As Europe’s largest lessors expand and grow across
Europe, Leasing Life reports on three territories on the
fringes of Europe currently offering tempting opportunities to the
more ambitious lessors.

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It would seem natural to think that
Massimiliano Moi, CEO of UniCredit Leasing, Europe’s second-largest
leasing company, would be licking his wounds following the
buffeting he and his company would seemingly have received at the
hands of the recession.

After all, over recent years he has staked his
personal reputation, as well as billions of euros of his company’s
money, in investments in Central and Eastern Europe.

Surely then, given the pounding that the CEE
has received at the hands of the recession, Moi must be feeling
downtrodden.

Not a bit of it. In fact, he is more convinced
now than ever of the opportunities the CEE offer.

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In a self-assured statement, and one likely to
be often repeated during the years ahead, Moi remarked: “I call the
CEE region our life insurance for the next 15 years to 20 years. We
will attain the highest level of return and growth from the CEE
region.”

‘Life insurance’

He is clear about the motives behind this
statement: as the recession raged across Europe, Moi kept himself
busy increasing UniCredit’s market share in CEE.

Last year, he says, UniCredit Leasing was one
of the top three leasing companies in 13 out of 17 European
countries.

If all this comes as a surprise, even more
unusual, given the turmoil it has suffered over recent weeks, is
his choice of CEE country with the most potential for making large
returns – Poland.

Poland, he said, is one of UniCredit Leasing’s
biggest areas “for our future investments, where we expect to make
the most returns”.

He added: “For some reason, Poland has been
able to escape the worst impact of the crisis – personally I don’t
see that 2010 will be worse than 2009, so for us this is and
remains a strategic market, in which we are growing and where we
are more and more closely linked to our banking network.”

He is not alone in pointing to Poland’s future
potential. Crédit Agricole Leasing & Factoring, the newly
formed financing arm of French banking group Crédit Agricole (CA)
after the merger of its leasing and factoring activities last
month, has put its Polish business at the top of its international
strategy.

This follows a period of considerable
expansion at CA’s Polish arm, Europejski Fundusz Leasingowy (EFL).
Having launched in Poland in 2000, it today has a 12% market
share.

EFL, with 850 employees, including around 400
sales people spread in 32 branches across the country, is CA
Leasing & Factoring Group’s largest leasing unit outside
France.

Both EFL and UniCredit Leasing are targeting
investment in Poland on the back of opportunities in its
transportation and logistics sectors. These include sizeable
infrastructural projects, particularly in motorway construction, as
well as renewable energy schemes.

Moi, meanwhile, who is pleased with his
company’s 2009 profits of €117m, despite the fact they are
significantly down on the year before, also pointed to another part
of his commercial empire that is performing well – Turkey.

A more eastern market

Although the income from UniCredit Leasing’s
Turkish subsidiary, Yapi Kredi, does not appear in the Italian’s
lessor’s consolidated accounts, due to the fact that under
accountancy rules it is barred from doing so because it is a joint
venture with Koc Group, Moi made clear that it made net profits of
€40m last year. No surprises, therefore, that Turkey figures at the
top of Moi’s agenda.

“These will be our main areas of focus, Turkey
and the CEE,” said Moi.

Moi is not alone in targeting Turkey. The ING
Lease network has just completed its first month of business in
Turkey, on the back of the Dutch bank’s retail bank infrastructure
there.

ING bought into Turkey through the acquisition
of Oyak Bank’s 365 branches in 2008, adding the country to the
group’s “home” (in other words, retail banking) markets of Belgium,
the Netherlands and Poland.

After nine months of preparation, a factoring
business under the auspices of ING Lease opened its doors to
business on 1 April. It will be followed by an equipment leasing
venture in mid-June.

John Howland Jackson, the CEO of ING Lease
Holding, said that the slightly-later opening of the leasing
business was due to issues with the lifecycle of Oyak’s existing
lease portfolio.

While ING Lease Turkey will only inherit a
moderate amount of leasing infrastructure from Oyak, it has taken
on quite a large factoring business, with particular market
presence in export factoring.

Both Moi and ING Lease will also be pleased
with the return to form of the Ukrainian leasing markets, in which
both have made large investments over recent years, the latter
particularly in its real estate sector (see New phase of
stabilisation in Ukraine leasing market).

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