Washington, D.C. — Americans for Financial Reform applauds the House Financial Services Committee’s passage of Rep. Maloney’s long-standing bill, the Overdraft Protection Act, which passed by a vote of 27-22.
AFR joined a letter from a partner organization, Take Medicine Back, to the North Carolina attorney general about the role of private equity in the corporate practice of emergency medicine.
At long last, private equity is getting the attention it deserves from antitrust authorities as a force for consolidation, higher prices, and less consumer choice.
Private equity firms have become some of the country’s biggest corporate landlords. Americans for Financial Reform estimated that as of June 2022, at a minimum, private equity firms owned real estate rented by around 1.6 million families.
Having a rapacious business like private equity watching over particularly vulnerable people has never been a good idea. Still the evidence is mounting that Wall Street has pushed the envelope in recent years. Nursing homes, youth facilities, and homes for disabled adults have all fallen under the ownership of an industry with a track record of prioritizing wealth extraction over running companies well, to say nothing of caring for people in need.
A new report finds that the private equity industry owned close to 700 utility-scale power generation facilities in the United States in 2021 that emitted about 200 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.
Private equity investment firms have quietly bought up close to 700 predominantly fossil fuel-fired electric power plants, making these Wall Street investment houses major greenhouse gas emitters.
AFREF led 26 other organizations in a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission supporting its proposals that would provide to investors in private funds (such as hedge funds and private equity funds) basic and important information on a quarterly basis to make informed investment decisions.
AFREF sent a comment letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission supporting several of its proposals that would better protect investors in private funds (such as hedge funds and private equity firms) that currently do not have the basic, necessary information they currently need to make informed decisions.
AFREF, joined by the Center for Economic Policy and Research and United for Respect, sent a comment letter responding to the FTC and DOJ’s request for information on merger enforcement. The letter calls on the agencies to to closely scrutinize and create presumptions to challenge acquisitions that employ leveraged buyouts and techniques like it.