J. Crew Succumbs to Bankruptcy after Private Equity Debt, Financial Looting
Preppy retailer cannot survive retail and coronavirus economic downturn saddled by private equity-imposed financial burdens.
All posts by AFR
Letter to Regulators: Suspend CFPB Rollback of Payday Loan Protections
[T]he process of rolling back the mandatory underwriting requirement provisions of the 2017 small-dollar lending rule was, at best, highly improper. We urge you to suspend the finalization of the rule pending a full investigation of the facts. There is a strong case to be made that the CFPB needs to restart the regulatory process entirely.
Letter to Congress: Renewed Call for Credit and Debt Protections in COVID-19 Relief
Letter calling on Congress to include consumer protections in COVID-19 relief
Joint Letter: Letter to Housing Regulators on Tenant Protections in CARES Act
Joint letter asking FHFA, HUD, VA and USDA to provide tenants with a mechanism to identify whether their apartment, home, or manufactured housing is covered by the tenant protections in the CARES Act
NEWS RELEASE: Decision to Block Private Equity Takeover of Dot Org a Victory for Nonprofits
Yesterday, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) rejected the proposed private equity takeover of the Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit that manages the non-commercial, charity, and non-profit internet domain registry for all Dot-Org websites. The decision recognized that the private equity debt loads and extractive business model would hinder Dot-Org’s ability to serve its non-profit clients without raising prices, compromising service, creating new revenue streams that comprise users’ data and privacy, or otherwise imposing unfair costs on 10 million organizations.
Joint Letter: Letter to FHA Urging Greater COVID-19 Protections for Borrowers
Coalition letter to FHA on clarifying and improving protections for borrowers facing hardship related to covid-19.
In The News: Trump Appointees Manipulated Agency’s Payday Lending Research, Ex-Staffer Claims (The New York Times)
Linda Jun, a senior policy counsel for Americans for Financial Reform, a consumer advocacy group: “To this day, despite many people asking, they haven’t provided anything about the basis for changing this rule beyond some vague references to new research. It’s hard to see the reversal as anything other than political.”
Letter to Regulators: End Insider Dominance of Municipal Market Oversight
ACRE, AFSCME, the AFL-CIO, AFR Education Fund, the Consumer Federation of America, and Public Citizen sent a letter to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board concerning the need for broader public representation in governance of the Board and oversight of municipal lending markets. The letter is
Private Equity Vultures Eye Real Estate During Coronavirus Crisis
Now, with 26 million workers unemployed and countless businesses closing indefinitely, private equity firms are salivating at the potential business opportunities that might arise from the expected economic fallout. Unless we take immediate action to prevent it, private equity firms will take advantage of this unprecedented crisis to make even greater asset grabs.
“Coronavirus distress is the ‘opportunity of the century’ for real estate investors,” according to a recent headline in The Real Deal, a New York real estate news publication. The article quotes Meridian Capital Group’s David Schechtman saying “But I will tell you, real-estate investors — when you take the emotion out of it — many of them have been waiting for this for a decade.”
Blog Post: Wall Street’s Secret Pet Profiteering
More and more as we go about our lives, the money we spend is siphoned off to enrich Wall Street firms. Private equity’s pet profiteering is just one way these investors have taken over so much of the economy and our daily lives.