Rumors were circulating Friday that factoring conglomerate J.G. Wentworth is in the process of going public. A call to J.G. Wentworth's toll-free number seemed to indicate something is in the works. Despite this I was unable to find an S-1 filing on EDGAR, except for one from like 1997.
It is possible that that the originator of the rumors misread a a December 21, 2011 posting by Donald D. Ernst in Wenworth ByThe Sea.Net as current when it was simply plagiarized from this July 7, 2006 Business Week article.
The J.G. Wentworth CEO, Michael B. Goodman, referenced therein, was replaced by David Miller, on or about January 5, 2009, according to press release and news reports of the time.
If the rumors were to be true it would be the second IPO of a factoring company in the last 24 months following the IPO of Imperial Holdings in 2011. The S-1 is the traditional pre-IPO filing that shows a company butt naked, warts and all to investors. If the 2009 bankruptcy filing was revealing this will be more so as it wil reveal the inner workings of the company, its profitability, prospects and more about the secondary market fior structured settlements and deferred cash flows.
A J.G. Wentworth competitor speculated that perhaps current investors are seeking to unload some shares.
Some in the primary market see a potential IPO of J.G. Wentworth negatively, in that corporate America and Wall Street will now be involved in factoring. They already are. The company has just completed its seventh asset backed securitizations since the beginning of 2010, but stated in a December 8, 2011 press release that in 20 years JGWPT’s subsidiary companies and their predecessors have only purchased $7 billion of future payment obligations. This is despite the persistent annoying but memorable ads.
This is the company that already dominated the market before it absorbed Peachtree, the 2nd largest company.
The primary market should know that befire the parties executed a Joint Dismiossal with Prejuidiuce on March 2, 2012, J.G. Wentworth was in litigation with David Springer and Sovereign Funding Group in Maryland state court over the so-called We Buy Payments redirect websites, which it alleged were engineered by Springer and Sovereign Funding Group. Figuratively speaking, in this case it is "Goliath" who has the sling shot and "David" is allegedly the big problem. Woodbridge Funding came to a similar conclusion and sued Springer and Sovereign in Maryland Federal Court in October.The rogue websites , which still exist but now redirect to Freedom1stFunding.com draw traffic from many companies in both the primary and secondary market and suck away potential leads with misleading come-ons. You may not like JGW or Woodbridge (and I certainly don't agree with some of their advertising), but it is their efforts that may clear up this problem. If successful they will actually help the primary market.
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