Whilst the announcement is now “old news” it did come when I was away sunning myself in Cyprus and whilst I thought about writing something for the blog at the time the amount of effort required to research and write something via Blackberry was too much like hard work.

Having belatedly read the press release dated 10th August I was interested to read the comment attributed to Doug Crawford that “The invoice finance industry is enjoying unprecedented growth in the current financial climate………”

The statistics for the factoring industry issued by the ABFA for the last couple of quarters show that far from enjoying “unprecedented growth” the industry has seen a drop in value of sales factored as well as the number of clients availing themselves of the services but I now await with great interest the figures for the quarter ended 30th June (which should be available shortly) to see the official confirmation of this growth.

This time I took more time out to read the webage and there was a section entitled “Simply fill in this short form to receive our 1 minute guide to factoring”

So far so good but a drop down list gave a list of options and you are supposed to select the option which is the most relevant. The options are:-

1) Cashflow Issues

2) Want To Grow?

3) Buying Our Company

4) Buying a Company

5) Want New factor

I know that Cattles Invoice Finance must be getting desperate by now but surely advertising for a buyer on their own website isn’t the answer

Is this to be the new company name if the sale of the factoring company ever goes through or have the Cattles management decided to prepare to jump ship in case the continued stalling proves terminal.

According to the report the company is in breach of it’s banking covenants and is currently locked away in talks with it’s bankers in an effort to refinance the company and they are claiming that they are unable to finalise the accounts for the year ended 31st December 2008 until these talks are concluded.

One has to wonder how this announcement tallies with the announcement made just a couple of days ago that CIF were expanding their sales team where the regional managing director made the bold statement that “Despite many of our competitors freezing recruitment as a means to cut costs, we feel it is important to invest in talent because it plays such an integral part of driving growth and business development”

One has to wonder quite what the “talent” has made of today’s announcement

I don’t suppose that they factored in the worsening climate for finance companies and banks at the time and the end of the year has now come and gone with no sign of any imminent announcement regarding the sale.

Rumours regarding the interest shown by Bank Santander have now gone quiet whilst we hear that Hitachi who were the recent favourites have also lost interest.

We have to repeat the advice that we gave in September that until the future is clear we cannot recommend Cattles to any of our clients.

Ian

Factoring Solutions

The group is in talks with it’s lenders about renogiating a £500m credit line that is due to expire next summer and is also trying to obtain a banking licence from the FSA which would allow it to start taking deposite from customers.

Perhaps these two factors would explain why subsidiary Cattles Invoice Finance is up for sale and we would re-iterate the comment that we made a couple of months ago that until the future has become clearer we would not recommend Cattles Invoice Finance to any of our factoring clients

We were approached by a company last week that was looking for a factoring facility and having read our website they were interested in our recommendations. The MD mentioned that he had already approached Cattles Invoice Finance on the basis that they were award winners to which my response was that almost all factoring companies were award winners somewhere or another.

Looking at the factoring and invoice discounting companies’ website I noticed that Cattles were proudly proclaiming to have won the Business Innovation of the Year award at the National Business Awards’ North West regional finals.

Moving onto Close Invoice Finance and they are claiming the Business Moneyfacts Best Factoring and Invoice Discounting Provider award for the third year running whilst Venture Finance are the winners of the Credit Today Factor Discounter of the Year for the second year running.

Perhaps the most amusing website is that of Bibby Factors where they are proud of the fact that they were voted best factor and discounter by NACFB 2003 2004 2005 2006 thus prompting the question “What happened in 2007 then”

In addition to the above I went to the annual Dealmakers Dinner late last year which included an awards ceremony and GE Commercial Finance managed to win the Dealmakers Asset Based Lending award of the year.

I have no doubt that the clearing bank factors have also won a shelf full of awards between them as I seem to recall that Lloyds TSB was the victor at the Dealmakers Dinner in the previous year.

Oddly enough we introduced the prospective client that started me thinking about awards to one of the few factoring companies that doesn’t seem to have won an award at all even though they consistantly offer an above average service at competitive rates.