Colony’s Barrack Urges Margin Call Moratorium in CMBS Market

Tom Barrack, who a week ago warned that commercial real estate financing was on the brink of collapse because of the coronavirus pandemic, is now calling for a moratorium on margin calls and intervention by the Federal Reserve to keep values of mortgage debt from plummeting further.

“America needs the immediate cooperation and support from our banking sector,” Barrack, chairman and chief executive officer of Colony Capital Inc., said in a white paper he posted on Medium.

The threat of widespread defaults has caused waves of selling in the market for commercial mortgage-backed securities. Banks in turn are ...