Jones Waldo

Welcome to guest blogger, Marianne G. Sorensen, an attorney in our St. George office that focuses on real estate law.

Could your (or your employees’) use of social media invite a claim that your lending practices are discriminatory?

“No way!” you state, knowing that you have trained bank personnel in complying with regulations issued under the Fair Housing Act, eliminated any overt evidence of discrimination, and carefully implemented policies to minimize claims of disparate treatment.

Pete Stevens is an attorney specializing in insurance reglatory law at Jones Waldo. His recent article in National Mortgage Professional magazine, "A New Era for Mortgage Closings," shares concerns for the propensity of scams and untruths in the mortgage industry. Read his piece on the growing importance of objective validation and vetting.

CLICK HERE for article.

More information on Pete and his practice can be found HERE. You can reach him via email at: rstevens@joneswaldo.com.

Franchisees can be among the best tenants for a retail landlord.  They tend to generate above-average customer traffic and revenue, and can increase property values and cash flow to other tenants. Franchisees are using a proven business formula and they can look to the franchisor for valuable assistance. Finally, to a greater or lesser degree, the franchisor will police the franchisee in matters of operations and finance in many areas where the landlord will benefit.

George Sutton's article on how US policy creates growth for big banks, while restricting it for small banks, hit today in the online edition of American Banker.

According to Sutton, "Three things are driving the growth of large banks: market demand, access to capital and regulatory burden. Failing to consider these in the rush to break up "too big to fail" banks could force critically important financial services to move offshore or to less stable nonbank competitors."

A pre-negotiation is a simple contract that the borrower and lender sign before starting substantive discussions over a troubled credit relationship. Pre-negotiation agreements can be more or less comprehensive, depending on the complexity of the credit relationship. For simple loan modifications they are often in the form of a simple letter, countersigned by the borrower. However they are structured, though, the lender benefits in two important ways: (1) The pre-negotiation agreement helps protect the lender from claims that a binding agreement was reached when it hasn’t been; and (2) it communicates to the borrower the seriousness of the situation and can help modulate the borrower’s expectations of the work-out or loan-modification process.

Banking and finance attorney George R. Sutton is featured in the January issue of Utah Business. George participated in a round table discussion for the magazine's banking and finance industry outlook section.

Every banker's heart sinks a little when a second trust deed borrower files a Chapter 13 case. You think, "There goes another one--into the non-accrual void--that I'll never see again."

There are two major ways a lender can declare a covenant default, that is, a default that results not from the failure to make a loan payment, but one that results from a change in the borrower’s financial condition. Typical commercial loan documents require the debtor to maintain certain minimum financial conditions, such as specified levels of inventory, debt coverage, net cash on hand and the like. Pretty boring stuff. The pinch point for the loan parties is how to craft the loan documents so that the lender’s need to declare a default in the face of a borrower’s deteriorating financial condition is balanced by the borrower’s need to have some measure of predictability.

We can only speculate about the real purpose for the Volcker Rule.  It is generally acknowledged that the kinds of proprietary trading targeted by the Rule did not cause or contribute to the Great Recession.  The rationale that banks should not be allowed to use insured deposits to engage in high risk speculative trading is bogus because depository banks were never allowed to do that under laws predating the Volcker Rule by decades.  The real target of the Rule is trading activities of bank affiliates.