ALTERNATIVE LENDER OF THE YEAR


Sponsored by:


Winner: Leumi ABL


Agility and a flexible business approach are key to aspiring and growing companies in today’s fast-changing commercial world, but so is cash.


Whether it is crowdfunding for a startup, invoice finance to aid cashflow, or asset-based lending for growth or M&A, the traditional debt-based sources of funding now have more competition within the funding arena.


Mark Durden-Smith invited attendees to applaud four of the Thames Valley’s finest exponents shortlisted for the 2016 ‘Alternative Lender of the Year’ award title: Blue Bay Asset Management, Breakthrough (Santander), Leumi ABL, and GapCap.


BlueBay is an asset management specialist looking for new opportunities in the European corporate debt market. Last year it backed EDM Group, a company supported by LDC for the past five years, with £100 million of new funding.


Although Breakthrough is a bank fund, judges wanted to acknowledge the alternative offering provided by Santander, which has helped companies access growth capital and connected them to entrepreneurs and potential talent.


The specialist asset-based lending subsidiary of Bank Leumi helps growing companies across the Thames Valley – with Jonathan Hughes actively writing mid-market and big ticket invoice discounting business in the region, and being regularly involved in south dealmaking.


Offering cashflow finance for growing businesses, GapCap, under founder and CEO Alex Fenton, is itself growing rapidly, and providing a very useful alternative for entrepreneurs and SMEs.


Mark Durden-Smith invited Adam Wardle, head of corporate finance at Wilson Partners, the Maidenhead-based chartered accountancy and CF


www.businessmag.co.uk THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MAY 2016 practice, to announce the winner – Leumi ABL.


Leumi ABL actually won this award title in 2014 when the category was first included in the Deals Awards, after online peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding schemes had entered and widened the funding market by providing other financial solution options for the business community.


Not that Leumi’s alternative lending speciality – asset-based products – is new on the business financing scene, as Jonathan Hughes, Thames Valley and south regional sales director of Leumi ABL explained, after receiving the winner’s trophy.


”Asset-based lending has been growing year on year compound for over 20 years and it is accepted much more widely now by corporate financiers and the private equity market. Like all markets it has matured so that the offering of companies like Leumi ABL is much more in tune with what the borrowers want than it might have been 10 years ago.”


So what made the winning difference this year? “We have worked hard always writing business in the Thames Valley, maintained a high profile, spent a lot of time getting out seeing the professional advisers, the investors and the business owners, and this award from the judges has recognised our high level of activity.”


And, Hughes accepted that it was “a definite advantage” to be based at Forbury Square in Reading at the heart of the Thames Valley.


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