regulators, the Office of Advocacy developed a study entitled "Small Business Lending in the United States." This was first published in 1995, covering lending in 1994. A subsequent edition of this study was issued in 1996, covering lending activity in 1995, and a third edition is in the final stages of internal review for 1996. I have copies of the 1995 study for Texas with me. In each study all 9,670 commercial banks are ranked by a number of criteria on how responsive they are to small business credit needs. Small business persons now have an independent source of data on bank responses to small business credit needs. This methodology has been picked up by the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, The Washington Post and numerous other business publications. In 1996 we also issued a companion piece to the banking study called "The Top Small Business Banks in the United States" which looked at the record of small business credit programs by the fifty largest bank holding companies as well as the top three banks in terms of small business loans outstanding for each state. The 1996 "bank holding company" study is in the process of being released and will appear in the American Banker published by the American Banking Association and will be reviewed by Business Week in the near future. The second project addresses equity financing needs. By way of background, the White House Conference on Small Business held in June 1995 identified the problem that small businesses were having in getting equity financing. Many small businesses could raise up to $250,000 from their own personal assets and those of family members and friends. The organized venture capital industry, initial public offerings or organized capital markets often had little interest in deals under $5 million. Thus, a "capital gap" between $250,000 and $5 million exists. To the extent that this gap is being closed today, it is being met by "business angels" high net worth individuals who make private investments. Many of these "angels" are successful entrepreneurs who have harvested their investments in their firms. They "harvested" by selling out to larger firms, venture capitalists or by going public and plowing back these funds into - small businesses as private equity investors. In addition, they have the experience to be "value added" investors and help close the "capital gap" from these firms in which they invest. The gap exists and the challenge is to close the gap for even wore firms. 13 Working with the University of New Hampshire and eight regional "angel" capital networks including the Texas Capital Network in Austin, the Office of Advocacy has developed the Angel Capital Electronic Network ACE-NET, an Internet based system which allows entrepreneurs to present their need for capital to accredited investors throughout the country. Accredited investors are high net worth individuals who have the knowledge and resources to do their own "due diligence", i.e., in-depth research into the investment to make informed decisions. Several legal hurdles had to be addressed, including Federal securities standards. The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a "no action letter" to ACE-NET on October 25, 1996. The system has also been designed to satisfy state legal requirements and has received the encouragement and support of the North American Securities Administration Association (NASAA). The system should be operational by the end of April. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before this Subcommittee today. I will be happy to answer any questions Thank you. that you or any of the other Members may have. ARRY ESEDA FERTILIZER P.O. BOX 119 WHITEFACE, !X 79379 806-287-1231-PHONE 806-287-1344-FAX Larry Combest 1205 Texas Ave. Lubbock, TX 79401 Dear Sir: I am writing you this letter in regards to the scrvice (or should I say the lack of service) that is being provided by the Hockley County Farm Service Agency. As a local business owner, I get concerned when people that I and other business owners respect as customers get treated the way that they do by the FSA. Not trying to single any one person out, but Carla Sires seems to have the biggest influence on the quality of service being provided. In the last ninety days, she has worked four of those days. Being in the position of office manager, I would think a person needs to work more than four days out of ninety to provide the service that farmers count on. She has also made very negative comments that she could care less if a loan is approved or not. This type of behavior should not have to be tolerated by anyone. One example of poor service is the length of time to get an application for a loan approved or denied. An application that was submitted for a loan took Eighty-nine days to process before it was denied. This is truly too long of a time for the approval process of a loan application. Please take time to help resolve this situation so that we can depend on the SERVICE that Sincerely yours, Long Beach Larry Beseda It has been several years since we have participated in the FHA guaranteed program. There are several reasons we are not interested in making FHA guaranteed loans. The first problem is that the guarantee agreement and monitoring requirements are extremely complex and difficult to comply with. If you fail to dot every I and cross every T, FHA will try to avoid performing on the guarantee. We also find it impractical to expect any customer to wait for months to be approved or denied by FHA. Most farmers need to be making management and other farming related decisions long before they hear from FHA. These slow loan and loan renewal commitments are ridiculous. Many small farming operations certainly have a need for the FHA loan program. I am afraid however, that if improvements are not forthcoming it will be to little to late for many of them. |