Ballard Spahr was thrilled to host a Commercial Real Estate Finance Council after-work seminar in our offices in sunny Los Angeles this past Thursday evening. CREFC is the premier trade association in the United States for...more
I’ve written extensively about the CRE CLO technology for a long time and why it is the best leverage technology across securitization markets. With the sponsor typically holding up to 20% of the bottom of the capital stack,...more
In 2021, the staff (the “Staff”) of the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) surprised the industry when it issued an interpretation stating that fixed income securities (including asset-backed securities) fall...more
On October 26, 2022, Dechert partners Laura Swihart and Stewart McQueen attended the CREFC Capital Markets Conference in New York City. Stewart gave opening remarks and Laura moderated a panel on the current housing market...more
I’ve been back from CREFC’s and RER’s annual meetings for a week or so, mulling what those confabs meant. There’s been plenty of reportage on the events, the panels, the parties, the to-ing and fro-ing, but what I want to do...more
By the time the comment period closed on June 17, 2022, the SEC had received thousands of comment letters from the public in response to the SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rules (the “Proposal”), which is perhaps the most...more
CREFC January 2022 – it was supposed to be the comeback conference. Everyone was pumped to spend a few days down south, getting together with their safely vaccinated clients, colleagues and friends. Meetings, mingling and...more
Last week, over 4,200 of our closest friends met virtually for the annual January conference by the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council, which is usually held in Miami. While we have all learned to go without in the last...more
Real Estate Lobbying Groups Pitch Expansion of Main Street Lending Program - In a letter this week to Representative Mike Crapo and Rep. Sherrod Brown, the Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, the...more
With apologies to Mr. Marquez for repurposing the title of his haunting book, it’s conference season here in CRE and ABS securitization-land and therefore a time to reflect (more Marquez) on the risks that the world will...more
‘Tis the season and I think it’s way overdue to put in a good word for sunny optimism. It’s been a while since the Golden Turkeys, and I apologize for being offline. This having to work for a living gets in the way of serious...more
The annual June CREFC conference at the Marriott Marquis in New York City was slightly less well attended than Miami (well, no duh!), but low conference attendance and stormy weather didn’t stop over 400 people from attending...more
We are all going to be heartedly sick of discussing LIBOR and LIBOR transition long before it becomes a thing at the end of 2021, but we really need to get this done. I can’t make this at all funny. We have a problem…but not...more
Returning to the theme of my most recent commentary entitled God Hates Securitization, I want to elaborate on the point I made there (yes, if you stuck with me all the way through to the end, there was a point): We need to...more
Last week, the CREFC Annual Conference was back in its traditional New York venue, which benefitted not only the Manhattan hospitality market’s RevPAR but also provided for an exciting and lively location in Times Square. ...more
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...more
Our friend, Dan Rubock, just inked an interesting and timely piece entitled, “Key pillars of loan structural quality are eroding, especially in single-borrower deals.” As usual, Dan’s views at Moody’s are worth considerable...more
South Beach played host to the 2018 CREFC January Conference last week, as roughly 1,800 of our best friends in the CRE lending and securitization industry assembled in Miami to reflect on another year gone by and to muse...more
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...more
What in the world have we done to ourselves? Our CRE Securitization business, or at least the conduit part of our business, continues to shrink: $800 billion in outstanding principal balance in 2007 and now, $400 billion? ...more
CREFC held its Annual Conference last week in Washington D.C. Given the current politically charged climate, 2017 felt like a very appropriate time to move the Annual Conference from its traditional home in New York to...more
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...more
When this Chapter was published in the preceding edition to this book in 2012, the main focus of the discussion on intercreditor agreements was the A/B intercreditor as such senior/junior lender arrangement was, and for the...more
The slow start to 2016 did not dampen the enthusiasm at CREFC’s Annual Conference, held last week in New York City. The conference saw record attendance, with standing-room-only crowds at virtually every panel. As with the...more
Earlier this month CREFC held its “Commercial Real Estate Finance Summit – West” in Santa Monica, CA, which – while not nearly as large as the annual conference in New York – was still very well attended (roughly 175...more