As the new round of loans gets closer to becoming a reality, questions remain over who will get the money this time around. In the first round of funding, some big cooperations like Ruth’s Chris and Potbelly received a bailout, while many small businesses didn’t get a dime. The blowback forced Shake Shake to return the money it received, but other large companies have not said they will do the same.
Today Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, “I think unfortunately there probably are a couple companies who qualified for this, and entities who qualified for this, who were not what we intended. And that’s a certification issue that I hope is going to be tightened up by new regulations.”
2. Why did they allow bigger companies to get #PPPloans when this is for #SmallBusiness pic.twitter.com/gHCBMHkZCt
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) April 20, 2020
Regardless of new “certifications,” there is a real worry in the small business community that, even if the new funding passes, there still won’t be enough money to go around. Duncan MacDonald-Korth, Co-founder of COVID Loan Tracker, has been helping people track their loans. He tells News & Guts:
So far, only 7% out of almost 20,000 companies that have responded to us have actually received money. Just under 25% say they have been approved, but have not gotten money yet, and do not have a clear timeline of when it will arrive.
Those aren’t good odds. And in addition to the government putting certain guidelines in place, MacDonald-Korth says banks should also be held accountable for how they distribute the loans.
“Banks were heavily incentivized to make sure their best clients got their applications approved. If you are a lender, you don’t want your biggest clients being boxed out, and you certainly don’t want the companies you have big credit lines with going bust. All of this explains why funding portals were slow to open to the public, very limited in audience, and why PPP money flowed to big companies”
Indeed today we are learning these banks will now potentially have to answer for their actions in court. Bloomberg reports:
Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and US Bancorp were sued by small businesses that accused the lenders of prioritizing large loans distributed as part of the virus rescue package, shutting out the smallest firms that sought money.
Perhaps, public pressure will be the only thing that changes these practices.