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Two weeks ago the domain name absoluteinvoicefinance.co.uk was registered to Nick McAvoy using the address of Cattles Invoice Finance in Yorkshire.
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.
We were told to expect an announcement this week regarding the proposed sale of Cattles Invoice Finance but much to the surprise of everyone the only announcement to be made so far this week is that the shares in the parent company have been suspended.
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
Whilst I’ve been away sunning myself over Easter my inbox has been filling up with emails from various factoring companies telling me about the awards that they had won (or were nominated for)
First off was an email from Skipton Business Finance by way of an introduction to the writer in which he stated that “There has been a lot of positive changes to personnel within SBF over the last 12 months which has lead us to achieve the ‘UK Factoring & Invoice Discounting Provider of the year award 2009’ at the ACQ Global Awards 2009” I wasn’t quite sure how to take the bit about the fact that it was the positive changes to personnel that lead to the award as I’m not sure if it meant that they had got rid of the people that stopped them getting the award in the past or had employed a factoring superhero or two.
The second email was from Venture Finance to tell me that they had been voted winners yet again of a prestigious award but I’m afraid that I can’t remember which as I accidentally deleted the email.
The third was a slightly unusual press release as it was from Oriel Collections who were jumping the gun a bit as they hadn’t actually won anything but had been short listed for “Commercial Credit Team of the Year” in the Credit Today awards.
Interestingly enough one of the three companies mentioned above has a terrible reputation in the industry for service and Factoring Solutions has received quite a few enquiries from it’s disgruntled clients in the past but there again I don’t suppose that winning an award actually has much to do with service anyway.
The shortlist for “Factor & Discounter of the Year” for the Credit Today awards comprises the following luminaries – Ashley Commercial Finance, Bibby Financial Services, Cattles Invoice Finance, HSBC Bank and Venture Finance. It makes me wonder how a company manages to get itself shortlisted for such an award. The staff and clients of Cattles haven’t known whether or not they were coming or going in the past few months whilst HSBC have been keeping selected brokers in champagne by offloading clients that they decided no longer fit their new criteria.
I will make the same comment that I made last time I wrote about silly season that the two factoring companies I use most of all have service levels far higher than most coupled with competitive pricing and unlike at least one of the factoring companies mentioned above are still actively looking for business yet neither of them has ever won diddly squat.
It’s a strange world
Cattles seem to be having a tough time of it lately as according to an article in the Scotsman a few days ago here it seems like one of their Scottish clients has been invoicing fresh air to the tune of £650,000
As if that wasn’t bad enough the shares in the parent company dived again last week as they had to issue a warning that their results would be delayed “pending completion of a review of the adequacy of its impairment provisions” which sounds to me rather like the auditors aren’t happy with the provisions.
Talking to one factoring company last week I was told that they were being inundated with CVs from employees from Cattles Invoice Finance which speaks volumes about staff morale.
When the board of Cattles announced to the world in September that their factoing subsidiary was up for sale they stated that they hoped to conclude a deal by the end of the year.
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