AFR Statement: Omnibus Contains Yet More Gifts to Wall Street
“The Omnibus budget package contains several policy riders designed to benefit Wall Street investment funds and big banks at the expense of the public. One provision in the omnibus allows Business Development Companies (BDCs), a type of private equity fund sold directly to retail customers, to double their permitted fund leverage from the current 1-1 level (one dollar of borrowed money for each dollar of investor equity) to 2-1. BDCs are already the beneficiary of regulatory exemptions since conventional closed-end mutual funds can only leverage 1-2, or borrow one dollar per two dollars of investor equity…”