Last week on April 9th, the Federal Reserve and Treasury announced two new lending facilities as part of the Main Street Lending Program: the Main Street New Loan Facility and the Main Street Expanded Loan Facility. These facilities are intended to provide additional lending assistance to small and medium-size businesses. They also released guidance setting forth the initial qualification requirements.
Unlike the Paycheck Protection Program, there is no loan forgiveness element. However, we wanted to make you aware of the availability of these loan programs should you need to borrow additional capital for your business during these uncertain times.
Key points regarding the program:
- $600 billion has been allocated to these two facilities.
- Eligible borrowers:
- No more than 10,000 employees or up to $2.5 billion in 2019 annual revenues
- Can only participate in one of these two facilities, not both
- Based on current guidance, it appears you can obtain a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) as well as through one of these lending facilities.
- Loan specifications:
- Loan term: 4 year maturity
- Principal and interest payments deferred for one year
- Adjustable rate of SOFR (currently near zero) + 250-400 basis points
- Minimum loan size: $1 Million
- No prepayment penalty
- You will be required to make several attestations, most notably the following:
- that you will not use proceeds of this loan to pay off any existing loans or lines of credit, with the exception of mandatory principal payments
- that the loan is due to exigent circumstances due to the coronavirus pandemic
- that you will make a reasonable effort to use the loan proceeds to maintain your payroll and retain your employees for the duration of the loan
For more information, please visit the Federal Reserve website at: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/mainstreetlending.htm.
If this program is of interest to you, please contact your bank and work with your attorney to review any loan documents.