Americans for Financial Reform flags that it now means all the banking agencies have majorities to move ahead with an unfinished rule from the 2010 Dodd-Frank law to address executives’ incentive-based compensation.
“The SEC must stand behind the need to have basic transparency around stock buybacks,” Natalia Renta, senior policy counsel for corporate governance and power at the group, said in a statement.
ESG advocacy — Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and Take On Wall Street are launching esgexplainer.org. They say it’s an attempt at “educating Americans about responsible investing” and “dispelling myths” about ESG.
“Banks make it very hard for consumers to choose where they want to go if they’re not happy with services,” Elyse Hicks, a lawyer specializing in consumer policy at the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform, told The Lever and The American Prospect.
“Many risks in the nonbank sector, from insurance to private equity to hedge funds to asset management, are becoming increasingly serious and in need of closer attention,” said Alexa Philo, senior banking and systemic risk analyst at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund.
The Sierra Club, Public Citizen and Americans for Financial Reform said Thursday that after analyzing the California law and state records, they believe that 75% of Fortune 1000 companies will have to make emissions disclosures once California’s requirements take effect later this decade.
Alexa Philo of Americans for Financial Reform told the House Financial Services Committee last month that the 2008 crisis had devastating impacts on the wealth of people and communities of color. Foreclosures on subprime loans and falling home prices wiped out many Black and Latinx owners’ home equity, which was a large part of their net worth, she said.
“Today was a bad day for predatory payday lenders and the Wall Street lobby groups that lent their names to some very ridiculous claims,” said Elyse Hicks, consumer policy counsel at Americans for Financial Reform. “None of their legal arguments passed the red-face test, and even the questions from the conservative justices reflected that reality.”
Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of groups that advocates for tougher financial regulation, said that private-equity roll-ups of small companies have serious anticompetitive effects and need to be reined in. “The private-equity industry has become the primary driver of consolidation and merger activity in the United States and the predatory practices and economic extraction of private-equity firms from their portfolio acquisitions present unique risks to a competitive economy,” the group said in a Sept. 18 letter to the FTC and Justice Department.
“We strongly disagree that new capital requirements will undermine credit availability,” said Alexa Philo, senior policy analyst, Americans for Financial Reform, after Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D.-Mass, asked whether the new rules could protect the availability of lending in a downturn.