Greg Smith Leaves Wall Street
(Mar 2012)
The New York Times published an op-ed by Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs' Executive Director who is resigning from his job after almost 12 years with the firm because, as he puts it, the firm's culture has veered far from what it was when he first joined the firm. He says in spite of the firm's recent scandals "the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money." At SLCG, we have come across many examples of the issues raised by Mr....
SLCG Research: Non-Traded REITs
(Mar 2012)
We've posted a new working paper on our website that brings together much of our research related to non-traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs). In it, we discuss the history and structure of non-traded REITs as well as differences between non-traded REITs and other avenues for gaining exposure to real estate. We highlight the dizzying array of fees and conflicts of interest embedded in these companies. We demonstrate that non-traded REITs are often misleadingly valued, heavily...
Déjà Vu: Non-Traded Business Development Companies
(Feb 2012)
Last week we posted an introduction to non-traded REITs that highlighted the many risks inherent to those investments. As it happens, another non-traded investment has been growing in popularity, but has an almost identical set of risk factors and has recently caught the attention of regulators: non-traded business development companies (BDCs).
The resemblance between non-traded REITs and non-traded BDCs is uncanny. Both are special business classes created by Congress in the mid 20th...
An Introduction to Non-Traded REITs
(Feb 2012)
Both FINRA and the SEC have started warning investors about non-traded real estate investment trusts (REITs), which are growing in popularity but expose investors to very serious risks. We at SLCG have had a variety of cases involving non-traded REITs and would like to describe our experience analyzing these investments and what they mean for regulators and retail investors.
In the most general sense, REITs are simply companies that hold almost entirely real estate assets. These companies can...
FINRA Regulatory Notice: Complex Products
(Jan 2012)
FINRA recently released Regulatory Notice 12-03: Heightened Supervision of Complex Products, outlining their increased scrutiny of a wide variety of alternative investments including structured products, inverse or leveraged exchange traded funds, and asset-backed securities. Here at SLCG, we've done research on each of those subjects, and have a variety of ongoing projects that bear directly on the issues highlighted by the Notice.
The products identified include:
