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Solent companies making it onto the Fast Track 100 The Car Finance Company
The Car Finance Company, the Portsmouth-based concern that is financing nearly 3,000 new customers every month, has maintained its position as one of the top sales growth companies in the UK.
The company is listed at number 10 in the latest Sunday Times Virgin Fast Track 100 league table, which annually ranks Britain‘s 100 private companies with the fastest- growing sales over their latest three years. It follows the 2014 number two placing.
The company has a field sales team that travels around car dealerships to meet every customer who takes out one of its loans. It claims this customer care has helped it to expand the 2015 sales figure to £53.9 million, which represents interest on the loans it grants. It averages out at more than 119% growth over the past three years.
Founded by executive chairman Mark Smith in 2007, the company now employs some 400 staff who focus on lending to people who find it difficult to get bank loans – currently approving over 50% of all applications. Pinebrook Partners acquired a majority stake for an undisclosed sum last March.
The Car Finance Company says: ”We pride ourselves on being different from the traditional banks and payday loan companies. Unlike any other
lender in the industry, we‘re an employee-owned enterprise. This is an important factor in our decision-making process, as every application we receive is reviewed by the employees themselves and not a computer program.”
Southampton Football Club
Southampton Football Club was the only other company from the Solent area to make the Fast Track 100 table, moving down just four places from the previous listing to number 38.
Promotion to the Premier League in 2012 after a seven-year absence helped to add £90m to its annual revenues, reaching £113.7m last year and averaging 70.5% rises over the past three years.
The Saints were originally a church football team founded in 1885. Currently chairwoman Katharina Liebherr owns the club – which now employs some 300 people – after inheriting it from her father, the billionaire industrialist Markus Liebherr. Last May the team finished seventh in the Premier League.
Club Southampton still has some hospitality packages available for this season, and has a sponsorship team dedicated to working with local businesses, offering high- level advertising, branding and marketing options. Since July 2014 the main backer has been Veho, one of the fastest-growing consumer electronic brands in the world.
Old Ford plant purchased for industrial and logistics development
Industrial, distribution and ecommerce companies have been invited to express their interest in a planned new 450,000 sq ft logistics and industrial park set to be built on the old Ford plant in Southampton.
In a reported £20 million deal, developer Mountpark purchased the 25-acre Transit Van factory site just before Christmas and has already been in discussions with Southampton City Council to build a modern industrial and distribution development.
www.businessmag.co.uk
Mark Webster, head of European logistics and industrial for Cushman and Wakefield commercial agents – which acted for Ford and is now working with Mountpark to market the new development – said: ”There was a lot of interest in the site. Land of this quality does not come up for sale very often.”
Ford produced Transit at the Swaythling factory for 40 years until it controversially closed the plant in 2013 with the loss of 350 local jobs.
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – FEBRUARY 2016
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