Bank Santander

It seems that having purchased a factoring company specialising in smaller and riskier clients Bank Santander now don’t want them and are giving them notice.

Having received an enquiry from the second Liquidity client within a week the factoring company that I passed them to said that they had also received several more through other channels.

One does wonder why on earth they bought this particular factoring company if that wasn’t the sector of the market that they wished to be in – it must have been the tax losses 🙂

Bank Santander have entered the UK factoring market not with a bang but with a wimper. The Spanish banking giant has been sniffing around the many factoring companies for sale for some time and were rumoured to be the frontrunners to take over Cattles Invoice Finance until getting cold feet and have instead plumped for the little known Liquidity Ltd a small factoring outfit based in Birmingham.

I have always been very dubious of recommending any of my clients to Liquidity as it is run by the same person that used to be the Chief Executive of Euro Sales Finance until it was rescued by Royal Bank of Scotland in 2001. Prior to being taken over by the bank Euro Sales topped the league tables of independent factoring companies appointing Receivers to their clients.

In 1999 and 2000 Euro Sales Finance accounted for one in five of all Receiverships appointed by independent factoring companies which was a horrifying statistic and one that has ensured that I never deal with any factoring company that has any of their old directors in a management position.