“We need local finance partners in
almost every European country, plus other countries like Turkey
which are developing very quickly,” said Dilek Mackenzie, head of
syndication at Hitachi Capital UK.
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There are already a number of other
Hitachi Group companies and independent vendors working with
Hitachi Capital to provide end-user financing, and the lessor is
seeing “far more and better” opportunities to establish more vendor
ties.
“I have a huge belief it can be a
successful business model,” Mackenzie said. “But it is very much at
the stage of feasibility, going through the internal
processes.”
In some European countries, including
Germany, France, Spain and Romania, the lessor has successfully
piloted the initiative
“Unfortunately, in Europe, Hitachi
Capital is not active directly, which creates problems when
managing the demands of vendors operating on a pan-European basis,”
said Mackenzie.
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By GlobalData“We therefore started working on a
cross-border syndication initiative and in the past few years have
completed pilot schemes with two vendors. These weren’t extensive
schemes – they only involved a certain number of transactions in
selective regions, but they were successful.”
With the new initiative, however,
Hitachi Capital will continue to focus on western European
countries, although Mackenzie did highlight central and eastern
European (CEE) countries as potential targets, such as Romania and
the Czech Republic.
“CEE countries are very interesting,
as Hitachi [the manufacturer] is still seeing a lot of growth – we
have high expectations for the region,” she added.
The benefits of cross-border
syndication deals are two-fold: first, Hitachi Capital will receive
an origination fee for the business it brings to finance partners,
and second, it makes money from fees on RV guarantees.
Because at the end of term, Hitachi
Capital essentially buys back title to the asset and pays the
finance partner an RV guarantee. Any additional RV profit goes to
Hitachi Capital.
In terms of assets, Mackenzie said the
lessor was looking at larger transport, medical and construction
assets in particular, as they can be remarketed on a global level,
through the Hitachi Group.
“We don’t want to be exposed to
certain regions where there is too much risk. We want to make sure
we can move the equipment around if it is economical to do so,”
Mackenzie added.
Jason T Hesse
