Strong demand for truck and trailer
leasing in the CEE.
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Some vendor finance specialists are indeed
seeing an upturn in business, although this is less the result of
more customer demand for leasing and more to do with the fact that
they are hoovering up business from former competitors which have
fallen by the wayside.
The UK arm of Deutsche Leasing which, like
most of the German company’s business, is dominated by vendor
finance, is seeing a “rise in penetration rates as the in-house
bank and other competition has dried up or disappeared”, according
to its managing director, Julian Hobbs. It reported growth in every
sector to which it has previously provided finance, including
construction, industrial equipment and transport. The one exception
is print.
Meanwhile, Patrick Gouin, global head of high
tech at SG Equipment Finance, which reported last month a 30
percent increase in business this year compared to last year,
remarked starkly: “The survivors [of the recession] get the best
business let down by others.”
Not unsurprisingly, lessors still active in
vendor finance are now focusing more on those sectors which have
been severely hit by the withdrawal of funding partners.
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By GlobalDataKey sectors include telecoms and
semiconductors, the funding of which was previously dominated by GE
Capital and Babcock & Brown, two players massively hit by the
recession.
“This has pushed some of the operators of
these sectors to look actively for financing solutions in order to
maintain their level of sales volumes and fight the recession,”
Vincenzo Scalzone, manager of European programmes and business
development at De Lage Landen, told Leasing Life last month.
SG Equipment Finance, meanwhile, is ramping up
core areas of financing computers, copiers and telecoms, all
sectors “where a number of lessors have retired from to a certain
extent”, said Gouin.
But it is not just a drop-off in competition
that is keeping busy those funders still willing and able to lend.
Stefan Jonsson, manager of global vendor at the structured asset
finance, leasing and factoring arm of SEB, points to manufacturers
being “less willing to provide other forms of financing assistance
themselves – such as extended payment periods” – and therefore more
reliant on leasing. He attributed this to “[the manufacturers’] own
stretched financial situation”.
Cash shortages among lessees are also helping
to bump up some vendor finance programmes.
“The large corporates which historically paid
cash are more and more coming to financing solutions,” said
Gouin.
Leasing penetration in the computer sector is
growing, while overall purchase, particularly in the hardware
market, is declining, he added.
Other sectors performing well, according to
banks interviewed for this piece, include industrial production
equipment which help to save energy and reduce pollution –
particularly in the Nordics – and according to Michael Vander, a
consultant with 15 years experience in vendor finance, the leasing
of equipment for the dental sector remains healthy.
Meanwhile, in Central and Eastern Europe,
there is strong demand for leasing in the truck and trailer sectors
as manufacturers face “a strong decrease in their turnover”,
according to Dieter Scheidl, managing director of
Raiffeisen-Leasing International GmbH.
The European leasing industry, by filling the
void left by the collapse of long-standing vendor finance
programmes, has again proven its resilience.
Brendan Malkin
