February 7, 2020
The cover story of the January 2020 issue of The Secured Lender magazine featured an interview with McGuireWoods Downtown Los Angeles office managing partner Hamid Namazie about his career and his advocacy for the Secured Finance Network, an international association of secured finance providers.
For the past 18 months, Namazie — a debt finance lawyer — has assisted SFNet with advocacy work on behalf of its members regarding commercial loan disclosure requirements that various state legislatures are enacting. These rules would force commercial lenders that provide financing for small businesses to disclose information similar to disclosures required for consumer financing.
Namazie’s advocacy focuses on educating legislators on the challenges facing factors and asset-based lenders in providing such disclosures.
The biggest concern, he said, is to ensure that loans continue to be broadly available to businesses of all sizes in all states. “If the disclosure requirements are poorly drafted,” Namazie explained, “lenders may make the decision to avoid potential liability and stop lending into the impacted state which will significantly limit the availability of commercial loans to businesses in that state.”