Articles by deBanked Staff
SBA Loans Increase Slightly in 2018
November 26, 2018SBA total loan volume exceeded $30 billion with more than 72,000 approved loans for FY18 (October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018), according to the SBA. The total volume is about the same as last year and there were approximately 4,000 more SBA loans issued this year compared to FY17.
Of the 72,000 SBA loans approved this year, 60,353 of them were 7(a) loans, totaling $25.37 billion. And 5,874 of the loans were 504 loans, totaling over $4.75 billion. This year, the SBA launched the 25-year Debenture, which offers an additional 60 months of financing at a fixed rate for small businesses. Since its introduction in April, over 1,000 debentures had been sold in FY18.
“The 25-year Debenture is designed to help free up cash flow and offer fixed rates in a rising interest rate environment for 504 borrowers and we are pleased to see over $1 billion has been disbursed in less than six months,” Associate Administrator for SBA’s Office of Capital Access William Manger said.
In FY18, there was notable growth in the SBA’s Microloan and Community Advantage Programs. In particular, over 5,000 loans were approved for over $72 million in the Microloan program and over 1,000 loans were approved for over $150 million in the SBA Community Advantage program.
Multimillionaire CEO Claims Predatory Lenders are Causing Him to Sell His Furniture for Food
November 22, 2018
Two months ago, a billionaire hedge-fund manager named Philip Falcone, the 377th richest person in the United States who once “put the squeeze on Goldman Sachs,” led a Virginia-based investment group to make a strategic purchase of a local Telemundo TV station in Columbus, Ohio. The seller, a company led by local businessman Richard Schilg, pocketed a lavish sum of $850,000, according to the Columbus Dispatch.
Two months later, Schilg, who is 61-years old, had become so poor and destitute that he would have to sell his furniture just to buy food. That’s what Bloomberg Businessweek says of Schilg in its purported tell-all piece about predatory lending. Though Schilg successfully negotiated a deal with a Wall Street billionaire, he apparently was outmatched and “unable to defend himself” when it came to much less sophisticated transactions at his other business, Pathmark HR, a human resources company located 15 miles outside of Columbus.
Pathmark HR is anything but small. At the end of 2017, Schilg’s company was on track to gross $20 million a year in sales. Along the way, he engaged in commercial finance transactions that required the sale of future receivables, non-loan arrangements that businesses use to fuel their growth.
They did not go as planned. Multiple financial companies obtained judgments to enforce the contracts that Pathmark HR had entered into, NY State court records confirm. Schilg told Bloomberg Businessweek that “your life is ruined by their contract.”
But if that’s the case, it stands to reason he wouldn’t enter into one again.
Pathmark HR kept applying for more of these things, industry insiders told deBanked, though the stream of judgments filed against his business from competitors offering similar products have served as a veritable red flag for underwriting departments. That would’ve created a problem for Pathmark HR if it intended to rely on that type of capital going forward.
That’s when a straw man appeared.
According to a purported (and admittedly unauthenticated) corporate resolution reviewed by deBanked, Schilg appears to have transferred his majority interest in Pathmark HR to an 82-year old minority shareholder named Robert Renzetti, who lists a small mobile home more than 1,000 miles away in Sarasota, FL as his residence.
There’s a catch. The corporate resolution (dated in 2017) says that Schilg can just buy the shares back from Renzetti in the future. Either way, several finance companies said they received applications for capital from Pathmark HR up through and including this year, with only Renzetti’s name and information included. Schilg’s is nowhere to be found.
Schilg, who Bloomberg Businessweek portrays as so poor that he’s more-or-less eating his household furniture to stay alive, is the former founder, chairman and CEO of Team America Corp, a staffing organization that grew to more than $350 million in annual sales by 1999. That’s more than $500 million at today’s value, larger than almost every single alternative funder that deBanked ranked in 2018.
Meanwhile, the only thing that separates Schilg from the sale of his TV station to a billionaire is FCC approval. Hopefully the man has enough furniture to see it through.
This is the second in a series of articles relating to a fanciful tale in Bloomberg Businessweek
LendingClub Funds $1 Billion in CLUB Certificates
November 20, 2018LendingClub announced today that it has funded $1 billion in CLUB Certificates, in just under a year since the company introduced the offering. According to its website, CLUB Certificates are “pass-through securities with CUSIP numbers backed by LendingClub prime or near prime personal loans.”
What does this mean? LendingClub was unreachable at the time, but LendAcademy researched it in December 2017 when the product was announced and indicated that the initiative was prompted by a potential investor who did not want to invest in whole loans, which can have a duration of several years. Instead, the investor wanted a security that acted like a whole loan, but had liquidity.
The result, according to LendIt, was the LendingClub CLUB Certificate, a security with an identification code that is cleared by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and could be traded in over-the-counter markets. Furthermore, LendIt wrote in the December 2017 story that the deal that precipitated the LendingClub CLUB Certificate was “a $25 million deal that was sold to one investor and in keeping with Dodd-Frank rules LendingClub retained 5% of the deal total on their balance sheet.”
“We continue to innovate for investors and diversify our investor base,” said Valerie Kay, Chief Capital Officer of LendingClub. “By continually innovating on products, LendingClub expects to further deepen and broaden investor access in 2019 and beyond through a variety of new products and structures.”
CLUB Certificates can be seen on Bloomberg and Intex with the “CLUBC” ticker.
In the third quarter of 2018, LendingClub posted record originations of $2.9 billion, up 18% year-over-year. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in San Francisco, LendingClub offers fixed rate business loans from $5,000 to $300,000 and personal loans of up to $40,000.
Bankers Healthcare Group Expands Beyond Healthcare
November 20, 2018Bankers Healthcare Group (BHG), which provides financing solutions to healthcare professionals, announced at the end of last week that it is expanding into small business lending with a new license to offer SBA loans through its wholly-owned subsidiary, FundEx Solutions Group. Fundex is now one of only 14 non-bank lenders in the country that offers an SBA 7(a) Loan Guarantee Program, according to the company.
“We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve earned licensure as a non-bank SBA lender,” said Mark Schmidt, CEO of FundEx. “Not only is this a great opportunity for the BHG brand to grow, but it’s a terrific new option for customers who may require loan amounts or terms that are not available through BHG in order to accomplish their business goals.”
BHG, through FundEx, will now be able to provide SBA-backed loans to licensed professions in a variety of sectors including accounting, architecture, law, engineering, financial services and insurance. Loans will go up to $5 million, with terms of up to 25 years. And the loans may be used for a number of different purposes, including real estate acquisition, renovation or expansion, purchase of equipment, business acquisition or commercial debt consolidation.
“There’s market demand for larger loans and we’re excited to offer another innovative lending solution to help licensed professionals grow their own businesses,” said Al Crawford, the original founder, Chairman and CEO of BHC. “We built FundEx Solutions Group based on our tenured success in medical financing to be flexible and fast with excellent customer service.”
Founded in 2001, BHG, based in Syracuse, New York, has provided more than $3.5 billion in funding to to over 110,000 healthcare professionals.
Happy Thanksgiving
November 19, 2018
SEC Scoffs at 1st Global Capital’s Attempt to Dismiss Securities Complaint
November 17, 2018The SEC is not impressed with 1st Global Capital’s attempt to dismiss the charges it stands accused of. Yesterday, the SEC filed opposition papers, writing “Having defrauded thousands of investors out of almost $300 million, Defendant Carl Ruderman now asks the Court to let him escape the consequences of his actions by dismissing the Amended Complaint against him based on a series of inaccurate and incomplete facts, incorrect legal standards, and infirm legal arguments.”
1st Global and Ruderman (who was the company’s owner and CEO), argued that the SEC does not have subject matter jurisdiction and that the notes between 1st Global and investors were not securities.
“Ruderman misstates the standards for evaluating whether a note is a security, and does not even bother to address the separate test for determining whether an investment qualifies as an investment contract,” the SEC claims. “The investment 1 Global offered and sold to investors was a security.”
Parallel to the SEC case, bankruptcy proceedings are continuing to move forward as well.
There has been no word on criminal charges since 1st Global revealed it was being investigated by the US attorney’s office in July.
The SEC’s opposition to 1st Global’s motion to dismiss can be downloaded here.
ICO Settles With SEC, Must Return Millions to Investors
November 16, 2018
A Boston based startup that raised $15 million in funds via an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) must return the money to token purchasers and pay a $250,000 fine, the SEC announced. AirFox, who must make those payments in accordance with an SEC settlement, introduced a plan in 2017 to provide free data to mobile phone users in return for eyeballing advertising. The SEC was careful to note that they had not accused AirFox of fraud, but rather of failing to register their tokens as securities.
Since the ICO, the value of AIR tokens have dropped by 94%.
Dan DeMeo is Back in Action… at Lendr
November 15, 2018
Daniel DeMeo has been hired as Chief Revenue Officer by the Chicago-based funder, Lendr.
DeMeo has been working as an independent consultant for the last two years, according to LinkedIn. Prior to that he was the CEO of CAN Capital, a company he had dedicated himself to for nearly seven years until an internal account performance issue led to several senior executives taking an immediate leave of absence.
Under DeMeo, CAN enjoyed success as one of the nation’s largest non-bank small business financiers, partially attributed to the company’s major head start in pioneering merchant cash advance products when the company was founded in 1998. DeMeo even landed on the cover of deBanked’s November/December 2015 issue, around the time when the company was widely believed to be planning an IPO.
It never happened.
The systems issue that toppled CAN’s top execs including DeMeo, brought the company to its knees, putting all new funding on hold for six months until it was saved by a capital infusion from Varadero Capital in July 2017. CAN Capital survived while DeMeo has notably since then kept a low public profile.
Now he’s back in action at Lendr, an ambitious funding company that offers MCAs, small business loans, equipment financing, and just recently, factoring.
“Dan is a highly strategic and thoughtful leader with broad perspective of the industry that enables him to understand specific challenges we face as a growing company,” said Tim Roach, CEO of Lendr. “Dan’s experience is a perfect addition to the team as we accelerate our growth plans, raise Lendr’s brand recognition, and further increase our market share.”
“I’m thrilled to be joining such a dynamic and progressive company,” said DeMeo. “Lendr has emerged as one of the leaders in the financial solutions space and we are poised to build strategic partnerships and alliances with those who share the same zeal in helping small- and medium-sized businesses grow.”
Lendr is setting its sights high. “We’ll be north of $100 million in our first year of factoring,” Lendr co-founder and CEO Tim Roach told deBanked in September.
The company has also been showing off its technological and fundraising prowess as of late. This past March, they closed on a $25 million credit facility that’s expandable up to $50 million. That news was followed by the announcement of a new funding option made possible through virtual and physical debit cards.
Lendr has offices in Chicago and New York and employs over 45 people.
