News Release: Fed Should Avoid Weakening Rules that Limit Private Equity Access to Bailouts

A group of financial reform, labor, and public interest organizations today warned the Federal Reserve not to water down rules that limit the access of companies owned by private equity firms to emergency lending facilities created during the COVID-19 pandemic. Allies of the industry have pressed the Fed to loosen the affiliation rules for its new Main Street Lending Facility, a step that would ease the way for private equity to access public money despite its ready access to capital markets and uninvested capital.

News Release: Senate Pandemic Relief Bill Would Weaken Key Safeguard Against Financial Crisis

A provision inserted by Sen. Mike Crapo, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, would encourage Trump-appointed regulators, who have already sought to reduce the minimum amounts of their own risk capital that banks have to hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, to go further. Sen. Susan Collins, sponsor of the part of Dodd-Frank in 2010 that Crapo wants to gut, has already filed an amendment that would strike the part of Republican bill that would make this change. The Senate should follow her lead and preserve minimum statutory thresholds for bank capital.

Letter to Regulator: Oppose Labor Department Retirement Advice Rulemaking Package

Together, these rules would put the retirement security of millions of American workers and retirees at risk by exposing them to conflicted retirement investment advice without adequate protections to limit the harmful impact of those conflicts of interest. We therefore urge you to withdraw the regulatory package in its entirety and to begin again on a rulemaking proposal that prioritizes protecting retirement savers from the toxic conflicts of interest that pervade the financial services industry.

News Release: Private equity-backed nursing homes do worse during pandemic for residents and staff

Private equity-owned and -backed nursing homes had higher COVID-19 infection and fatality rates for residents, and those same facilities had a disproportionate share of the COVID-19 resident and staff cases and deaths relative to public, non-profit, and other for-profit nursing homes in New Jersey, according to a new report from Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund (AFREF).