The above is the search term used by someone last night in Google who ended up on this blog. The IP address was in Brighton which leads me to wonder if it had anything to do with the meeting of GMAC staff that was arranged in Brighton for yesterday afternoon where something of importance was to be discussed.
Ian
Factoring company of the year silly season is here again – part 2
I wrote a story in April (http://factoringblog.co.uk/?p=204) saying that whilst I was away sunning myself a raft of different factoring companies had all won awards for being the best factoring company according to a variety of different publications.
Having returned from topping up the tan again I found two more emails in my inbox from companies announcing their recent awards.
The first was from Leumi ABL to tell me that they had been voted “Asset Based Lender of the Year” according to ACQ Finance magazine’s Country Awards for Achievement 2009 and according to the blurb “The accolade is the result of a totally independent poll amongst industry peers”
The second was from those masters of self promotion Venture Finance who were awarded “‘Independent alternative finance provider of the year” by….. wait for it….. ACQ again.
Whilst I’m sure that both Leumi and Venture feel proud of their awards a look at some other of the award winners may put them into perspective as “ALMT – Best Indian Commercial Law Firm of the Year”, “Aviation Law Firm of the Year – Latin America, “Insurance & Reinsurance Law Firm of the Year – UAE”, “Shipping Law Firm of the Year – Hong Kong”, “Shipping & Maritime Law Firm of the Year – UAE” and “Specialist Law Firm of the Year – Aviation – UK” were all won by the same company – Clyde & Co
Is there anyone who hasn’t won an award from these people 🙂
Cattles Invoice Finance sale announced at long last
The long running saga of the sale of Cattles Invoice Finance has at last been announced with the purchasor being the private equity house AnaCap Financial Partners LLP who have been lurking in the wings for quite a while.
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.
Business Money called me an anorak
One of my factoring buddies sent me the current edition of Business Money which to those that haven’t come across this august journal is a magazine apparently devoted to the factoring industry which says lots of nice things about all of the factoring companies and is funded by advertisements from them too. He seemed to be highly amused that the magazine had printed a dig at me 🙂
When skimming through it there were three paragraphs that caught my eye.
1) Business Money, over 16 years has always endeavoured to report hard commercial reality
2) The job of the media is to report facts, accompanied by comment given that the public cannot be sufficiently well-versed in every topic being reported on to place the news in context
3) The Cattles saga goes on, a situation calling for some sensitivity and not helped by one or two, who really do need to get out more, without their anoraks, and who seem to delight in creating as much anguish as they can for a great bunch of men and women who are just trying to do their job with something of a cloud over them.
The urban dictionary defines an “anorak” as someone “obsessively interested in a thing or topic that doesn’t seem to warrant such attention” so it would seem that because I have a problem with the fact that Cattles Invoice Finance are continuing to take on new staff and clients at a time when their parent company is struggling for survival I am an anorak that should get out more.
I’m quite sure that the friendship shown by Business Money towards Cattles Invoice Finance has nothing to do with the full page advert that appeared a few pages along in the same edition. 🙂
The Factoring Blog was set up partly because there is no media devoted to reporting “the hard commercial realities” within the factoring industry and there is much that needs to be said but unlike Business Money we can be objective because we don’t have to worry about biting the hand that feeds us.
Problems at Ashley Commercial Finance ?
Ashley Commercial Finance have issued a press release which included the phrase “We have decided that in the current climate risk is more easily managed at the “small ticket” end of the factoring market and have therefore introduced a temporary funding cap of ÂŁ50k for new business.”
We had heard rumours of funding restrictions being placed on clients and wonder whether this is connected with other rumours doing the rounds about substantial bad debt losses within their client portfolio.
There is a well known company within factoring circles whom no-one would touch with the proverbial bargepole but if rumours are to be believed Ashley unwisely took on a client connected with this company and are now suffering the consequences.