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House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) promised to subpoena the data used to develop the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s proposed rewrite of the Community Reinvestment Act, if the agency doesn’t provide it willingly, MorningConsult.com reported. In a contentious hearing yesterday morning, Waters clashed with Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting over the anti-redlining legislation. The OCC and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. last month released a proposal to revamp the law, which consumer groups worry will take away protections. Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) asked Otting at the hearing if he would release the data used to craft the proposal, which Otting has argued is confidential information. Otting said that’s not something the agency would make available for public distribution. Waters, chiming in, said the committee would subpoena the information since she doesn’t expect cooperation from Otting and the OCC. Read more. 

Click here for more information on the hearing. 

Attorney Kavita Gupta has been appointed to serve as the Chapter 11 Trustee overseeing the bankruptcy sale of 38.56 acres of privately-owned real property on the world-famous Las Vegas Strip, according to a press release. The bankruptcy court has approved bid procedures setting a bid deadline of April 30, 2020 and May 19, 2020 auction for qualified bidders. The 38.56-acre development site includes 750 feet of frontage on Las Vegas Boulevard directly across from Mandalay Bay and is within walking distance from the new Las Vegas Raiders stadium. On April 30, 2018, Desert Land, LLC (Case No. 18-12454), Desert Oasis Apartments, LLC (Case No. 18-12456) and Desert Oasis Investments, LLC (Case No. 18-12457) filed chapter 11 bankruptcy petitions in the District of Nevada. As the court appointed Chapter 11 Trustee, Kavita Gupta is vested with the exclusive right to oversee the sale process and to manage the debtors' property and business activities. In December 2019, Keen-Summit Capital Partners LLC and Colliers International were engaged by the Trustee as exclusive real estate agents for this offering. 

Fitch Ratings research found that secured creditors are recovering all or most of their investments when retailers file for bankruptcy protection, even as nearly half these companies don’t survive with a physical presence, the Wall Street Journal reported. Among large retail and supermarket chains that filed for bankruptcy protection over the past 15 years, 45 percent closed all of their stores, the ratings firm said in a new report. Fitch found that the bankruptcies of 25 out of 55 retail and supermarket companies ended in liquidations. High debt balances and lease and interest payments are some of the headwinds driving retailers into bankruptcy, Fitch said. They can also suffer from insufficient investments in operations and problems with cash flows and liquidity. At the same time, some troubled big retailers had a hard time accessing trade credit, such as Sears Holdings Corp., Toys “R” Us Inc. and Gordmans Stores Inc. Inventory suppliers demanded cash on delivery, cash in advance or a letter of credit to guarantee payment for goods.

Heeding the call of some of the largest mortgage lenders in the industry, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is moving to back the elimination of debt-to-income (DTI) requirements in mortgage underwriting, Bankrate.com reported. In a letter CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger sent to Congress yesterday, the CFPB asked to amend the Ability to Repay/Qualified Mortgage rule (ATR/QM rule) in order to remove DTI as a qualifying factor in mortgage underwriting. This rule was created in response to the financial crisis of a decade ago as a way to prevent lending money to borrowers who might not be able to afford the loan. The ATR/QM rules includes eight separate borrower qualifications that lenders must examine when approving a loan. The rule includes things like verification of income, credit history and DTI, among others. The only portion the CFPB is asking to amend is the DTI requirement as a powerful coalition of lenders deems the rule unfair and constraining.

An Alabama mall owner is suing Forever 21 Inc., saying that it lost millions of dollars leasing space to the retailer based on misleading sales targets, Bloomberg News reported. Forever 21 is accused of misrepresenting sales projections for a store it opened in Allied Development of Alabama’s Eastern Shore shopping mall, promising yearly revenue of at least $6 million but delivering only about $1.6 million its first year in business, according to court documents filed Nov. 22. In 2017, Allied Development struck a deal with Forever 21 that allowed the apparel retailer to peg its rent payment to its monthly gross sales. The store would turn over 5 percent of its monthly sales, as well as a bonus of 1 percent of yearly sales in excess of $7 million, according to the agreement. But the retailer used false information to back up projections it gave as part of the deal, according to the filing. Forever 21 based the projections on sales at its nearby store in Mobile, Alabama, which it said had generated $6 million in 2017, Allied Development said in the court filings. That store generated only $2 million in gross sales during 2017, according to the court documents.

The former 3M corporate campus in Austin, Texas has averted foreclosure after the entity that owns the property — and is controlled by Austin real estate investor Nate Paul — yesterday filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the Austin American-Statesman reported. That filing came shortly before the 156-acre property had been scheduled for a foreclosure auction. It was the sixth bankruptcy filing since November to stave off potential foreclosure on properties owned by entities controlled by Paul and his World Class Property Co. In August, agents from the FBI and U.S. Department of Treasury searched World Class’ downtown headquarters. Those agencies have declined to comment on the operation. The new bankruptcy filing came as the monthly foreclosure auction was underway on the steps of the Travis County Courthouse. The bankruptcy petition lists the estimated assets of Silicon Hills Campus at $100 million to $500 million and estimated liabilities at $50 million to $100 million.

The Trump administration will propose a new rule as early as Monday that would reduce the burden on local governments to meet their fair housing obligations, further scaling back civil rights enforcement, the Washington Post reported. Among the changes sought by the Department of Housing and Urban Development: redefining what it means to promote fair housing, eliminating the assessment used to address barriers to racial integration, and encouraging cities to remove regulations that stand in the way of affordable housing, according to the proposed rule obtained by The Washington Post. Fair housing advocates say that the proposal reduces the financial pressure on local governments to end residential segregation, as required by the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and is the latest erosion of Obama-era regulations designed to enforce the landmark legislation. The 2015 regulations required communities to take meaningful action against long-standing segregation by analyzing housing patterns, concentrated poverty and disparities in access to transportation, jobs and good schools. HUD Secretary Ben Carson has characterized those steps as “overly burdensome” and “too prescriptive,” saying that transforming segregated living patterns and poor neighborhoods into areas of opportunity is often not within a community’s control.