Farah Ashraf Kamal
United States
Covers:
Investigative Reporting on U.S. Financial Institutions, Regulation & Capital Markets
Doesn't Cover:
Crypto, NFTs, Web3 or retail-trading
Articles by Farah Ashraf Kamal
65 Years of U.S. Commercial Banking: 10 Charts That Explain the Great Consolidation
For more than a century, U.S. commercial banks have filed standardized financial reports with federal regulators. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York compiled these "Call Reports" into a research dataset covering 1959 to 2025: 2,544,226 quarterly observations from 24,716 unique FDIC-insured commercial banks. Finleet analyzed this dataset to quantify 65 years of structural transformation in American commercial banking.
The $8.5 Million CEO Who Got Beat by Someone Earning Half as Much
Gary Rodrigues earned $8.58 million leading Star One Credit Union in 2023. Over the past decade, his institution grew assets by 31 percent. Brett Martinez earned $3.18 million at Redwood Credit Union—less than half of Rodrigues—yet delivered 269 percent asset growth, the highest in our 664-institution analysis. The paradox captures something essential about executive compensation in the credit union industry: more money doesn't automatically buy more growth.
The $371 Million Betrayal: Inside America's Credit Union Enforcement Crisis
The numbers tell a story of systematic betrayal. Over the past fifteen years, the National Credit Union Administration has permanently banned 1,422 individuals from the financial industry, employees and officers who violated the trust of the member-owned institutions they served. These weren't faceless corporate executives at distant megabanks.
How Angel Studios Raised $150M+ With Zero Sales Commissions
When Angel Studios filed its 2025 Regulation A offering, it disclosed something remarkable: $67,500 in total service costs on $71.7 million raised. That's a 0.1% cost ratio, compared to the 13.4% average across all Reg A issuers this year. The difference isn't luck or timing. It's the result of nearly a decade building distribution before asking for capital.
The True Cost of Reg A: 13.4% of Every Dollar Raised Goes to Service Providers
Companies using Regulation A to raise capital in 2025 planned to raise $3.5 billion but actually collected just $540.4 million, a 15.4% success rate. Of that amount raised, $72.2 million went directly to service providers, representing 13.4 cents of every dollar. The numbers tell a story of capital inefficiency that founders need to understand before pursuing this path.
Masterworks' $161M Reg A Ghost Fleet: 100+ SEC Entities, Zero Vault Sales
"Sometimes I make something I don't even understand until later." Jean-Michel Basquiat Masterworks, founded in 2017 by entrepreneur Scott Lynn, has built one of the most successful alternative investment platforms in the art market. The company claims over 880,000 members, $1 billion in assets under management, and 23 profitable exits with annualized returns ranging from 4.1% to 77.3%.
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