As Investec buys into the professions market, Antonio
Fabrizio discovers how Syscap, a long-term player in this market,
has been faring.
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The UK professions sector has suffered
heavily during the economic downturn, but demand seems to be slowly
rising again.
Philip White, CEO of Syscap, an IT lessor with
15 years’ experience of the professions financing market, said the
sector had been hardest hit between 2008 and the first half of
2009.
The “reduced sentiment to invest” has meant
that many lessors have felt the pinch as a result, White said.
Syscap has mostly been involved with “white
collar” professions (legal and accounting businesses), but it also
has a presence in the veterinary, dental and optician
professions.
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By GlobalDataThe legal and accountancy sectors have been the
worst hit by the recession, while those firms that had a good
spread of income sources, and without a concentration of resources
on one business line, were the least affected, White said.
Market stabilisation
However, over the last five months
there has been a market stabilisation across the white collar
segment, White added.
“Practices have gone through consolidation,
downsizing and in certain cases failures, but there is probably
some stability in the marketplace now,” White said.
“Having gone through an unpredictable time, the
stability now means that people need to look at how they are going
to operate in the new ‘normal’.”
He also said that Syscap has seen a
“significant improvement in sentiment” for people to invest in
IT.
“IT, by virtue of advance in technology,
doesn’t last forever. Unlike a piece of plant that somebody might
decide to extent for another 12-18 months, IT changes are often
mission-critical,” White added.
“In those scenarios where it is, a lot of the
funding we’ve been doing in the last 12 months has been just to
keep systems going.
“But I think people can no longer sit on their
hands and do nothing.”
This view, White said, is shared within the
industry, and a number of independent surveys from data providers
for the IT sector such as Gartner and IDC have forecast a gradual
recovery in 2010.
