uk news
New CEO for Arval A
Bart Beckers
rval UK has announced that Jean-Marc Torre is to hand over his role as Chief Executive Officer after five successful years to join Bank of the West. He will be replaced by Bart Beckers, who has strong
experience in operating leasing having spent the last 15 years with LeasePlan. Bart Beckers has completed a number of roles in Europe, most recently as chairman of the LeasePlan companies in France where he successfully turned around the company in 2005/6 and prepared it for renewed profitable growth, followed by the acquisition and subsequent integration of the French multi-brand leasing subsidiary of the Daimler group. Bart Beckers said, “Having known Arval for many years as a respected and very professional market leader in the French market, it is a real pleasure to be able to join the group at a moment in time where continued growth, client centric projects and people development
OBITUARIES
JOHN LUFF (17th March 1955 – 7th Feb 2011)
John spent his whole career in the finance business, joining Lombard in 1978 and Ford Motor Credit in 1980. In 1986 he joined United Leasing, working with
Sam Geneen and Philip Davies. In 1988 Philip, John and Sam started what is
March 2011 ■
www.leasingworld.co.uk
now Five Arrows Leasing. Over the last 22 years at Five Arrows John was instrumental in many of the acquisitions and sales including Benton Finance, Capital Asset Finance, County Leasing, Security Pacific Finance, and State Securities. For the last two years John spent most of his time at State Securities. John was a great traveller and equally could be found climbing in the Himalayas or trekking the rain forests of South America. He followed the Five Arrows tradition of being a keen cyclist. John’s funeral service was held at St Michaels Church, Bray, in Berkshire and then at at Braywick Cemetery. He leaves his wife Sue, and son Guy
(who works at KPMG in their leasing and asset finance division – like father like son).
ERIC GILLETTE (1928 - 2011)
Eric Gillette, who spent nearly 30 years at Bowmaker, one of the original major UK leasing and finance companies, recently passed away aged 83. Eric was Branch Manager in Sheffield, before moving to Bowmaker’s Head Office in Bournemouth, where he became a main board director.
He spent his final working years until retirement at Hill Samuel.
11 > IN BRIEF
are high on the agenda. Jean-Marc has done a great job leading the UK teams to the position that we are in as a company today, so it is for me an honour and a real pleasure to take over from him and continue on the route of further development.” Jean-Marc Torre will be leaving the company at the end of February to assume the leadership of the Commercial Banking Group at Bank of the West, part of BNP Paribas Group which owns Arval. During his tenure Arval has gone through a period of sustained growth, increasing its fleet size and strengthening its product offer despite challenging market conditions. This has cemented Arval as one of the top leasing companies in the UK and the leading fuel card provider. Jean-Marc Torre said, “After a very enjoyable 5 years at Arval UK I feel that I am leaving the business in a strong position. During my time here I have been very proud of our achievements and last year's business results were testament to the effectiveness and stability of our company and the spirit and strength of our employees. Bart is an extremely capable replacement and I am sure he will deliver continued success to Arval in the UK.”
out to the Banks for funding. We believe there is a blanket perception that Banks are simply not lending, particularly amongst start ups and smaller firms, so they’re not even putting in the request. Yet our study also shows that the Banks are indeed lending, with the majority of applications in 2010 being granted in full, so there is a mismatch between reality and perception.”
This statement from
Charterhouse Research seems to ignore the alternative explanation, which is that banks are lending to those they want to lend to, and potential applicants know that so they may not bother to apply. Banks would prefer to lend to larger companies whose business they understand, and that they already have a long relationship with, which is borne out by the statistic below that only 16 percent of large businesses perceive funding to be unavailable, compared with double that figure among the small business community.
The
second factor is that small businesses complain about the high level of fees being demanded, sometimes even before funding is granted (e.g. compulsory accountants’ reports on business viability). Some of the key findings of the Business Banking Study are as follows: • 28 percent of start ups claim that
the
availability of funding is poor (no surprise as startups are always more difficult to fund)
• 25 percent of established smaller firms believe the availability to be poor
• Only 16 percent of larger firms believe it to be poor.
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