First-time jobless claims for the week ending May 16 increased by 2.438 million to bring the total number of Americans who have filed for unemployment benefits to 38.9 million during the past nine weeks. … READ MORE >
Covid-19
The future of work: Five predictions for private equity firms
As businesses around the world consider how they return to work amid the coronavirus pandemic, private equity professionals are already making plans for widespread changes to their workforce. … READ MORE >
Home construction collapses under coronavirus lockdown
Housing starts plummeted 30.5% to an annualized rate of 891,000 in April as the full weight of the coronavirus lockdowns hit the sector, the Commerce Department reported on Tuesday. … READ MORE >
Main Street Lending Program should be attractive to eligible family offices
As steady flows of management fees and profits interest start to attenuate, liquidity becomes more important to prevent the family office’s operations from slipping. As the economy slows and uncertainties linger, family offices that provide investment management services need to move beyond the Paycheck Protection Program and focus on the new Main Street Lending Program. … READ MORE >
As demand for commercial loans rises, so do underwriting standards
The increase in demand is consistent with the latest results from the RSM Middle Market Business Index, which indicate that an increasing number of respondents either sought special financing during the survey period or are planning to seek special financing over the next six months. … READ MORE >
Is brick and mortar dead? This time, we’re talking about office buildings.
As many middle market companies have shown that they can shift from a traditional brick-and-mortar setting to a virtual one, office building tenants, and landlords, are rethinking the need for offices in the future — and the related fixed costs they bring. … READ MORE >
U.S. manufacturing sector hit hard by COVID-19, new RSM data shows
The recession in the U.S. manufacturing sector that began in the second half of 2019 has been sharply exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, new proprietary data from RSM shows. Significantly more middle market manufacturers reported losses to U.S. revenue and greater disruptions to operations and their supply chains than the … … READ MORE >
Modeling the spread of the coronavirus: Another difficult milestone
Our projections for the spread of the disease are for total U.S. cases to approach 1.5 million by the end of the week. Based on those projections, and given the current mortality rate of 6.0%, we expect the U.S. death toll to approach 90,000 by the end of the week. … READ MORE >
Retail lessons from the RSM US Middle Market Business Index
While it’s no surprise that middle market retailers were hard hit by fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, proprietary RSM data underscores this vulnerability. One key data point highlighted a potential opportunity for retailers related to business continuity planning, however, as the initial outbreak slows. … READ MORE >
U.S. retail sales: April really was the cruelest month
Americans continued to shelter in place during April, resulting in a 16.4% decline in top-line retail sales. While April will most likely prove to be the nadir in U.S. retail sales, we are not expecting a meaningful near-term rebound because of the significant dislocation in the labor market and clearly diminished income horizons. … READ MORE >