As the implications of the current
recession for lessors become more and more grim, it is not just the
big companies that are struggling.
Many small and medium-sized lessors
and brokers are beginning to disappear on a monthly basis as funds
dry up, and the list of the fallen will only grow as the year
progresses.
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London-based Orion Leasing Holdings,
the holding company of the Orion Leasing group of companies, also
went into voluntary liquidation in January. Kevin Ashley Goldfarb
of Griffins Insolvency Practitioners was appointed liquidator.
It should be noted that Orion Finance
and Leasing Ltd, an asset finance broker based in Macclesfield,
Cheshire, is still very much in business and has nothing to do with
Orion Leasing Holdings.
It is understood that Knutsford-based
Cheshire Finance & Leasing has gone out of business
recently.
Cheshire provided Hire Purchase and
Leasing services across a range of used and new cars and commercial
vehicles, with a specialism in leasing ‘prestige’ brands such as
Aston Martin, Ferrari and Jaguar.
More general equipment finance was
also offered for the industrial sector, as was IT equipment
leasing.
Leasing Life was unable to
contact any representative of the company.
Also at the end of January,
Basingstoke-based leasing company Trident Finance was struck from
the UK’s Register of Companies. Trident was thought to have been
active in leasing surgical and hospital equipment.
Unrelatedly, Trident is the last in a
series of five different companies called Trident Finance Ltd to
have been struck from the companies register in the last 25 years.
The other unrelated Tridents disappeared in 1986, 1994, 1999 and
2001.
During the final quarter of 2008,
creditors of funder and broker 5 Diamond Securities were informed
that shareholders had passed a resolution to put the company into
voluntary liquidation, with accountancy firm Mazars named as joint
liquidator.
The company was believed to fund a
lease portfolio of around £2 million, and was thought to have done
some £3 million of broker business in its last year of operation.
There has been no dividend for unsecured creditors.
