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.
AFREF sent a comment to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) supporting the SEC’s proposals to modernize the reporting of beneficial ownership by including cash-settled derivatives in large position reports over Schedules 13D and 13G. We also urge the SEC to clarify its definition of who should constitute a “group” under the proposal as it should only apply to the sharing of material nonpublic information related to not yet disclosed large positions instead of efforts to improve the long-term corporate governance of companies.
In a House Financial Services Committee hearing from the beginning of March, both Representatives and witnesses discussed how Wall Street and private equity are causing housing prices to soar and driving inflation.
AFREF sent a comment to the Securities and Exchange Commission calling for the agency to close long-running loopholes that have enabled certain hedge funds to use swaps and derivatives to avoid disclosing large positions which in turn can lead to coordinated attacks on companies and unnecessary volatility in the underlying prices of certain companies’ stocks. The implosion of family office Archegos Capital is emblematic of such a problem as its use of certain derivatives to build over an over 10% position of a company’s outstanding shares were never revealed until after it was forced to unwind and leading Globally Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) to take over $10 billion in losses as a result.
AFREF sent a comment to the Securities and Exchange Commission supporting the agency’s proposal to expand position disclosure requirements (via Form PF) for both hedge funds and private equity funds. Many of the disclosure exemptions were formed when both types of funds were fractions of the size they are today and would give the SEC and by extension, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) critical information to prevent the uncertainty and threats to financial stability that we saw with Long Term Capital Management in 1999 as well as the financial crises of 2008 and March 2020.
Today’s proposal from the Securities and Exchange Commission is a key step in bringing much-needed transparency for investors and accountability in the vast private funds market. The reforms it proposes would give pension funds that invest workers and retiree savings much more information, allowing them to better protect hard-earned dollars.
Sara Myklebust, research director at Bargaining for the Common Good Network, an initiative of labor and community groups, worked with [Patrick] Woodall, [research director at] Americans for Financial Reform, to try to survey units owned by large-scale corporate landlords in major cities across the country in 2019. Myklebust and Woodall were interested in whether they could document the consolidation of the market for single-family rentals, manufactured homes and apartments.