Resources

Client Alerts, News Articles, Blog Posts, & Multimedia

Everything you need to know about BMD and the industry.

Blog Post

The Shadows Are on the Run: Global Icon Aon Adds Its Heft and Stature to the Legitimization of the Cannabis Industry

September 20, 2024Aon, a global firm with 50,000 employees across 120 countries, has made a strategic move into the U.S. cannabis industry, joining a growing list of institutional players such as First Citizens Bank. This entry aligns with the efforts of the Institutional Cannabis Lending Community (ICLC), which has been driving deal flow and fostering best practices among financial institutions since its founding less than 18 months ago. Aon will co-host an exclusive event for the ICLC at the Benzinga Capital Conference in Chicago, where it will unveil a custom product suite designed for cannabis businesses and tap into the collective expertise of the ICLC's nearly 30 Participants, which include banks, lenders, and compliance experts.Blog Post

Entourage Effect and Shield Compliance Join the ICLC

April 17, 2024In a continuation of its recent growth, only a bit more than a year after its organization, the ICLC is pleased to announce the addition of 3 more new participants. One of these is a commercial bank. In accordance with our commitment to our bank participants, they are not identified outside the Community unless they specifically authorize it. The other 2, Entourage Effect Capital (EEC) and Shield Compliance, are each well known within the cannabis industry and will enhance the ICLC’s potential value to its participants, enriching the spectrum of relevant and accretive cannabis industry experience, skillsets and perspectives available to them.Blog Post

Trulieve Tax Announcement and the ICLC Growth Spurt

March 19, 2024On March 12, leading cannabis tax lawyer James Mann made an extremely timely virtual presentation to ICLC participants regarding the announcement by Trulieve of its receipt of more than $100 million of tax refunds in connection with a challenge to what it owes under Section 280E of the Internal Revenue Code.Blog Post

Another Big Move Out of the Shadows; First Citizens Bank, the nation’s 19th largest, poised to enter the Cannabis Market

February 20, 2024A commentary on cannabis and hemp dated January 12, 2024 posted by First Citizens Bank on its website reflects the decision by the Bank to extend its very substantial hemp/CBD platform into the cannabis space.Blog Post

Out of the Shadows - Cannabis Going Mainstream

November 21, 2023BMD Phoenix Office Managing Partner, Stephen Lenn, recently discussed today's cannabis industry at an Akron Roundtable as part of their "Bringing it Home" series.Blog Post

Institutional Cannabis Lenders Community Holds First Meeting

July 28, 2023BMD Attorneys Stephen Lenn and Brandon Pauley have organized the Institutional Cannabis Lenders Community (ICLC), which is a community of institutional lenders include banks, credit unions, dedicated cannabis loan funds and family office/ultra-high net worth investors and are excited to announce that the group recently held its first meeting. The more than 20 participants in the ICLC, which was organized to enhance relationships among institutional cannabis lenders and provide forums for evolving best practices, include 4 of the major cannabis loan, more than a dozen banks and credit unions, and a cross section of other organizations that are involved in institutional cannabis finance activities.Client Alert

Valley National Bank/Trulieve Loan: A Big Step Out of the Shadows

January 18, 2023In a late December press release, Trulieve announced that it had secured a $71.5 million commercial bank loan. In addition to the amount of the loan, which may be the largest commercial bank loan to date to a cannabis company, the release prominently identified Valley Bank and featured both a quote from Valley’s Senior Vice President, John Myers, and a description of the Bank’s service platform and commitment to the cannabis industry.Blog Post

Invitation to Banks & Family Office/Ultra-high Net Worth Investors Exploring Cannabis Lending to Join Our Informal Institutional Cannabis Lenders Community

December 2, 2022An update on the latest developments in the cannabis banking/lending space by subject matter expert, BMD Scottsdale/Phoenix Office Managing Partner Stephen LennBlog Post, Client Alert

Community Banks: Collaboration, not isolation, is the key to protecting/ enhancing the cannabis business you pioneered

August 26, 2022As we prepare for the plenary session of the informal institutional cannabis lenders community announced in my previous article, I am pleased to advise that participants now include 5 of the best-known dedicated loan funds; a select group of commercial banks ranging in size from single state community banks to mid-size regionals making cannabis loans into the mid-8 figures; and, a syndicator of credit union cannabis loans.Client Alert, Blog Post

Explosive Growth in Pot of Gold Opportunity for Bank (and Other) Cannabis Lenders Driving Erosion of the Barriers

May 13, 2022Our original article on bank lending to the cannabis industry anticipated that the convergence of interest between banks and the cannabis industry would draw more and larger banks to the industry. Banks were awash in liquidity with limited deployment options, while bankable cannabis businesses had rapidly growing needs for more and lower cost credit. Since then, the pot of gold opportunity for banks to lend into the cannabis industry has grown exponentially due to a combination of market constraints on equity causing a dramatic shift to debt and the ever-increasing capital needs of one of the country’s fastest growing industries. At the same time, hurdles to entry of new banks are being systematically cleared as the yellow brick road to the cannabis industry’s access to the financial markets is being paved, brick by brick, by the progressively increasing number and size of banks that are now entering the market.Blog Post

Fluresh Cannabis’ Bank Loan: Moving Into the Mainstream

April 18, 2022The announcement by Fluresh, a vertically integrated Michigan based cannabis business, of the closing of loans from a federally insured commercial bank totaling almost $50 million represents an important landmark for both Fluresh and the cannabis industry writ large. For Fluresh, perhaps as important as the bottom-line benefits of lower cost financing, the fact that its operations and financials passed muster with a substantial commercial bank can be regarded as an important rite of passage. For the industry, it reflects its inexorable movement out of the shadows and into the mainstream. This substantiates the view that, whether or not any of pending the federal legislation is enacted, bank lending to the cannabis industry will continue to accelerate.Press Release

Press Release: Fluresh Completes Historic Cannabis Industry Financing With $48 Million in Engagements From Federally Chartered Bank

April 18, 2022Fluresh LLC, one of the largest vertically integrated cannabis operators in Michigan, announced today the closing of a senior secured note with a federally regulated commercial bank headquartered in southeast Michigan. The secured Bank Note closed on December 28, 2021, and is for aggregate gross proceeds of $25 million. The Bank Note has a variable interest rate and, at the time of closing, bore an interest rate of 5.75% per annum with 50% of the aggregate proceeds capped at 7.0%.Blog Post

Out of the Shadows | An Investor Summit Recap

February 9, 2022After a COVID hiatus of more than 2 years, I rejoined the institutional cannabis investment speaker circuit, offering the closing remarks at the Kahner Global Cannabis Private Investment Summit in Coral Gables, Florida. My remarks addressed how banking developments are increasingly impacting cannabis investment, operating and financial strategies and decisions, for both plant touching and the growing array of ancillary businesses serving the industry.Client Alert

Banking and Cannabis: Is it Legal

January 4, 2022Marijuana is still a Schedule 1 drug and is illegal under federal law. However, I am not aware of any federal banking law or regulation, or any other federal law or regulation, which explicitly makes it illegal for banks and other financial institutions to provide their traditional services to state legal cannabis businesses.Blog Post

Key Takeaways from BMD’s Banking and Cannabis Webinar

October 14, 2021Estimates have shown that the cannabis industry is one of, if not the, fastest growing industries in the United States in recent years, with no sign of slowing. Growth requires capital. Banks need loans, and cannabis companies, which are rapidly becoming bankable need access to lower cost bank lending. While cannabis remains federally illegal, an impediment to access to financial institution credit, banks and credit unions are nevertheless entering the market in increasing numbers.Client Alert

Banking & Cannabis: The Next Frontier Webinar

September 23, 2021On Tuesday, September 21st, BMD’s own Banking and Cannabis Partner, Stephen Lenn, hosted a star-studded cast of panelists in a webinar titled Banking & Cannabis: Cannabis Lending, The Next Frontier. The webinar, which had to suspend registrations when hitting a maximum cap of 500, aimed to explore issues related to cannabis and banking, with a particular emphasis on lending. With the sponsorship and support of the Bankers Associations of Arizona, Colorado, Ohio and Utah, Steve was able to recruit an elite group of bankers, bank regulators, cannabis industry players, and cannabis regulators, who took the topic head on. The discussion kicked off with an opening from the keynote speaker, VP of Congressional Affairs for the American Bankers Association, Tanner Daniel.Client Alert

Banking and Cannabis: Bank Lending, The Next Frontier

May 10, 2021A fortuitous combination of developments and circumstances present the banking and cannabis industries a large opportunity to enhance each of their respective bottom lines: conventional bank lending, payment processing, treasury management and other services, and bank administered SBA and revenue bond financing to cannabis businesses.Client Alert

Will Federal Legislation Open Cannabis Acquisition Floodgate?

February 18, 2021Are potential buyers quietly lobbying at federal and state levels to kick open the door to launch a new round of strategic acquisitions? Will presently pending federal legislation, the SAFE and MORE Acts, providing safe harbor for banks and re- or de-scheduling marijuana, be sufficient to mobilize into action major non-cannabis companies that previously shunned the cannabis industry due to the unknown implications of owning businesses whose activities are illegal under federal law?