Fact Sheets and Reports: The ABCs of Private Equity
From A for Ambulance to Z for Zamboni, this book takes the reader on an alphabetical journey through the myriad ways that private equity has encroached into most parts of everyday life.
Category Archives: Reports, Fact Sheets, Background Papers
Report: Wells Fargo: We Go Far Beyond The Law
Wells Fargo, the San Francisco-based megabank, has been embroiled in a series of scandals, lawsuits, and customer abuses over the past decade. Despite public outrage and legal actions, the bank’s executives have failed to address the issues adequately. They have been accused of lying to Congress, neglecting shareholder complaints, and evading accountability for their wrongdoings while claiming to make improvements.
Report: The Carlyle Group’s Hidden Climate Impact: Exposing a Decade of Fossil Fuel Investments
A new investigation reveals that the Carlyle Group has been quietly scooping up fossil fuel assets over the past decade, producing an estimated 277 million metric tons of CO2 emissions.
News Release: Subprime Corporate Debt, Hitting $5 Trillion, Brings Defaults, Slower Growth
The explosion of low-quality lending has brought debt loads in corporate America to record highs, a development that is likely to bring, in the coming years, a wave of defaults, slower growth, future job losses, and potential instability stemming from the utter opacity of this business. Despite the exponential growth in subprime corporate debt, our laws and regulations have not kept up, leaving policymakers and regulators in the dark as to the exact size of this market and where various risks may exist that could affect other financial institutions, companies, and their workers.
Report: Lessons Learned from the Paycheck Protection Program
The Paycheck Protection Program, a critical pillar of the CARES Act pandemic relief legislation, failed to equitably distribute money despite an avowed goal of focusing on small businesses, according to a new report from AFREF and six other public interest organizations and labor unions.
Report: Results of a nationwide survey: Retail investors’ support for the SEC mandating climate-related financial disclosures from public companies
A nationwide survey of retail investors was conducted between March 18 and 29, 2022, by Embold Research on behalf of Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and Public Citizen. Broadly, these survey results show that investors care about climate-related risks and opportunities of public companies, support the SEC requiring climate-related disclosures with third-party audit, and would factor the information disclosed into their investment practices.
Report: Public Money For Private Equity: Pandemic Relief Went To Companies Backed By Private Equity Titans
This study estimates that at least $5.3 billion in CARES Act money went to 611 portfolio companies owned or backed by private equity firms that held $908 billion in cash reserves.
Report: OpenGate Capital
View or download a PDF of the full report here. Open Gate Capital The Private Equity Stakeholder Project Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund In 2017, OpenGate Capital, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm bought HUFCOR, which manufactures portable room partitions for hotels and
Report: Climate Roadmap for U.S. Financial Regulation
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund and Public Citizen released the “Climate Roadmap for U.S. Financial Regulation” to guide the new administration to mitigate climate financial risk and decrease the financial sector’s contribution to the climate crisis.
Paper: Lifting the Curtain on Private Equity
In partnership with The American Federation of Teachers, AFREF released a paper entitled “Lifting the Curtain on Private Equity: A Guide for Institutional Investors and Policymakers.”