deny or revoke any exemption in subsection (a)(9) or (11) or in subsection (b) of this section, either generally or with respect to a specific security or transaction. No such order may be entered without appropriate prior notice to all interested parties, opportunity for hearing, and written findings of fact and conclusions of law, except that the Commissioner may by order summarily deny or revoke any of the specified exemptions pending final determination of any proceeding under this subsection. Upon the entry of a summary order the Commissioner shall promptly notify all interested parties that it has been entered and of the reasons therefor and that within 15 days of the receipt of a written request the matter will be set down for a hearing. If no hearing is requested and none is ordered by the Commissioner, the order will remain in effect until it is modified or vacated by the Commissioner. If a hearing is requested or ordered, the Commissioner, after notice of and opportunity for hearing to all interested persons, may modify or vacate the order or extend it until final determination. No order under this subsection may operate retroactively. No person may be considered to have violated §7304 or §7312 of this title by reason of any offer or sale effected after the entry of an order under this subsection if he sustains the burden of proof that he did not know, and in the exercise of reasonable care could not have known, of the order.

(d) In any proceeding under this chapter, the burden of proving an exemption or an exception form a definition is upon the person claiming it.