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forced arb

Joint Letter: Coalition Urges Intuit to Reject Proposal on Forced Shareholder Arbitration

The measure, which is scheduled for a vote at the company’s annual meeting next week, would block
investors harmed by securities fraud or other corporate legal violations from bringing their claims as a
class in a court of law, before a judge and jury. This would effectively end most shareholders’ ability to
recover their losses in such cases, as they cannot affordably be brought individually in arbitration by any
but the very largest institutional investors.

Sticky PostNY Daily News

In The News: The fight to protect consumers, at a crossroads (The New York Daily News)

As Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, put it, last year, the CFPB “was constructed really deliberately to protect ordinary people,” and the Trump administration has “taken it apart — dismantled it, piece by piece, brick by brick.” I [Leandra English] am honored to join DFS Superintendent Linda A. Lacewell’s team to ensure that as Washington retreats, New York continues to lead.

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News Release: New CFPB Task Force Runs Counter to Agency Mission

“The CFPB is dropping the ball on enforcing and drafting federal rules to actually protect the public from rip offs and discrimination in lending,” said Linda Jun, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “Creating and hiring a new task force stacked with industry representatives and ideological opponents of regulation is one more move that runs directly counter to the CFPB’s basic mission.”

Photo by Tom Rumble on Unsplash

News Release: AFR Ed Fund Criticizes HUD Proposal for Thwarting Fair Housing Goals

If the proposed rule went into effect, HUD’s assessment of whether localities were meeting their AFFH obligations would not include consideration of race, religion, national origin, families with children, or other protected classes that the Fair Housing Act was intended to shield from discrimination. The proposed rule eliminates the community participation process, which was proven to be extremely effective in helping communities develop meaningful fair housing goals, and does not even have a requirement that state and local governments conduct a fair housing analysis for their communities at all.

Medical billing

In The News: Blackstone-KKR Hidden Hand in Ad Blitz Unleashes Washington Fury (Bloomberg)

Confronted with the rare prospect of defeat on Capitol Hill, private equity titans Blackstone Group Inc. and KKR & Co. unleashed a national advertising blitz last year against legislation that threatened their investments in health-care companies valued at $16 billion … House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters has already said she plans to hold a hearing early this year featuring executives from top firms. Meanwhile, progressive groups such as Americans for Financial Reform and United for Respect are funding anti-private equity campaigns.

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In The News: This was supposed to be the decade of tougher consumer protections. That didn’t happen. (CNBC)

“The biggest concerns that we see with the CFPB today is they are holding the hands of the payday lenders,” said Linda Jun, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform. “That means that the debt trap will continue and people will continue to lose their cars and their bank accounts as a result of the continued destruction of payday loans.”

WallStreetCreativeCommons

News Release: Report Highlights Private Equity Ownership of Texas Plant as Possible Danger to Health, Environment

Following last month’s explosions at a petrochemical plant near Beaumont, Texas on the Gulf Coast, a new report draws attention to the private equity industry’s growing control of companies in this sector through a business model that may increase health, environmental, and safety risks. This financial engineering often allows private equity firms to extract wealth from the companies they purchase, but can result in intense pressure to cut costs, resulting in layoffs or reduced spending on operations that can lead to substandard products or services.

fence with a yellow sign that says 'danger' = Photo by JF Martin on Unsplash

Report: Private Equity’s Chemical Catastrophe in Texas

The day before Thanksgiving, a chemical plant operated by the TPC Group exploded in Port Neches, Texas spewing contaminants, forcing over 50,000 people to evacuate, and leaving the community with the lingering aftereffects of an industrial disaster. The TPC Group is owned by two private equity (PE) firms, SK Capital Partners (SK) and First Reserve. The private equity owned chemical plants in Texas held by SK Capital have a long record of environmental violations — not just the TPC Group factories but other SK Capital portfolio firms.

AmBanker

In The News: Where have all the CFPB fair-lending cases gone? (American Banker)

“They’ve made it easier to hide patterns of discrimination by raising the threshold for reporting, which makes it harder for civil rights lawyers or state attorneys general to draw conclusions when the data is not available,” said Linda Jun, senior policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform, a nonprofit coalition. “So in addition to not going after any bad guys in two years, they are making it a lot harder to find those patterns of discrimination.”