Dechert’s Antitrust Merger Investigation Timing Tracker (DAMITT) finds that significant antitrust merger investigations in the U.S. currently are taking 10 months which is about 30%−40% longer than in prior years.
Continue Reading DAMITT – How Long Does it Take to Conduct U.S. Antitrust Merger Investigations?
As we begin to close in on the initial implementation of the Risk Retention Rule, we are looking beyond the headlines and trying to figure out how the Rule will actually work. The result is troubling.
Continue Reading Risk Retention: Flash – These Rules Don’t Work!
The Great Equity Correction of 2015 that is now being enjoyed by all of us is a correction, and not the beginning, of the Great Bear Market of 2015 (from my lips to God’s ears). It reminds me of just how little we know about how all complex systems, like the global financial market (and don’t get me started on climate), function. Nonetheless, our Regulatory State behaves as if this was not true and as if wise governmental types can simply declaim new rules and regulations to get their very specifically-designed outcomes.
Continue Reading The Regulatory State: May We Have A Little Humility, Please?
An increase of defaults and rising debts have Business Development Companies (BDCs) concerned as the trend may lead to a number of distressed credits within their portfolios. Specialists from Dechert and Houlihan Lokey will address these concerns and potential solutions which matter to BDCs during a webinar taking place on Wednesday, September 9. The webinar will focus on structuring issues (e.g., portfolio eligibility, valuations, MIP implications, etc.), tax considerations (e.g., distribution requirements, qualifying or good income test, asset diversification, etc.) as well as bankruptcy and restructuring concerns.
Continue Reading BDCs As Creditors of Distressed Companies: What You Need to Know
MERSCORP, Inc. (“MERS”) has been under fire for years. We wrote about it a while back when residential mortgage borrowers challenged the ability of MERS to foreclose on mortgages it held on the theory that MERS, as a mere nominee to the lender, was not a real party in interest. More recently, local recording offices have filed class action suits against MERS arguing that the MERS system prevented them from collecting fees supposedly required under state law. Now there’s a sympathetic plaintiff! In the past month, the Third Circuit and Fifth Circuit both rejected these arguments.
Continue Reading MERS: Better Than a Faster Horse
In anticipation of the effective date of the Final Rule on December 24, 2016 (early Christmas gift?), CLO market participants have been constructing solutions that allow collateral managers to raise the capital necessary to support investments required by the Final Rule.
We have seen an increased use of a hybrid structure that has been referred
After years of delays, changes and significant debate, the Volcker Rule is now, largely, in full effect. Sold to a sometimes intellectually incurious Congress and the electorate as a central piece of legislation to limit systemic risks to the financial system, the Volcker Rule, among other things, prohibits “banking entities” from engaging in proprietary trading activities and acquiring or retaining “ownership interests” in (or acting as sponsors of) certain “covered funds.”
Continue Reading Volcker Rule – Five Years On
More than 100 senior executives participated in Dechert’s Risk and Rewards of CRE-CLO and CLO Securitizations: Navigating the Capital Markets seminar. The half day event, supported by CRE Finance Council (CREFC) and the Loan Syndications and Trading Association (LSTA), focused on themes important to the CLO market and the CRE securitization market. Panelists addressed
For want of a baker, a job was lost. For want of a job, the economy was lost. For want of an economy, the banking system collapsed. For want of a banking system – well, ultimately Grexit.
Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, Grexit, (China), Grexit, Grexit. The Greeks will be fine, right? There is no such thing as contagion, right? Your lips to God’s ear, please. As I write this, the Greek Parliament has approved the bailout and it looks like an immediate Grexit is off the table, (although the Germans are none too pleased)! Wonderful.
Continue Reading Grexit Deferred: The End of the Beginning for Greece?
Today, there appears to be an ever-expanding number of sponsors and markets for crowdfunding. Commercial real estate is no exception. At the recent IMN US Real Estate Opportunity & Private Fund Investing Forum, Elizabeth Braman, Chief Production Officer of Realty Mogul, presented at a session focused on crowdfunding for real estate. It was very well attended. Dechert and CRE Financial Council (CREFC) recently hosted an equally well attended seminar in San Francisco featuring leaders in the field to discuss the current state of crowdfunding debt and equity real estate investments and that discussion, in our thinking, was illuminating about this fascinating, and perhaps fraught, new business.
Continue Reading Current Marketplace Trends in Real Estate Crowdfunding