A secretive hedge fund that\u2019s been quickly\u00a0amassing troubled taxi medallion loans\u00a0has sat down with an advocacy group seeking to save drivers from drowning in debt and losing their cabs.<\/p>\n
Greenwich, Conn.-based Marble gate Asset Management met with embattled taxi drivers and their advocates on Monday in a move that could lay the groundwork for a deal to provide yellow cabbies with some wiggle room on their loans, sources said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had an introductory meeting with Marble gate yesterday,\u201d Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, told The media. \u201cWe have already made a mutual agreement to move forward and draw up some universal standards on debt relief.\u201d<\/p>\n
Desai told that Marble gate also agreed to indefinitely delay a Thursday auction of 25 medallions, which would place troubled loans behind those medallions into new ownership.<\/p>\n
Marble gate declined to comment on this story, but a source familiar with the firm told that Desai\u2019s characterizations of Monday\u2019s meeting were correct.<\/p>\n
As reported last week, Desai and her members were up in arms after Marble gate purchased loans tied to some 3,000 taxi medallions from the National Credit Union Administration for a reported $350 million. Marble gate, which already owned 1,300 medallions and loans, is now the largest single owner of the placards that allow taxi drivers to operate.<\/p>\n
The purchase comes as drivers have\u00a0seen the value of their medallions\u00a0go from $1 million in late 2013 to below $200,000 thanks to the rise of ride-hailing startups.<\/p>\n
Reported last week, the $1.4 billion fund has been buying taxi medallions with a goal of owning a \u201csuper fleet\u201d of yellow cabs. But Desai\u2019s group wants the values of the loans Marble gate bought to be restructured to a uniform value of $150,000 with monthly payments capped at $900.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A secretive hedge fund that\u2019s been quickly\u00a0amassing troubled taxi medallion loans\u00a0has sat down with an advocacy group seeking to save drivers from drowning in debt and losing their cabs. Greenwich, Conn.-based Marble gate Asset Management met with embattled taxi drivers and their advocates on Monday in a move that could lay the groundwork for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":13284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1469,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-york","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13285,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13283\/revisions\/13285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}