Aequitas Financial

Aequitas Financial

Aequitas Financial was founded in 2010 in Burlingame, California, by CEO Bob Jesenik and President Brian Oliver. The firm emerged as a direct lender focused on private credit opportunities in the middle market, a segment where post-financial-crisis bank retrenchment created persistent supply-demand imbalances. Aequitas structured its platform to originate, underwrite, and service loans that require specialized diligence, positioning itself as a non-bank capital provider to borrowers underserved by traditional lenders. The firm deploys capital across private credit, real-estate finance, and specialty lending. Its real-estate activities include bridge loans for commercial and residential projects, often secured by hard assets and structured with shorter durations. On the private-credit side, Aequitas originates asset-backed loans, cash-flow-based term loans, and structured financings for companies with enterprise values typically below $100 million. The firm also structures consumer and small-business receivable purchase programs through its specialty-finance division. Aequitas raises capital through private placements and registered note offerings, attracting individual and institutional investors seeking yield-oriented fixed-income exposure. Aequitas operates from its headquarters in Burlingame and maintains an additional presence in Portland, Oregon. The firm built an in-house servicing and collections infrastructure, which allows it to manage credit risk directly rather than outsourcing to third-party servicers. In recent years, Aequitas has faced heightened regulatory scrutiny; the SEC charged the firm and its executives in 2016 with overvaluing assets and concealing the deteriorating performance of its loan portfolio (per SEC litigation release, March 2016), leading to an asset freeze and receivership that reshaped the firm's operating posture. Aequitas differs from most private-credit managers in its reliance on a registered-note funding model rather than closed-end fund commitments. The firm sold securities directly to retail and high-net-worth investors under Regulation A+ and other exemptions, creating a permanent-capital structure not typical among institutional private-credit GPs. That structure proved fragile under asset-performance stress, and the subsequent enforcement action against the firm serves as a regulatory case study in the governance challenges of non-bank lending platforms that source capital from individual investors.