Articles

I hope you had a safe and peaceful weekend as many of us celebrated the Passover and Easter holidays and found some respite from the crisis in our friends, families and communities.  Events continue to unfold at a rapid pace, and I’d like to bring you up to speed on what our association is doing to analyze and share information and influence outcomes to support our collective interests.  Our priority remains to attend to the well-being of our SFNet community and to fulfill our mission of putting capital to work. 

On the legislative and regulatory front, we have focused our Advocacy resources on three imperatives.

• Leveraging the CARES Act. Last week an additional $250B was pledged to the already oversubscribed Paycheck Protection Program. SFNet and our volunteers, in alignment with the AFA, ELFA, ASEA and other trade associations, are petitioning legislators to simplify execution challenges, modify affiliation rules and extend eligibility to financial services companies under PPP. Our positions on these matters can be found at SFNet.com. 

Dianne Wagman is a senior vice president, senior director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Executive Talent Acquisition for Santander US.   

This article analyzes the conflict between federal and state marijuana laws, and its impact on the inability of state-legal marijuana businesses to obtain traditional and fundamental types of banking services from federally insured banks. This article is divided into three parts: (i) an explanation of the conflict of state and federal marijuana laws; (ii) the effect of the conflicting laws on the decision of banking institutions to provide services to state-licensed marijuana businesses; and (iii) congressional and judicial attempts to resolve the conflict between state and federal marijuana laws.

This is the second article in a three-part installment about the banking dilemma for state-licensed marijuana businesses in the United States.

Recently, People's United Bank, N.A., a subsidiary of People's United Financial, Inc., announced it had expanded its Commercial Specialty Business with the formation of a dedicated Lender Finance team. The Team is led by Patrick Lee, managing director, head of Lender Finance, and is an extension of the Bank's existing Asset-Based Lending group. The Team will work with non-bank lender finance companies nationally to provide tailored solutions of $10MM or more to help them achieve their near and long-term growth objectives.

Here, Patrick Lee discusses his background and new role.

The fourth quarter of 2020 showed a tale of two cities between the bank lenders and the nonbank lenders.  On a quarter-over-quarter basis, bank lenders in the fourth quarter showed flat total commitments with a drop in outstandings while the nonbanks showed double-digit percentage increases in both commitments and outstandings.  At the bank level, new commitments approximated commitment runoffs, perhaps showing signs of stabilization while nonbanks increased on their third-quarter momentum of closing more deals than runoff in both commitments and outstandings. For both banks and nonbanks, there was a common theme of low utilization with the fourth quarter of 2020 showing the lowest utilization levels in recent history.

The quarterly report is segregated into a bank/non-bank classification while the annual report is combined, with specific bank/non-bank classifications in certain areas.  Both surveys had comparable number of respondents with prior quarters and years with 34 participants for the annual survey and 35 participants for the quarterly survey.

Q3 study highlights improved future outlook tempered by significant near term headwinds

Small business owners have faced unprecedented challenges due to the pandemic and are in the midst of great uncertainty with the upcoming presidential election. However, the Q3 Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index indicates there is a continued spirit of forward-facing optimism among small business owners despite the persistent trials. The overall score rose 12 points from last quarter’s historic low-water mark, driven by a sharp rise in sentiment about future expectations. The overall positive movement in sentiment was contrasted by the third successive quarterly decline in optimism about current business conditions.

Moritt Hock & Hamroff (MH&H) announced that two new attorneys joined the firm’s Creditors’ Rights, Restructuring & Bankruptcy practice group: Allison Arotsky and Michael C. Troiano. Each focusing in restructuring matters, Arotsky and Troiano will be adding to MH&H’s more than 40-year-long leadership role in the creditors’ rights sector.

Marc L. Hamroff, managing partner of MH&H, said, “We are delighted to build on our longstanding reputation and excellence in servicing the creditors’ rights, restructuring, and bankruptcy industry by adding two outstanding attorneys to our practice. Both Allison and Michael are expected to make an immediate positive impact on our services to our clients in these areas through their proven expertise, skills, and knowledge of bankruptcy law.”

JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. acted as sole global coordinator for the marketing of the Term Loan Facility. PJT Partners is serving as independent financial advisor to the Company.

Mac Fowle is the global head of Asset-Based Lending (ABL) for J.P. Morgan Commercial Banking. He is responsible for the end-to-end strategic leadership of the ABL group in supporting the financing needs for clients across Commercial Banking and the Corporate & Investment Bank (CIB).

In this installment of our series of executive interviews, Charlie Perer sits with Tim Knight (pictured) to hear his perspective on executive development, advice for lenders, the growth in the non-bank market, what every executive should be thinking about, the importance of diversity and lessons learned, among other things.

Knight is the vice president and senior managing partner with ThinkingAhead where he is responsible for operations, training and recruiting for the firm. He also leads the partner group that heads up the firm’s Commercial Banking and Commercial Finance, Legal, Life Sciences and Security/Physical infrastructure search practices.

Backed by Silicon Valley Bank, Goldman Sachs and Comerica Bank, TripActions secures up to $500 million debt facility to launch first-of-its-kind, end-to-end global corporate travel management and payments solution.