Factoring

Factoring company of the year is…..

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Almost all of them.

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.

Davenham Group Problems

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Less than a year after Davenham rejected an £84m takeover bid at £3.25 per share an announcement that record bad debts will wipe out any profits has seen the share price tumble to just 8.25p

The company has taken measures to react to changing circumstances by making a large number of staff redundant whilst employing more people in it’s arrears department but there are still concerns that the problems that originate in the property division might impact on the factoring and trade finance divisions.

Davenhams have some niche products for financing the SME sector including a stock finance facility that is quite innovative and we would hate to see that plunging property values will affect the company’s ability to continue increasing it’s presence in the factoring arena

Factoring PR blunders

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In these fast moving and difficult times one has to be doubly careful of press releases and PR exercises as they may leave you with egg on your face at a later stage.

The current edition of the glossy magazine Business Money has a full colour cover devoted to Landsbanki which will no doubt continue to be an embarrassment to it’s editor until the next edition comes out whilst Venture Finance sent out a press release on 25th September telling the world about the new larger premises that they were moving into on 1st October in order to facilitate the integration of all the extra people upon their integration with Fortis. This was less than two weeks before the announcement that Fortis was being nationalised and the integration would now no longer be going ahead.

Ian

Welcome to the factoring blog

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What a day to start blogging about the world of factoring and invoice discounting with the major UK banks in complete disarray having had to go to the Government, begging bowl in hand due to the complete failure of their lending policies over the past few years.

If it weren’t bad enough that the parent companies of Royal Bank of Scotland Commercial Finance, Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance and Bank of Scotland Cashflow Finance are now part Government owned we also have the situation where one of those banks is heavily involved in the funding of many of the major independent factoring companies too so we don’t know what the future holds for them either.

 

Ian