All articles by Grant Collinson
Grant Collinson
Animated’ first Leasing Foundation meeting
Co-founder of the organisation, which was created to support the leasing and asset finance industry, Andrew Denton, told Leasing Life the meeting was all he had hoped for, and said the 15 governors in attendance discussed how to develop the Foundations ambitions for research, industry development and education.
Profile: A local lessor for local business
While much of the fleet leasing industry across Europe has muttered about consolidation in the market during the crisis years of post-2008, one UK broker sees opportunity in all things small, local and manual. Credo Asset Finance, based in East Anglia, on the east coast of England, is a regional fleet broker which reckons it has found a gap in the market local SME fleets which falls between retail finance and major business fleet funders.
CIT opens online portal for hi-tech leasing
CIT Global Vendor Finance has launched a suite of online software to support its manufacturer partners and resellers. Called e-Quiportal, the suite is designed to support the changing technological requirements of partners such as cloud-based products, managed services and usage-based billing, the US-headquartered lessor said. The first product from the suite is called e-Quipdirect which allows customers to order and finance equipment and related services, such as software, extended warranties, installation and training, through one process.
NACFB heads to London
The body which represents brokers in the leasing and asset finance industry in the UK has been based in Exeter for the majority of its 20-year history but intends to be based in the UK capital before the end of November. Writing in the NACFBs member magazine, Adam Tyler, chief executive of the NACFB, said: “Over the last two years, and with an even greater acceleration in the past six months, I have been spending more and more time in London, with three days a week becoming the norm.
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Agricultural capital
Having signed some lucrative deals with some of Europes biggest agriculture equipment manufacturers over the past two years including Kverneland, Berthoud, Grimme and Vaderstad, it is clear GE Capital CDF, the floor plan finance arm of industrial conglomerate General Electric, intends to plough a deep furrow in the field of agricultural finance.
Long, dark night
Therefore, when eurozone ministers reached a preliminary agreement on 28 June to use a central fund to bailout struggling banks in the single currency zone, Leasing Life took the opportunity to reach out to the leasing community and discover how bad the crisis really is and what the various possible outcomes might mean for the industry. Testament to the ever-changing nature of the crisis and the sensitivity of the subject for businesses, many of the leasing networks contacted by Leasing Life refused to comment with one bank-owned lessor suggesting the topic was too politically loaded and changing too quickly for it to contribute.
Leasing Foundation board of governors grows
The line-up of global leasing professionals and academics who have joined the Lease Foundation as governors has reached 14 with the latest raft of board members. John Bennet of Hitachi Capital Business Finance, who was awarded the Leasing Life Lifetime Achievement award last year, joined as governor along with three leaders from the captive finance sector Nils Jaeger, vice president of international finance with John Deere Financial, Bret Thomas, vice president and global business head at Xerox Financial Services, and Patrick Jelly, managing director of Pitney Bowes UK. The not-for-profit organisation set-up by Andrew Denton of CHP Consulting and Derek Soper of IAA-Advisory has also welcomed academics Rob Macredie, a professor of Information Systems at Brunel University, and Professor Iwan Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Internationalisation and External Affairs at Swansea University.
Decline of the ‘anti-competitive’ NLGS welcomed
The chief executive of ING Lease UK, Chris Stamper, has hit out at the governments National Loan Guarantee Scheme (NLGS) as anti-competitive and said the programmes demise could be seen as a Treasury response to that criticism. In a letter to Leasing Life, Stamper said he agreed with the points made by Peter Collins, chief executive of MAN Finance, who said the scheme is anti-competitive because it gives support to UK-based banks and not to other asset finance providers. Since launching the Funding for Lending Scheme (FLS), the latest credit-easing initiative, the Treasury has effectively called time on the NLGS as a tool to stimulate lending five months after it began
Kennet Equipment Leasing goes digital with quote app
UK leasing broker Kennet Equipment Leasing has launched a smart phone app for its vendor partners to calculate leasing quotes. The tool is available on iPad and most smart phones, including iPhone, Android and Blackberry models, and can be used to quickly generate leasing quotes using an invoice value and repayment term.