By: Ezra Ashkenazi

A Midwestern money managing company, O’Brien-Staley Partners, has acquired hundreds of New York City taxi medallion loans, becoming a major part of an industry that’s getting outplayed by companies like Uber and Lyft. The Partners have collected around 400 medallions from Signature Bank, this is around 3% of the 13,587 medallions that are either in use or in storage, according to the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission. The taxi industry is a failing one with leaders such as Signature and Capital One Financial Corp. struggling thanks to the rise of Uber and Lyft. This has left many taxi drives with a huge debt that they can’t pay back. According to a Crane’s Business article, medallion prices are as low as 110,000 dollars, this is down from 1 one million dollars at the start of the decade.

With medallions becoming less and less valuable, banks have found it more profitable to just sell them to private equity and hedge fund firms. Matthew Daus, an attorney at Windels Marx who formerly served as commissioner of New York’s taxi and limousine bureau, said that “There are other players resurfacing,” and that Some banks “may cut their losses once and for all.” According to Susan Turkell, a spokeswoman for the New York based Signature Bank, they made a huge sale of preforming loans to O’Brien-Staley, with about 46.4 million dollars made in loans tied to medallion. However, E. Gerald O’Brien, the chief investment officer at O’Brien-Staley Partners, declined this comment made by Signature Bank.

At the end of last year, O’Brien-Staley had 1.3 billion dollars in regulatory assets. The firm is now one of the largest lenders against medallions, according to Andrew Murstein, president of Medallion Financial Corp., which originates and services taxi loans. Murstein wrote in an email that, “It is another positive sign for the industry that another fund with a successful track record believes that medallions are a good investment.” With the taxi industry taking a huge decrease in productivity as of late, this huge investment gives hope to the people that have lost a lot from the new means of transportation that some successful people see the taxi industry bouncing back.