Venture Finance

Venture Finance – the kings of self promotion

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Venture are one of those companies that delight in taking the slightest opportunity for a bit of self promotion and the latest bit of PR to arrive across my desk is to tell me that their Birmingham office has moved address.

For most companies it would suffice to give the new address and the date of the move but I guess that Venture employ a PR man who needs to earn his corn so I received the following:-

“Venture has strengthened its presence in Birmingham by relocating to a new office in the city centre.

The new address is:
Venture Finance
Victoria House
116 Colmore Row
Birmingham
B3 3BD

The new office has a great location in the centre of Birmingham, just a few hundred yards from New Street rail station. This will enable our Midlands team to provide an even better and more tangible service to our introducers.

With a fourth Business Improvement District recently approved for Southside, these are exciting times to be located right at the heart of the city and we look forward to continuing our efforts in supporting local businesses meet the recovery with strength.”

According to Multimap, Venture have moved just two and a half miles from Edgbaston to the much more expensive Colmore Row and I am intrigued to know how this move will enable their team to offer a better and more tangible service to introducers.

The new address is certainly nearer to the bars and restaurants in the city centre and I wonder if this is anything to do with the “exciting times” referred to. After all, it is December

Interesting times at Venture Finance

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Venture Finance are heavily into self promotion and it seems like every time they sign a client a press release does the rounds. The latest to hit the circuit was earlier this week when they announced that “its Q3 results for 2009 are the best it has achieved in a decade. The independent invoice and asset-based lender has provided consistent support to UK businesses, in what has been a difficult time for liquidity. As a result, Venture has witnessed a 42% increase in new clients above the usual third quarter average, dating back to 2000.”

Th company’s staff must be wondering quite what to make of this announcement as they had just been called to a staff meeting during which they were told that the company was looking for volunteers for redundancy as 20 staff were to be chopped.

Venture Finance rumours

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The grapevine has been full of rumours about Venture Finance being the latest target of Deutche Bank’s attempt to break into the UK factoring market but it has recently come to the ears of the Factoring Blog that having got as far as due diligence they have suddenly lost interest as apparently they weren’t too keen on some of the structured lending deals that they looked at

Factoring company of the year silly season is here again – part 2

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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 🙂

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.