Deal Maker of the Year Awards 2013 WINNER - SEAN POWELL

NAME: Sean Powell COMPANY: RBS Invoice Finance POSITION: Director of Business Development TEL: 0161 862 8002 EMAIL: sean.powell@rbsif.co.uk

BIO

Sean Powell is Director of Business Development at RBS Invoice Finance and is responsible for developing and implementing the company’s sales strategy across the North of England and Scotland.

Sean has worked for RBS Invoice Finance for 18 years and has extensive experience working across the SME market and the wider professional community. Sean and his team have a proven track record of working with clients across the region and have a strong appetite to work across a variety of opportunities – from small to large and more complex transactions.

Sean Powell explains: “At RBS Invoice Finance we value our relationship with the intermediary market and pride ourselves on being able to demonstrate the advantages of using invoice finance. Our aim is to ensure introducers are best placed to advise their clients on the full suite of products that may suit their financial requirements. By giving clients a greater choice of solutions, together with the intermediary market, we can ensure we are delivering the right product that is tailored to suit the business’ needs.

Forging strong partnerships with the intermediary market remains one of our key priorities. Not only does this form a vital channel for new business opportunities, but we also recognise the importance of introductions to our client base as and when the opportunity arises. As one of the largest providers of invoice finance in the UK we have a strong appetite to write new business, and offer a full suite of financial solutions including Asset Based Lending (ABL), international, Enterprise Finance Guarantee Invoice Finance and integrated Bad Debt Protection. We also offer a broker scheme with attractive incentives for the intermediary market demonstrating our commitment to working effectively together to achieve the right funding solution for our clients.”

Positive secures secondary buyout with

RBS Group Earlier this year, RBS Invoice Finance and NatWest were instrumental in supporting Positive Cashflow Finance (“Positive”) after structuring a £22million funding line that supported the firm’s directors to secure a majority shareholding in the business they founded five and a half years ago.

The deal team was headed up by Sean Powell and transacted by David Green (Business Development Manager), Hannah Preston (due diligence), David James (Relationship Manager), and Ed Clivery and Paul Bradbury (NatWest banking team).

The company, which was backed by private equity

firm Infinity Asset Management in December 2007 (“Infinity”), recently announced profits of £652,000 for 2012, on a turnover of £3.6 million.

Positive are headquartered in Manchester and

provide funding facilities from £10,000 to £1million to improve working capital, fund acquisitions and accelerate growth.

Commenting on the deal, Positive’s managing director David Smith, said: “When we were approached by RBS Invoice Finance it became clear that they shared our vision for the future and put together a financial package that worked. The increased funding line will

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enable us to continue to develop and provide much needed working capital to SMEs throughout the UK.” Phil Chesham, sales and marketing director at Positive, added: “We are delighted to be working with RBS Invoice Finance as we have always had a good relationship with them. This was a particularly important aspect of the deal for us as we have built a solid business by developing healthy long-term relationships with both our clients and our funders. Having announced strong profits, we feel well placed to further develop our business”.

Sean Powell, director of business development at RBS Invoice Finance, concluded: “We are delighted to have assisted Positive through this share purchase and look forward to working with them in achieving their continued growth. This underlines the commitment of both RBS Invoice Finance and Positive in supporting the SME marketplace. With a strong appetite to write new business, at RBS Invoice Finance we offer a full suite of financial solutions including Asset Based Lending (ABL), International, Enterprise Finance Guarantee Invoice Finance and integrated Bad Debt Protection. This deal highlights how invoice finance can be used to support MBO activity and whilst we can offer our facilities as part of a stand-alone facility we also have the benefit of working closely with our bank colleagues and can provide a group wide funding solution as we have done for Positive.”

Sean goes on to explain: “Access to finance and cash flow management continue to be top of the agenda for UK businesses when seeking advice from their professional advisor and finding out what options are available to them.

The increasing number of

Government lending schemes and bank initiatives demonstrates there is support available and sometimes traditional loans and overdrafts will be the answer but increasingly we are seeing the rise of more flexible types of funding such as invoice finance coming to the fore to provide not only safe working capital and protection against bad debt and late payments but also to support more complex transactions and acquisition activity.”

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DEAL: RBS Invoice Finance backs Positive Cashflow Finance’ MBO from Infinity