Credit crunch send chills across business spectrum

In today’s world, there’s no place to hide for businesses or consumers.

The financial crisis sweeping the globe is closing the loan window for many of metro Atlanta’s companies and their customers.

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Johnny Crawford /jcrawford@ajc.com

Jim Foster, owner of Real Salon near Decatur, says he didn’t have any trouble tapping his credit line, but he has a second one available just in case.

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That’s because stock markets and banks from London to Tokyo have direct impacts on Wall Street, and vice versa. And those financial markets — with all the money they’re supposed to provide — determine whether businesses and consumers on Main Street get credit.

Like others caught in the housing market’s downdraft, Marsha Middleton and her husband, Willie, have been seeking a mortgage for a year, despite good credit.

“We have the credit score,” said Marsha Middleton of Brookhaven. But she said lenders have been leery to finance their recently constructed home because they are self-employed and would need a so-called “jumbo” mortgage topping $417,000.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said households with good credit histories are having trouble getting mortgages and home equity loans, and banks are clamping down on credit card limits and the availability of car loans. Essentially, banks are holding on to their cash, uncertain about who to lend to or how much would be prudent.

In the new environment, local companies are treading carefully.

“For all practical purposes, new loans are dead right now,” said Richard L. “Rick” Jackson, chief executive of Jackson Healthcare in Alpharetta. “I’d hate to be in a business right now that needs to borrow money to exist.”

Jackson said his 600-employee medical staffing company doesn’t need to borrow any extra cash now. But his financial backers have basically told him not to ask. “The information they’re giving me is I should be glad I don’t need any money.”

Jackson Healthcare has a mostly untapped $100 million credit line from three large lenders that it uses mainly to finance acquisitions. As a result of the credit crunch, Jackson knows he will have to be “a lot choosier in what we buy,” he said.

For some would-be borrowers, the choices are tougher.

Because his customers have been slow to pay lately, Ronnie Antebi asked his bank to double his credit line to $200,000, but the bank, which he declined to identify publicly, refused.

“We wanted a little more to be on the safe side, but they’re not doing that right now,” said Antebi, who owns A&R Welding, a 38-employee company near downtown Atlanta that makes spiral steel staircases and components for apartments and other buildings.

Antebi said he recently laid off three employees and may have to cut more next month if business doesn’t pick up. He plans to try other banks.

Not all borrowers have had trouble getting additional loans, but even those people are worried.

“We are lucky so far,” said Jim Foster, owner of Real Salon near Decatur. Foster said he didn’t have any difficulty tapping a home equity credit line to cover half of the roughly $50,000 cost of relocating his five-employee beauty shop in late August from Avondale Estates.

But he said he’s glad hair salons aren’t usually too sensitive to economic downturns, and that he has a second credit line available — just in case. “If the current economic crisis continues, I may have to tap that,” he said.