The industry worldwide was profoundly shaken by the events of 2020, and the two-day SFNet International Lending Conference provided attendees with a broad global view of economic recovery and a deep dive into the new normal of covenants, risk management and other areas of the secured finance business.

White Oak Commercial Finance ("White Oak"), an affiliate of White Oak Global Advisors, is pleased to welcome Mike Earnhart as Senior Vice President, Managing Director of Originations. Mr. Earnhart will be based in Los Angeles with national coverage responsibilities.

Mr. Earnhart is an accomplished financial industry executive with in-depth experience in factoring, asset-based lending, banking and territory sales management. He served on the Board of The Professionals Club and was formerly the Committee President of City of Hope’s Fashion & Retail Group, where he is still an active member.

Thompson Coburn LLP, a national law firm with six offices across the country, has announced its combination with New York-based Hahn & Hessen LLP, a 44-attorney firm with nearly a century of experience representing financial institutions and other financial market participants in commercial finance, bankruptcy, workouts, and complex litigation.

The combination, effective July 1, 2021, will create a combined firm with more than 400 attorneys across seven offices: Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and Southern Illinois.

Bitcoin-mania appears to have no limit, including entering corporate balance sheets with Tesla’s move to buy $1.5 billion worth of the cryptocurrency. By doing so, Tesla joins Square and MicroStrategy as a public company with a large bitcoin exposure. The increased bitcoin presence, however, also creates some significant questions that requires answers from corporate financial advisers and the companies themselves.  

Citizens announced today that it served as Lead Left Arranger for Stoughton, Mass.-based Liquid Tech Solutions’ new $350 million senior credit facility.

Liquid Tech provides route-based, on-site mobile refueling solutions across the United States. The company’s 24/7 “truck-to-truck” service delivers primarily diesel fuel to client job sites or their place of business and directly into truck fleets, boats, locomotives, equipment, generators and fuel storage tanks.

White Oak Commercial Finance, LLC (“White Oak”), an affiliate of White Oak Global Advisors, LLC, announced it provided a $50 million asset-based revolving credit facility to a leading, athletic footwear and apparel retailer based in the U.S. 

The retailer recently activated a roll-up of several brands led by a private equity firm, and the transaction was structured with advances against the company’s inventory, accounts receivable, and intellectual property. The proceeds will be used to refinance existing debt and provide for ongoing working capital needs.

Kristen Holihan is a Senior Vice President, Senior Business Development Officer for Bank of America Business Capital (BABC), the asset based lending team at Bank of America. Kristen is responsible for identifying and engaging new ABL opportunities and working with potential borrowers to get a new ABL revolver structured and closed. She is focused on covering private equity groups, advisors, middle market companies, and large corporate companies, in both Metro New York and Upstate New York, to deliver these solutions. Kristen has also spent significant time as an ABL underwriter, as well as on the Leveraged Finance Origination and Capital Markets teams. Kristen graduated from Babson College in 2012 with a Bachelor of Science (concentration in finance). She will also be starting the Executive MBA Program at Columbia University in August 2021. Kristen is a member of the Diversity Equity and Inclusiveness Committee for the Secured Finance Network, as well as a member of the Diversity and Inclusion Council at Bank of America.

It is not everyday that you are given an opportunity to live out the career you would have in an alternate universe, but that is exactly what happened to me, thanks to the SFNet Guest Lecture Program and SFNet MidWest Chapter President Jennifer Kempton, who kindly asked me to be the Guest Lecturer.   

Last month, Sarah Fyffe, vice president, Asset Based Lending, BMO Harris Bank, and I were able to virtually present ABL 101 to Professor Gregory Udell’s Entrepreneurial Finance Class at Indiana University on April 5.  It was without a doubt one of the coolest things I have ever done in my career and I am so grateful to have been involved. Education and mentorship are my favorite part of the job and, to do so in a university setting, was an incredible experience.  For Sarah, it was a chance to lecture to a classroom where she once sat as a student in Professor Udell’s class.  Talk about coming full circle!

Lizzy (pronounced LEE-see) Diaz-Ortiz is a Chicago-based attorney with over 15 years of experience leading culture change for organizations. Most recently, her efforts have focused on driving diversity and inclusion programs in which she helps organizations create a culture of belonging to drive better business results.

She grew up as a military brat living and working all over the world and spent her formative years in Germany, quite different than the rest of her extended Puerto Rican family. Her diverse experiences as an Army dependent laid the groundwork for a three-year professional stint in Mexico City as an adult. More importantly, it provided the foundation for her desire to work in the diversity, equity, and inclusion realm and advocate for equitable outcomes.

What if I don’t want to come back?  Do I have to disclose whether I was vaccinated to my employer? What are the impacts of remote operations from a commercial real estate perspective? How does corporate culture survive in a remote or hybrid environment? What is the impact on career mobility? How are new technologies being deployed to revolutionize workflows and the customer experience in the equipment finance industry?

As the country continues to make its comeback after more than a year of fear and uncertainty from COVID-19, we are left with a lot of questions on what this all means about the work world—returning to offices and what the future will look like. In response to this, SFNet will host its first Innovation Conference, focusing on The Future of Work on July 14 and July 21, 2021 from 12:00-3:00 EDT each day. The Conference will focus on what the world of secured finance will look like as we emerge from the crisis. Attendees will walk away with the knowledge of whether their business is leading, adapting or falling behind.