Monroe Capital LLC today announced it has expanded its platform to Asia with the appointment of Alex Kim, as Managing Director and Head of Asia. The newly opened office in Seoul, South Korea reflects Monroe’s commitment to expanding its business in Asia.

Prior to Monroe, Alex was the CEO and Managing Director of Korea and Head of Southeast Asia Institutions at Aberdeen Standard Investments. Alex has over 20 years of experience in asset management and banking, with 15 years spent in the Asia Pacific region.

Nneoma Maduike, member of SFNet’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusiveness Committee interviews Anthony C. Hood, PhD, executive vice president and chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer of First Horizon National Corp. Dr. Hood is responsible for cultivating and expanding First Horizon’s strategic leadership in developing and implementing programs and initiatives that advance the Company’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts.

We’re excited to bring the secured finance community together live and in-person at SFNet’s 77^th Annual Convention – Adapt. Renew. Grow. – on November 3^rd-5^th in Phoenix. 

We recognize that there is a lot of uncertainty right now, so SFNet has instituted a no-risk registration policy* that gives you the flexibility to sign up today with an option to cancel your in-person attendance for any reason up to the day before the Convention. We’ll refund you the difference between our in-person cost and our virtual rate so you can easily convert to online attendance if anything changes between now and November 2^nd.

BHI, a full-service commercial bank, announced that its Food & Beverage Group has closed a total of $100 million in new financing transactions.  The robust volume of transactions reflects the continued expansion of BHI’s Food & Beverage Group.

For Citromax Group and Citromax International Corporation, BHI has provided a $27.5 million revolving line of credit. 

Brooke Iley counsels and defends domestic and foreign corporations in all areas of employment and labor law compliance and litigation, including wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, wage and hour class and collective actions, trade secret disputes and data protection, and alleged fiduciary breaches. She represents clients in negotiations, litigations, and arbitrations nationally in these areas.

The last 18 months have brought challenges unlike no other. Stewart Hayes, chair of the SFNet 2021 40 Under 40 Awards and managing director, Wells Fargo Capital Finance, sat down with four former SFNet 40 Under 40 Award winners who led their company or group practice during 2020-2021 to dive into how they addressed challenges, what helped prepare them to weather the COVID crisis, and advice on handling the next curveball.

As many SFNet members know, a strong work-out culture, in which lenders and their financially distressed borrowers use out-of-court workouts (OCWs") as a less costly and more efficient alternative to  formal bankruptcy proceedings, is a well-established feature of the U.S. lending environment. 

Economic Context

The recession of 2008-2009 brought many lessons to the lending community; and the small independent finance companies were no exception. When looking back at that period, many of the lessons that we should all remember occurred in 2005-2007, during the lead up to the recession.

If you’ll recall, the economy was strong and business was booming. For small independent finance companies (that typically run counter-cyclical), new business was harder to come by and highly competitive. As is often the case, this led to aggressive structures and lower pricing, a bad combination.