This summer's merger of JG Wentworth and Peachtree Settlement Funding continues to hold fascination for Orlando Personal injury attorney and Vantage Capital factoring company partner, Hank Didier, Jr., who supports our message that "sellers get second (and third and fourth) bids to ensure deals are market driven and reasonable as envisioned in the spirit the state protection acts" in a posting on Injury Board.
According to an August 24, 2011 article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "Peachtree Financial's Settlement Funding, a life insurance settlement company that recently merged with J.G. Wentworth, has laid off 155 workers at Peachtree's Boynton Beach (home ) offices.
While 90 percent of the Boynton Beach staff is being laid off, 10 percent have been offered jobs and relocation to J.G. Wentworth's headquarters in Radnor, Pa.
J.G. Wentworth and Peachtree Financial Solutions joined assets in July and are now owned by a privately held holding company, JGWPT. The layoffs are the result of anticipated cost savings of merging the two similar companies".
While Hank Didier, Jr, chooses to place his emphasis on the fact that J.G. Wentworth had previously filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009 before merging with Peachtree earlier this year, isn't the real story (for the history books) that Peachtree needed JG Wentworth after losing a credit line from a major European bank on its life settlement business? While JG Wentworth came out of its pre-packaged bankruptcy 6 months after filing Peach Holdings, the parent company of Peachtree Settlement Funding, had its credit rating downgraded by Standard & Poor’s as “CCC.” According to the S&P rating system, this means that Peachtree had “extremely vulnerable financial security” and had a “questionable ability to meet obligations unless favorable conditions prevail.”
With all due apologies to those at Peachtree who lost their jobs in a down economy, in my opinion the merger of JG Wentworth and Peachtree is a good thing.
- Gets another "Unemployment TV" advertiser off the streets
- Gets what is in my personal opinion, an intransigent "price gouger" off the streets. Peachtree attempted to jake a Florida structured settlement annuitant for over 41% in 2007 and routinely charged selling annuitants in the high teens discount rates thanks to consumer ignorance (and purportedly in some cases a figurative "rubber stamp").
- The "low hanging fruit" can sleep a little easier
The question from a political standpoint is how the JG Wemtworth-Peachtree merger affects the National Association of Settlement Purchasers (NASP), which loses a major contributor as the result of the merger?
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