The February sale of German bank IKB’s leasing businesses to PEAC excluded operations in Slovakia and Romania, IKB’s latest financial statement show.
Earlier this week, BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions signed a memorandum of understanding to acquire IKB Leasing Romania, leaving Slovakia as the only country where IKB still operates a leasing business.
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UK-based PEAC Finance acquired the rest of the IKB Leasing Group in February, bringing its subsidiaries under a rebranded German subsidiary. The sale included German truck lessors UTA and 30% equity in the captive finance unit of Linde, the materials handling manufacturer.
The size of the transaction was not disclosed. As of September 2017, IKB held a combined €276m (£240m) of equity in the entities it sold.
Equity in the Romanian and Slovakian subsidiaries was €1.9m and €2.7m respectively. IKB Leasing Romania reported €329m in profits for 2016, while Slovakian operations recorded a €201m loss.
IKB retained around €1.1m in leasing and hire purchase receivables. In the last publicly available results before the PEAC sale, receivables totalled €55m.
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By GlobalDataAccording to IKB, the decision to divest leasing operations stemmed from a decision to focus on “high-end mid-market companies”.
PEAC looking for European expansion
PEAC was born in 2016, when private equity firm HPS Investment Partners acquired CIT Vendor Finance UK, which had been seeking a buyer to reemerge from bankruptcy.
PEAC maintaned CIT’s existing base of operations in Dublin, and subsequently sought to expand beyond soft assets and into the European market.
The acquisition of IKB Leasing, first agreed in mid-2017, extended PEAC’s footprint to Italy, Germany, Austria, Benelux and France. It also provided it with a presence in growing Eastern European markets such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia and Hungary.
Last month, PEAC chief executive John Phillipou told Leasing Life in an interview: “We don’t want to go toe to toe with the banks and main leasing companies. But we do want to offer a very fast point of sale, through e-sign payout through broker-lenders in the hard and soft asset section.”
