Rick Jones Named to Mortgage Bankers Associations’ Commercial Real Estate/Multifamily Finance Board of Governors

By Shannon Galvin on December 1, 2020 Posted in Commercial Real Estate

We’re happy to share some exciting news as Crunched Credit’s very own Rick Jones has been named as a newly elected member of the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Commercial Real Estate/Multifamily Finance Board of Governors (COMBOG). COMBOG drives Mortgage Bankers Association’s commercial and multifamily policies and recommends industry standards. After a tumultuous year and with some uncertainty heading into 2021, Rick’s experience with and insight into the commercial real estate world will undoubtedly be an asset for COMBOG.

If you’d like to learn more about COMBOG and meet the other Board Members, read their press release here.

Congratulations, Rick!

2020 Golden Turkey Awards

By Rick Jones on November 23, 2020 Posted in Awards, CECL, Commercial Real Estate, COVID-19, Golden Turkey Awards

So, once again, time for Dechert’s acclaimed (at least by us) Annual Golden Turkey Awards. It is rather a difficult time for comedy; we are in the throes of a completely unfunny pandemic. Sitting down to finalize this year’s list gave me some sympathy for our late-night talk show hosts who are very publicly pining over the end of the Trump administration and trying to find humor in the anticipated Biden administration, where the watchword is “dull is cool.” But perhaps looking for inanity and making gentle fun of it might even be more important in tough times than good. So, with that in mind, we went digging for gems in 2020. Nothing seems quite so risible as in past years, but here’s the best of a bad lot:

Inexorably SOFR…But Hang On!

By Rick Jones on November 16, 2020 Posted in LIBOR Reform

Timing is everything. I published a piece two weeks ago on LIBOR transition to SOFR and suggested that folks get on with it and embrace this flawed but seemingly inevitable new SOFR index. Writing that piece, I thought of as rather an exercise in self-care, I just had to get beyond my annoyance with SOFR and stop worrying about SOFR and embrace it with all its flaws and join the SOFR chorus. Continue Reading

LIBORcast: A Conversation with David Bowman, Federal Reserve Board

By Jonathan Gaynor on November 5, 2020 Posted in LIBOR, Regulatory

Since nothing is happening in the news right now, we thought we would put out a second post on LIBOR this week. As you may know, Dechert has a LIBOR podcast which you can find on our YouTube page. In the latest episode, David Bowman, Senior Associate Director from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, joined Matt Hays and Jon Gaynor for a conversation about the transition. The discussion covered development of Term SOFR, fragmentation of SOFR-based rate fallbacks, tough legacy, the status of the New York State legislative solution (although this part is slightly outdated since a bill has been introduced), the proposed federal law solution and the fundamental human condition (that’s only partly a joke).

It’s Time to Initiate a SOFR Loan…Or Maybe Not

By Rick Jones on November 2, 2020 Posted in LIBOR

I wrote back in the early days of 2020, or as we call it now, the “Time Before,” that we thought it made sense for key market participants to consider an early move to SOFR pricing, not just as the backstop but as the interest rate of the loans. Frankly, we were thinking about the SASB market, and we thought that would be indeed well received by the investor community. Continue Reading

Inflection Point? How Much Change Are We Really Facing?

By Rick Jones on October 12, 2020 Posted in Climate Change, COVID-19, Financial Reform

I am trying to figure out how much I care, as a businessman (as opposed to an actual living, breathing human being), about the chaos swirling around us. Every day’s news seems more the stuff of a dramatic conceit of someone’s next thriller than reality. Throw in a car chase and some sex, and we’ve got a movie. (The North Carolina sexting scandal doesn’t really get us there for this purpose.)

CMBS On The Perp Walk: We Are Being Set Up!

By Rick Jones on September 8, 2020 Posted in CMBS, Commercial Real Estate, Financial Reform, Risk Retention, Securitization, Structured Finance

Folks, last week I made the point that it’s extremely important to confront negative narratives about our industry before they take hold, creep into the interstices between things that are true and then somehow ossified into received wisdom. So, taking on board my own advice, which shockingly I find compelling, I want to sound the alarm about a recent Wall Street Journal story concerning the misstatement of net operating income in our industry (I only wish I could qualify as an influencer here. I read about two teens with millions of followers this weekend; they talk about stuff like..their hair. Is there anyone out there that wants to know about my hair?). Continue Reading

LIBORCast: Interest Rate Caps, Derivatives and Value Transfer with Chatham Financial

By Jonathan Gaynor and Rosamond Doran on August 19, 2020 Posted in LIBOR

In the fourth installment of our new LIBORcast program, Matthew Hays and Jonathan Gaynor discussed interest rate caps, derivatives and value transfer with Chatham Financial’s Rob Mangrelli and Matt Hoffman. Tune in to hear about the cost of a SOFR interest rate cap, adoption of the ISDA protocol and rate fragmentation in the post-LIBOR market.

By the way, this podcasting thing might be catching on because you can hear Rick Jones speaking about the challenges of driving engagement with and the complexity of the LIBOR transition on last week’s Bankshot podcast.

There’s a New Black Swan in Town and It’s After Us!

By Rick Jones on August 13, 2020 Posted in COVID-19

We have virtually no bandwidth to deal with anything other than the pandemic, do we? The marches of every conversation begin with “you’re okay, I trust” and end with “take care” and now we really mean that. It’s exhausting, isn’t it? It’s hard to even remember the “time before.”

Volcker Rule Amendment: Trending Towards Flexibility

By Chao Huang and Evan Reid on August 10, 2020 Posted in Regulatory, Regulatory Complexity, Securitization

After much anticipation and expectation, on June 25, 2020, the Federal Reserve Board, CFTC, FDIC, OCC, and SEC (the “agencies”) finalized an amendment to Section 13 of the Bank Holding Company Act, commonly known as the Volcker Rule, which among other things prohibits banking entities from sponsoring or acquiring ownership interests in “covered funds.” Covered funds are entities that would be investment companies but for exemptions provided under Sections 3(c)(1) or 3(c)(7) of the Investment Company Act, and generally include private equity funds and hedge funds. The final rule, which goes into effect on October 1, mostly follows what the agencies had signaled to everyone back in the mask and quarantine-free days of January when it released proposed changes that are largely adopted in the final rule. Continue Reading