News Release: Report Outlines KKR’s Harm to Frontline Communities As it Continues to Center a Fossil Fuel Strategy
A new report examines how Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and its affiliates have run three liquefied natural gas (LNG) investments.
A new report examines how Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and its affiliates have run three liquefied natural gas (LNG) investments.
“History clearly shows that unfettered growth in the name of capitalistic “success” results in sustained and growing inequality, human and planetary exploitation, and worse,” wrote Ericka Taylor, popular education manager for the Take on Wall Street campaign of Americans for Financial Reform. “Yet there are other models—many that come from Black, Indigenous, and other historically marginalized communities—that take a more holistic, symbiotic approach to growth.”
Several organizations today joined together to express support for the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) rule last week that would better protect retirees and savers from the lack of transparency in the $25 trillion private fund industry that has allowed it to overcharge its investors for decades.
The new rules from the SEC’s will require that private funds – primarily private equity and hedge funds – must disclose all their fees and expenses in a clearer, standardized fashion so that investors on behalf of retirees and savers more clearly see what they are being charged for, and can better use this new information to negotiate against their fund advisers or take their money elsewhere.
The new disclosures would benefit the millions of Americans with retirement savings in pension plans, Andrew Park, a senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, a financial sector watchdog group, told DealBook.
The captivating short documentary “OpenGate SHUTDOWN,” produced by Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, took center stage at the SOGO Film Festival. On Aug. 12, Ricardo Valadez, the private equity campaign manager at Americans for Financial Reform, joined a discussion about the impact of the Janesville, Wisconsin-based Private Equity firm, OpenGate Capital, on Hufcor Inc. and the Janesville community.
Americans for Financial Reform is calling on Congress and banking regulators to address the repeated mishaps and losses in the $2.5 trillion syndicated “loan” market following a court ruling today. The 2nd circuit appeals court affirmed a lower court decision that syndicated loans are not securities and therefore banks are not liable for clear mis-statements and omissions when selling the debt to investors. The original case highlights the risky nature of the debt behind syndicated loans.
“Not only does the rule address a lot of informational gaps investors in private funds have had, it rightfully also goes after some of the most egregious behavior that funds have been able to get away with,” said Andrew Park, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, referring to the curbs on those particular fees.
As we approach the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Representative Ayanna Pressley sent a letter to the CEOs of the five largest banks in the U.S. — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, and Citigroup — calling for a financial audit report detailing the status of the racial equity pledges they made in response to the summer 2020 uprisings following the murder of George Floyd. The pledges ranged from $116 million committed by U.S. Bank to $30 billion committed by JPMorgan Chase.
Washington, D.C. – New investor protections announced today by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have the potential to curb widespread practices that have allowed Wall Street’s $25 trillion private fund industry to harvest tens of billions in fees at the expense of public pensions, retirees, and other savers – all to the advantage of some of the richest people in the world.
Alexa Philo, a senior bank policy analyst at the consumer advocacy group Americans for Financial Reform and a former examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said the shift would restore needed guardrails that should have never been removed. “If the Fed says seven banks and two IHCs are going to be impacted, my reaction to that is that they should have been in those higher categories to begin with and their current categorizations are an understatement of the systemic risk they present,” Philo said.