Asset manager Equigroup
already has partnerships with the likes of Barclays and Nordea, but
now it wants to grow even further. Brendan Malkin catches up with
its European head, Richard Blunden.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Lessors might have seen their budgets crippled by the
recession, but they still appear willing to invest in their
asset management operations according to Equigroup’s European arm,
which plans to establish partnerships with more finance houses and
expand into new territories in mainland Europe.
Currently it has partnerships with the leasing
arms of six banks, in which the lessors provide operating lease
finance and carry out risk and credit checks on customers while
Equigroup offers asset management, asset tracking and tracing
solutions, as well as end-of-life support, such as remarketing.
Also, using its own panel of logistic
companies and resellers, Equigroup refurbishes equipment to make it
resaleable or release-able. It also carries out collections
operations.
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By GlobalDataThe right man for the job
The task of growing Equigroup’s European arm,
which specialises in the IT and medical equipment sectors, has been
handed to Richard Blunden – who looks to be well suited to the
role.
He was appointed managing director of
Equigroup’s UK-based European operation last October, although he
has worked for the company’s Australian arm since 2006.
Most of this time has been spent building up
Equigroup’s health care operation, first in Australia and
subsequently across the UK and parts of Europe.
“Being involved in this roll-out, which was
partly driven by our partners, meant coming to Europe periodically,
roughly once every four to six months,” Blunden told Leasing
Life.
Prior to joining Equigroup, between 2000 and
2006 Blunden headed up GE Capital’s Asian health care finance
operations, an experience which he regards as having showed him
“the benefits of industry and product specialisation”, and which
also helped him to “understand all aspects of risks and development
roadmaps for equipment categories”.
Looking for opportunities
Under Blunden’s management, Equigroup plans to
expand into several leasing markets.
“We will be looking at further markets across
Europe,” he says.
Equigroup’s current desire for growth follows
a period of expansion in parts of the business, particularly in
Australia, and contraction in others, including at its UK arm.
However, it appears that new business levels
from its Nordea and Barclays partnerships, each totalling circa
£40m (€45.4m) per annum, have not waned. Blunden says he has “high
growth expectations” for these partnerships.
Blunden has already begun the hunt for
additional funding partnerships, although he says he is steering
clear of competitors of its partners. But new partnerships will not
be forged any time soon.
“We’re not in negotiations with any potential
new partners at present. These are tough times. We want to get the
most from what we have,” he says.
Even so, Blunden is convinced that there is a
growing need for outsourced, asset management-related services.
Lessors increasingly want
to specialise in certain assets, and as a result they want to “add
value” rather than being “everything to everyone”, he says.
Therefore, total cost of ownership has risen
in importance, which means lessors have to be even better at
predicting equipment values several years into the future –
something which Equigroup has experience in.
There are cost benefits to all this, too.
Blunden estimates that effective lifecycle management of large
fleets of computers, for instance, can “deliver total cost of usage
savings of up to 20% of original capital cost”.
Furthermore, with the environment on most
peoples’ agendas, lessors in the IT space – which makes up 80% of
Equigroup’s area of expertise – need to be good at “data cleaning
and wiping”, at “selling equipment locally” and at managing the
process of selling equipment to “other countries”, especially as a
large amount of Equigroup’s equipment is sold on to Asia and
Eastern Europe.
As well as being able to track assets, an
increasingly useful tool in the light of growing levels of fraud,
there is also an increased need for equipment replacement
cycles.
Growth in demand for outsourced services in
the asset management space is also partly being driven by recent
changes in the IT and medical equipment spaces.
In the case of medical equipment, which saw
several consecutive hikes in their asset values following the
launch of new scanners several years ago, many lessors are now
looking for what Blunden calls “managed equipment services”.
This means that a lessor, working in
partnership with a manufacturer or an OEM, provides a range of
solutions for an entire department over a longer term, usually
between 15 and 20 years instead of a single piece of equipment.
Meanwhile, in the IT space, while demand for
laptops and PCs is on the decline, it is on the rise for whole new
products, including servers and internet-related items, such as
broadband equipment.
Equigroup is currently looking to provide its
services in the ATM sector.
