I’m a great admirer of Jack Cohen and his periodic market commentary. I answered his last one and then after the two of us talked, we decided we’d publish them together as a duet. So here you go.… Continue Reading
Beany & Cecil was a cartoon. The Current Expected Credit Loss accounting rules, better known as CECL, which the FASB is insisting will go into effect at the beginning of next year for publicly traded banks and lenders and a year later for all other GAAP reporting entities is not. Now, heaven forfend that I … Continue Reading
Last year, a California Bankruptcy Court wiped out $10.2 million in default interest (“DRI”) when it ruled that a 5% DRI was an unenforceable penalty in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy case where the construction lender fully recovered principal, interest, and other costs of collection. In acting as the borrower’s fairy godmother, the Court noted that … Continue Reading
God help me, I’m finally writing about climate change. This commentary assiduously avoids the obviously political (we take the view that complaining about and belittling our elected representatives and the permanent bureaucracy for doing boneheaded things is entirely apolitical). And while even the phrase “climate change” carries with it a certain frisson of a capital … Continue Reading
After an evening checking out my various high school and college yearbooks for any troublesome content, and checking Mom’s photo albums (I’m good on the yearbooks, but there were a couple cowboy and Indian pics from when I was about 7, that could be troublesome), it got me thinking hard about the power of words, … Continue Reading
The new Opportunity Zones program that came to us in 2017’s major tax reform offers investors the chance to roll the capital gains from the sale of any appreciated property into new investments, located within specially designated areas known as Opportunity Zones, and defer—and potentially partially eliminate— capital gains taxes on such sale. The program … Continue Reading
We’re all just back from CREFC and the mood was broadly constructive. (Don’t you love that word, “constructive”? When did “constructive” become a fancy way to say “good”?) We all went to South Beach this year wondering where the investors were, wondering whether the market was okay and wondering whether December was a blip or … Continue Reading
It’s 2019. Nothing really terrible or shocking has happened yet…at least by the standards of December. But it’s early yet. As a card-carrying member of the commentariat, I could not possibly pass up the opportunity to bloviate on the “Year Ahead” with the certain knowledge that no one will remember if I’m wrong, and if … Continue Reading
We have been writing off and on about the restoration to good graces of the commercial real estate CLO since the early days of this current recovery, and it’s important to keep the conversation going. Hey, if Pete Rose can get into the Hall of Fame (and as MLB is embracing gambling, that cannot but … Continue Reading
It’s that time again for Dechert’s CrunchedCredit Annual Golden Turkey Awards. In a year made most remarkable by the extraordinary performance of the US economy, idiocy, silliness, pigheadedness and stupidity have tended to be somewhat obscured by the economic good news machine. At the other end of the spectrum, the continued high volume of outrage … Continue Reading
In February, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in The Loan Syndications and Trading Association v. Securities and Exchange Commission and Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, No. 17-5004 (D.C. Cir. Feb. 9, 2018) (the “LSTA decision”) that a manager of an open market CLO is not required to retain risk under the … Continue Reading
In 2013, the Obama administration issued the Cole Memorandum, which called a truce between federal prosecutors and marijuana businesses operating legitimately under state law. After regime change in Washington, however, it may come as no surprise that Jeff Sessions—the Attorney General who once opined that “good people don’t smoke marijuana”—rescinded the Obama-era guidance. The only … Continue Reading
LIBOR is going away, but that’s sort of old news at this point. However, it has been received wisdom that only after the Bank of England stops imposing an obligation upon member banks to publish LIBOR quotes as at the beginning of 2021, would LIBOR go away and then we would need a replacement. … Continue Reading
Morningstar has published a proposed method for rating single-asset/single-borrower (SASB) transactions. The new approach is slated to replace the “U.S. CMBS Subordination Model” with respect to SASBs and other forms of CMBS securities with similar credit and diversity profiles, including large-loan transactions and rake certificates. Morningstar has issued a request for comments on the proposal. … Continue Reading
It’s day 2 of Mark Zuckerberg’s Congressional debut and I still have yet to catch a glimpse of him or his entourage. But – I have had the opportunity, with some fellow industry players, CREFC staff and members of the CREFC-HVCRE Working Group, to meet and speak with members of the House Financial Services Committee (Andy … Continue Reading
Last week IMN hosted an inaugural New Hotel and Development Conference in New York City. The gathering of developers, hotel operators, brands and other hospitality service providers was very upbeat. Many panelists indicated that they were more optimistic now than they had been six months ago. They credited the state of the macro economy and … Continue Reading
Fresh off the Philadelphia Eagles’ first Super Bowl victory, a group of Dechert attorneys and 3,500 of our industry colleagues descended on San Diego for the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) CREF/Multifamily Housing Convention & Expo. While those of us on the cross-country flight from Philadelphia were in a particularly jubilant mood, it was clear from … Continue Reading
Around this time of year, we slip on the prognostication goggles and take a look forward into the next year. While there is ample evidence that prognostication is a dodgy exercise, I always tell my folks that the fact that it’s hard to do and extraordinarily unreliable is not an excuse not to have a … Continue Reading
The Trump administration and Congress have lots on the agenda: tax reform, financial regulation reform, job creation (think infrastructure spending, maybe?) and more. While it seems unlikely that much of anything “real” is going to happen anytime soon or even this year (other than more drama, more tweets and more Trump-isms), there’s some hope for … Continue Reading
Well, we’ve had the big reveal and the administration’s new tax plan is out. This plan, announced with a great deal of fanfare, feels more like a campaign promise than an actual executable plan. At two hundred forty-six words from end to end (four different typesets, three different fonts, three colors, weird spacing and a … Continue Reading
Since my earliest days in the CRE capital markets biz, there has always been a drumbeat of grumbling from the borrower community about the annoying complexity, expense and delay of having one’s loan serviced in a capital markets transaction. It’s been going on forever. Like noise, like listening to Brits complaining about their weather; it’s … Continue Reading
The doctrine of substantive consolidation (generally- the power of a bankruptcy court to consolidate the assets and liabilities of affiliated entities in bankruptcy) is a recognized remedy exercised by bankruptcy courts – one that strikes fear into the hearts of many lenders. Justifiably so. The doctrine can be employed to order the substantive consolidation of … Continue Reading
As is our tradition here at Crunched Credit, each year, about this time, we present our Golden Turkey Awards. In a year of monumentally bad surprises, we truly had difficulty narrowing our list down to only the exceptionally worthy candidates. Voters, governments and regulators sent shockwaves throughout the world in 2016, upending markets and throwing … Continue Reading
As we are just inking one of the very first pre-risk retention effective date risk retention deals (Potemkin Village anyone?), we are also seeing an increased flow of what are generically referred to as CRE CLOs. It’s time to consider how the Risk Retention Rule (the “Rule”) will apply to this growing market technology.… Continue Reading
