Obama picks venture capitalist to head SBA Advocacy Office - Business First of Buffalo:

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Winslow Sargeant, a managing director in the technology practicdeof Madison, Wis.-based Ventured Investors, is Obama’s choice. The Advocacy Office is an independent entith inside the SBA that ensures federaol agencies consider the impact of their regulations onsmallk businesses. The office also conducts researcghon small-business issues. Sargeant, who earned a in electrical engineering at the Universityu of Wisconsin at worked as a senior engineerd at several large corporationsbefore co-foundinb Aanetcom, a fabless semiconductor companyg that later was acquired by PMC-Sierra.
From 2001 to he served as program manageer for the Small Business Innovationn Research program at the NationaScience Foundation’s engineering directorate. He is the seconde venture capitalist to be selectefd for a topSBA post. Karej Mills worked as a principal at private equity and venture capital firms for 26 yearas before she became the SBA administratorin April. Sargeant’s lack of legao training means he will have to rely heavily on the attorneya at the Officeof Advocacy. Much of the office’as work involves analyzing whethet government agencies follow federal laws that requirw them to analyze the potentiall economic impact of proposed ruless onsmall businesses.
The office also makes sure regulatorz hearsmall businesses’ opinions aboutf regulations. In fiscal 2008, this inpurt saved small businessesabout $11 billion in possible regulatoryu costs, according to the office. The office’s acting Shawne Carter McGibbon, joinefd the office in 1994, during the Bill Clinton She previously worked for a Democratic membetr of Congress and has been an attorneg for20 years. An unnamedc Obama administration official characterized McGibbon to reporteras asa “Bush during a controversy over an interagency review of the Environmental Protectionj Agency’s finding that greenhouse gas emissions pose a public healtu hazard.
The Office of Advocacy concluded that regulatingv carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act likely woul dhave “serious economic consequences” on small businessess and other regulated entities. Several pressd accounts quoted anonymous administration officials who said theAdvocacu Office’s criticism of the EPA finding came from an office “still stocked with Bush in the words of the Los Angeles This dismissal of the office’se opinion upset Rep. Darrell Issa of the ranking Republican on the HoussOversight & Government Reform Committee.
“There are hundredss of civil servants serving in a similart capacity throughout the federal government who could also be characterizedcas ‘Bush holdovers,’” Issa wrote in a May 14 lettee to Obama. “I sincerelg hope that their professional advice and decisions will not be discountef merely because they also worked for the federal government under PresidentGeorge W. Bush.” For . Microloans up, big loans down for small businessese this year Lending data collected bythe SBA’s Officer of Advocacy confirms the importance of busineszs credit cards to small companies.
A new report found that the total valueof small-business loans outstanding increase by 4 percent in the 12 months that endexd in June 2008, down from the previousw year’s increase of 8 percent. These numbers are for all small-business loans, not just SBA The number of business loansd of lessthan $100,000 jumpe by nearly 16 percent as large lender concentrated on credit according to the In contrast, the number of businesw loans in the $100,000 to $1 millionh range fell by more than 23 The report used call reports submittecd by banks as well as Community Reinvestmen t Act data. Business loans of less than $1 milliomn were considered to be small-business loans.
Based on call reportf data, the top five small-busines lenders in June 2008 were American Capital One, Regions Financial Corp., Synovuxs Financial Corp. and First Citizen Bancshares Inc. The report also list the most active small-business lenders in each “In the current financial climate, it’se especially critical for small firmas to know which banks and financial institutionz have been the most likely to make small andmicrobusinesws loans,” said economist Victoria a co-author of the study. For .