Pursuits
Wall Street Finds New Subprime With 125% Business Loans
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Doug Naidus made his fortune selling a mortgage company to Deutsche Bank AG months before the U.S. housing market collapsed. Now he’s found a way to profit from loans to business owners with bad credit.
From an office near New York’s Times Square, people trained by a veteran of Jordan Belfort’s boiler room call truckers, contractors and florists across the country pitching loans with annual interest rates as high as 125 percent, according to more than two dozen former employees and clients. When borrowers can’t pay, Naidus’s World Business Lenders LLC seizes their vehicles and assets, sometimes sending them into bankruptcy.