AFR led a coalition letter to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee ahead of their hearing titled “Holding Executives Accountable for Recent Bank Failures.” The letter calls for mandatory clawbacks of incentive-based executive compensation and gains from stock trades in cases of bank failure.
AFREF submitted a comment to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on their proposed rule to require the disclosure of important information regarding the ownership and control of nursing facilities, including when an owning or managing entity is a private equity (PE) company or a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT).
Private equity and healthcare are incompatible and AFREF states in the letter that the current lack of transparency in ownership of facilities exacerbates the problem and shields owners and investors from accountability for the performance of the businesses they own and welcomes the disclosure rule.
AFREF joined a comment letter that strongly supports the CFPB’s proposed safe harbor of $8 for credit card late fees. The CFPB provided ample evidence that this amount is fair, reasonable, and proportional to the costs incurred by issuers for late payments.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today finalized a plan to bring long-overdue transparency to the practice of companies buying back their own stock. However, the final rule weakened key aspects of the initial proposal.
Washington, D.C. – The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today finalized a plan to require private funds, which include hedge funds and private equity firms, to disclose more information about their investments to the SEC.
Washington, D.C. – The sale of First Republic Bank to JPMorgan Chase this weekend has highlighted the urgency of strengthening guardrails around Wall Street megabanks while also laying the groundwork for a longer-term effort to reduce concentration in the banking sector.
Washington, D.C. – The report by the Federal Reserve on the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank only highlights the need for federal regulators to tighten oversight of banks as soon as possible to both remedy the errors of the past, and to forestall further financial contagion. At the same time, a fully independent probe of the Fed’s actions, including its leadership, remains vital.
The Federal Reserve’s deregulatory and light touch approach to regulation and supervision paved the way for the bank failures that have shaken the financial system this year and that led to extraordinary government intervention to preserve financial stability. Below we suggest a set of changes the Fed can make without Congressional action that would increase financial stability and put the welfare of the public ahead of the narrow interests of big banks and Wall Street.
Alexa Philo, a former bank examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, said the Fed could adopt stricter rules on its own, without relying on Congress. “It is long past time to roll back the dangerous deregulation under the last administration to the greatest extent possible, and pay close attention to the largest banks so this crisis does not worsen,” she said.
Washington, D.C. – New Congressional hearings today on crypto regulation will likely fail to adequately address the many risks that the industry posed to consumers, investors and financial markets by crypto assets and actors, according to advocates with Americans for Financial Reform and Demand Progress.