Trying to be a Nice Guy in Small-Business Lending
Mandis wants to be a nice guy in high-rate small-business lending
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Steven Mandis was working on a book two years ago about whether Goldman Sachs put profit above principles when he decided to get into small-business lending’s version of subprime: a corner of Wall Street where brokers push loans with interest rates that can climb higher than 100 percent to dentists with bad credit and pizzeria owners behind on their bills.
As Mandis, a former Goldman Sachs banker, scouted for lenders to invest in, he saw offices that looked like boiler rooms, with salespeople furiously working the phones. The co-founder of one firm he visited had been sentenced to probation for insider trading.