All posts by team

Memo: Sun Capital Case Study of Private Equity Looting

Today, private equity controls some 8,000 companies in the United States, more than twice as many companies as are publicly traded on U.S. stock markets. Private equity firms manage more than $4 trillion in U.S. assets and now own companies that collectively employ nearly 9 million American workers.

Like many PE firms, Sun Capital Partners often buys up existing businesses, loots their assets, squeezes workers, decimates jobs through layoffs and bankruptcy, and threatens workers’ retirement benefits. 

Blog Post: Wall Street Money in 2020 Elections

Wall Street is pumping tremendous sums of money into the 2020 elections, and there are some notable trends regarding who is getting the money and who, within the financial services industry, is contributing this cycle. At the presidential level, Wall Street is splitting its contributions close to evenly, or maybe slightly favoring Biden over Trump. At the same time, it is fairly clear that Wall Street is investing in keeping the Senate in Republican hands.

Letter to Regulators: Letter to the Department of Labor urging it to withdraw a proposal that would impose new burdens and costs on retirement plans.

AFREF submitted a letter to the Department of Labor urging it to withdraw a rule proposal that would impose onerous costs and process requirements on private sector retirement plans when deciding whether and how to vote on matters brought to a vote at public companies’ annual meetings. It will impose costs on retirement savers and undermine advances on corporations’ integration of environmental, social and governance factors, including those that have a material financial impact on long-term investment performance

sign for the CFPB outside a building

Kraninger Lets Industry “Drive the Agenda” at CFPB Even During COVID-19 Pandemic

Kathleen Kraninger, the current director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,  told an audience of bankers at a November  2019 industry gathering that “you are really helping drive the agenda.” Unfortunately for the public and for consumer financial protection, the Kraninger agenda and the Wall Street lobby’s priorities are indeed all too similar, and that has proved true even during the COVID-19 pandemic and massive economic distress it has produced.

In The News: 10 Years After Financial Reforms, Public Wants More Regulation (Rising Up With Sonali)

It has been more than ten years since the Obama Administration signed into law the Dodd Frank Act, a set of modest financial regulations that were meant to address the causes of the Great Recession. Since then many of the regulations have been weakened and whittled down. But a new poll finds strong public support, across the political spectrum for Wall Street to be held to account.

Testimony: License to Bank – Examining the Legal Framework Governing Who Can Lend and Process Payments in the Fintech Age

What industry calls “innovation” is often easily mapped to a longstanding financial service and therefore the existing laws should apply. At the same time, certain tools and certain forms of partnerships should have no place in our economy whatsoever. Treating innovation as an unqualified good leads regulators to ignore both considerations of equity and long-term, sustainable innovation. Give the interface between powerful corporations, complex products, and the public, precaution should be the norm, as it is in food and drug regulation.