CATERPILLAR FINANCIAL
SERVICES
Lawrence Chambers
has joined Caterpillar Financial Services (Cat FS), where he is in
charge of customer and portfolio management. His job remit covers
collections and remarketing across Cat FS’ business in Northern
Europe, Turkey, Africa and the Middle East. He previously worked in
a similar role at the transport and construction arms of Volvo
Financial Services.
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AZULE FINANCE
Jon Openshaw, an
experienced leasing specialist, has joined as a programme manager
at Azule Finance, the UK-based media finance company. Openshaw has
a strong IT background, having worked at AT&T Capital and Sun
Microsystems before he joined Smartfundit as its sales director in
2007. He subsequently joined Syscap, as its head of vendor
programme management, and then Apro Finance, where he was a
consultant. At Azule, he is responsible for generating new business
through manufacturer and reseller programmes.
Gavin Scott, Azule’s sales director, commented: “We brought him on
because of his strength in IT, and IT is an area in which we want
to expand as other leasing companies in this market have pulled
out.”
LEASEDRIVE VELO
Leasedrive Velo has announced a
shake-up within its senior management team. Roger
Partridge, CEO since 2003, is to move away from day-to-day
executive involvement with the fleet management and leasing
company, while David Bird, formerly Leasedrive
Velo’s chief operating officer, will become managing director.
Partridge spent 24 years with the group, and new MD Bird paid
tribute to his tenure. “Roger has successfully managed the growth
of the business for over 10 years and ensured that the company has
maintained its unbroken record of profitability. Under his
leadership, the Leasedrive Velo Group has become a major player in
the fleet management sector,” Bird said. Meanwhile, the former
finance and commercial director at BT Fleet has joined Leasedrive
Velo as its new finance director, the company said. Robert Whitrow
had been at BT Fleet since 2002 and with BT since 1998; prior to
that he was an assistant director at KPMG Corporate Finance.
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By GlobalDataBDL
Germany’s leasing association BDL
has a new chief executive. Horst Fittler was
appointed at the helm of the body at the beginning of February,
replacing Friedhelm Westebbe, who worked in the
German financial services sector for nearly 30 years. Fittler was
for a long time the managing director of Commerz Real
Mobilienleasing GmbH, based in Dusseldorf. BDL’s president Martin
Mudersbach said he was pleased about the association having
appointed Fittler, who knows the leasing industry “from top to
bottom”.
Syscap
The chief sales officer at Syscap,
Mark Gidge, is understood to have left the IT
finance and lease brokerage company. At this stage it is unclear
where Gidge, who has been at Syscap for several years, has moved
to. The move takes place amid a time of growth for the lessor
following an increase year on year during 2009 in the number of
finance agreements it signed with vendors, combined with greater
usage of its online portal.
LOMBARD VEHICLE
MANAGEMENT
In order to grow its presence in
public sector fleet leasing, Lombard Vehicle Management has
recruited new faces to its public sector team, which will in future
be integrated within the Strategic Accounts division, launched last
year.
Emma Darby will cover the southern region for
Lombard; she has worked in the public sector team for two years,
having spent a total of eight years at the fleet provider.
Rory MacKinnon will be in charge of public sector
fleets in the north; he joined the lessor in 2003 on a fast-track
programme, and has worked in its customer services, consultancy and
finance departments. They will both report into Peter Butler,
development director, who joined the Strategic Accounts team in
2009 and now takes up responsibility for the public sector team’s
operations. Butler has over 20 years’ experience at car
manufacturers, and oversaw business improvement programmes at
Volkswagen and Toyota. In addition, Ian Banks has joined the
strategic accounts team as a relationship director. He previously
worked at Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank.
FLEET ALLIANCE
Fleet company Fleet Alliance has
launched a short-to-medium term leasing product, Flexi Hire, for
contracts of between one day and 30 months in total. Martin
Gray, who joins from Mercedes-Benz dealer group John R
Weir where he was corporate sales manager, has joined Fleet
Alliance to oversee the new product, with the job title of fleet
solutions manager.
grs
Remarketing company grs, part of
Greenhous Group, has announced that Theo Kortland
has been promoted to the role of managing director, while previous
MD Kerry Finnon, to whom Kortland will report, has
been appointed CEO of Greenhous Remarketing.
CITROËN
Mark Waite is the
newly-appointed international key account manager at Citroën, the
French carmaker said. He will work within its newly-created Citroën
Business International division, which will aim to grow Citroën’s
share of the fleet market, and will report to the manufacturer’s
Paris headquarters. Waite has significant UK fleet market
experience, having worked at Toyota and Lexus as fleet business
development manager, contract hire leasing and rental manager and
most recently cost of ownership manager.
GLASS’S
Peter McCullough
has been appointed to the newly-created post of head of OEM, fleet
and finance at data provider Glass’s. He joins from CAP Motor
Research where he was business development director, and was
previously MD of
autotrader.co.uk. McCullough’s brief at Glass’s will be to expand
the business’s position in the fleet and finance sector.
QBE
Business insurer QBE has said that
Steve Dickie has been appointed motor fleet
portfolio manager. He has three decades’ experience in motor
insurance, having previously held senior positions at Dominion
Insurance Company and Lloyd’s broker RL Davison. His last role was
at HSBC Insurance (UK Ltd) where he was its motor fleet
underwriter.
BMW Financial Services
UK
BMW Financial Services UK has
appointed a new interim chief executive, Christian
Kalinke.
The former head of BMW Financial Services UK, Keith Dye, is
returning to his native South Africa, after four and a half years
as CEO of the captive’s UK operations.
Kalinke will take up the post as of 1 March, and will oversee BMW
Financial Services UK until a permanent replacement for Dye is
recruited.
He has over 30 years of motor industry experience, and was head of
Financial Services for BMW in Europe from 2006 to 2008. Prior to
that, Kalinke was head of strategy and marketing for the captive’s
European operations.
Associated Commercial
Finance
Associated Commercial Finance
(ACF) has recently taken on new senior staff. The lease broker took
on board Mark Banks (formerly involved in large
corporate lending for Bank of Scotland), Ranjit
Jutley (recently a broker manager at Lombard) and
Andy Moore (a former leasing specialist at Norton
Folgate). In addition, ACF has hired Richard
Hirst, previously a director and shareholder of Wyse
Finance, as its commercial director. The move came after “months of
negotiations” following the purchase of Wyse in July 2009 by
German-based lessor CHG Meridian
