Europe’s top leasing experts will gather in Milan for the
Leasing Life Asset Finance Awards
2010 on 4 November.

Best in class leasing companies
from across Europe will be recognised at a glittering awards dinner
at the Grand Visconti Palace. The special guest category, the
Italian Lessor of the Year Award, is presented in honour of the
host country.

Last year’s awards in Berlin saw
UniCredit Leasing grab the top prize as the European Lessor of the
Year. Deutsche Leasing led the field in the host country category
to win the German Lessor of the Year Award.

The SME Champion of the Year Award
was clinched by Amstel Lease, and IBM Global Financing received the
Captive Finance Provider of the Year Award. De Lage Landen won the
European Vendor Partnership of the Year Award

Hotly contested new categories this
year include the
Green Lessor of the Year Award and the Public Sector Lessor of the
Year Award. The 2010 finalists, whittled down from a list of
nominated companies, are showcased over the next 4 pages.

The Leasing Life Asset
Finance Awards 2010 are sponsored exclusively by
CHP Consulting.

 

Vendor Finance Provider
of the Year Award

Deutsche Leasing Group

Deutsche Leasing has made and maintained a name for itself as a
vendor finance specialist with global coverage.

The Sparkassen-funded group,
currently Europe’s third-largest lessor, achieved €8.3bn in new
business over its last financial year, including significant
volumes in China and other non-European territories.

It continues to operate and develop
large scale sales-aid programmes in the machinery sector, such as a
partnership with Austrian injection moulding giant Engel and a
joint venture with printing equipment provider Koenig &
Bauer.

Deutsche Leasing remains a major
presence in Central and Eastern Europe, and has recently made
significant inroads into the finance of renewable energy
assets.

 

Microlease

Microlease is a highly specialised player in the testing
equipment sector that has shown a great level of flexibility and
innovation in its approach to using leasing and finance expertise
to help partners sell equipment.

With turnover of around €40m
annually, the company has a wide reach across Europe and North
America through its manufacturer and distributor partners, and is
growing rapidly on the back of repeated private equity-funded
acquisitions.

Most recently, it has developed a
highly integrated relationship with technology firm Agilent, which
has involved Microlease acquiring a significant portion of the
original equipment manufacturer’s sales force.

 

SG Equipment
Finance

SG Equipment Finance (SGEF) has remained active and aggressive
both at home in France and across 39 countries worldwide.

Vendor finance makes up a greater
proportion of SGEF’s business each year, including business from
more than 40 multinational programmes and many other national-level
arrangements. Well capitalised and supported by its parent, SGEF
has not pulled back from partners during the recession, and
continues to build its tally of vendor programmes on a year-on-year
basis.

It has picked up many arrangements
from other contracting players, and continues to invest in the
development of new IT tools to support partner equipment sales.

 

Syscap

The effort of developing a UK broker into a successful vendor
finance provider in the climate of the last two years has taken a
lot of energy and determination from Syscap.

Despite financial difficulties and
a particularly tough UK market, the company has become a respected
specialist in the IT finance arena and has recently secured deals
with big names such as Computer 2000 and Infor.

Although not a dedicated vendor specialist, Syscap’s ability to
take on increasing business through the vendor channel demonstrates
a high level of opportunism and adaptability.

 

Innovator of the Year
Award

3 Step IT

The leasing and asset management company 3 Step IT,
headquartered in Vantaa, Finland, was set up in 1997 and
specialises in managing the acquisition, use and renewal of
technology and other fixed assets.

It has a presence in the UK, the
US, France and Russia, and in the Nordic and Baltic regions. It has
noted good growth in the IT and health care and retail sectors.

3 Step IT acquired BNP Paribas
Lease Group’s subsidiaries in Sweden, Norway and Denmark in
February.

 

Arval

The BNP Paribas subsidiary is a specialist in automobile leasing
and has a total fleet of almost 85,000 cars and vans.

Arval offers a variety of financing
products, including Louveo, launched in 2009. The offering provides
a solution half-way between short and long term leasing, financing
reconditioned vehicles for 6 to 24-month periods. In August,
Stephen Beck was appointed group innovations director, a newly
created position.

The company will acquire the
vehicle leasing arm of Spanish bank La Caixa for €62m.

 

Nordea Finance

Nordea Finance is the leasing arm of Nordic bank Nordea,
providing sales finance, receivables finance and fleet management.
It operates in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania and Poland.

In May, the company announced plans
to become the leading leasing and factoring provider in the Baltic
states.

The company uses the same operating
model across all its territories with a focus on cross border
leadership.

Nordea Finance ranked 12th in the 2009 Leaseurope list of the
biggest names in European leasing.

 

Captive Finance Provider of the
Year

Dell Financial Services

The leasing arm of Dell works with
a broad range of clients including SMEs and large corporates, and
has an auctions function.

It has expanded thanks to
acquisitions, such as IT service provider Perot Systems at the end
of 2009; and has moved towards solutions for hardware, software and
services.

About 60% of its business in Europe comes from the UK, France,
Germany Spain and the Netherlands, although it has a presence in 16
European countries.

 

Heidelberg Financial Services

Heidelberg Financial Services is
the financial services arm of print giant Heidelberg and focuses
mainly on financing print products through a number of funders.

The aim of Stephan Knuppertz, head of division, is to “have
little or no book”, with more or less all finance sales achieved
through the company’s partners. In the financial year 2009-2010, it
contributed €19m to Heidelberg’s overall result.

 

Pitney Bowes Global Financial Services

Pitney Bowes Global Financial
Service finances franking and mailing equipment, using facilities
including hire purchase and finance leases

Assets funded range from small home
office postage meters to some of the world’s largest production
mail environments and the company’s portfolio includes supporting
start-up enterprises. It was incorporated in 2004 and is based in
Stamford, Connecticut.

Pitney Bowes is a Fortune 500 company with bases in 100
countries.

 

Xerox Finance

Xerox Financial Services continues
to be regarded across the industry as a model for the successful
operation of a captive finance company.

Despite seeing leasing volumes
under pressure as a result of a depressed technology industry, it
has continued to build penetration rates year after year through
development of its offering to sellers of Xerox equipment.

In addition to designing tailored financial products and
offering a range of incentive schemes, it has even explored the
financing of third-party products in order to keep partner
relationships strong. Having launched a German business in 2008,
Xerox is a constant growing presence in European technology
leasing.

 

Cisco Capital

Cisco Capital picked up significant
market share in IT finance following the withdrawal of several
bank-owned lessors from the sector. The company has focused more on
financial solutions as demand from customers increased.

Now Cisco Capital plans to expand
into Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It has also built its
presence in the video conferencing segment thanks to parent company
Cisco’s acquisition of specialist provider Tandberg.

 

European Lessor of the
Year Award

BNP Paribas Lease
Group

A subsidiary of French bank BNP
Paribas, BNP Paribas Lease Group (BPLG) specialises in leasing
professional equipment. Ghislain Brocart, country manager for
France, said that in some segments, it receives a new request for
finance every four seconds.

It signed with Microsoft Financing
early in 2010 to provide solutions to both Microsoft’s direct SME
customers and customers serviced by resellers in France, Germany,
Italy and Switzerland.

BPLG is also active in vendor
finance and provides equipment sales-aid finance programmes to
manufacturers, dealers, distributors and brokers. It was ranked as
number one in terms of total new business and number of contracts
won in Leaseurope’s ranking of lessors for 2009.

 

SG Equipment
Finance (see profile, Vendor Finance Provider of the
Year Award)

 

UniCredit
Leasing

The Italian lessor has operations
in 17 European countries. It has a strong relationship with the
European Investment Bank (EIB), which provides lines to support
SMEs via leasing schemes Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary and
Slovakia.

In 2009, it also launched a
dedicated ‘competence centre’ in Vienna for renewable energy
finance in line with its expansion strategy in the CEE region.

Part of the UniCredit Group, the company was ranked number one
in Europe by Leaseurope in 2008 but slipped to number four in 2009,
losing its crown to BNP Paribas Lease Group.

 

Public Sector Lessor of
the Year Award

Cranmer Lawrence

Cranmer Lawrence was set up in 1998 and is still owned by one of
its founding directors.

The company has strong ties with
the UK National Health Service (NHS), underwriting more than £37m
(€43m) of operating lease business with the NHS in the year to 31
March 2010. Funding is arranged on a fixed interest rate basis,
unless otherwise requested, and leases are written on a tax fixed
basis. Cranmer Lawrence also reported £21m of lease originations in
the first three quarters of 2010.

 

Deutsche Leasing
(see profile, Vendor Finance Provider of the Year
Award)

 

ECS UK

ECS services include IT budget management, hardware maintenance
and IT security.

Annual turnover is €1.74bn at the
company, which was recently sold to French finance provider
Econocom (see Econocom agrees terms for ECS
takeover). ECS is a named provider on the UK leasing
procurement framework for the health service in the UK.

 

LeasePlan

LeasePlan fleet is made up of 1.3m vehicles globally, and it is
present in 30 countries. It launched an internet savings bank in
February in order to diversify its funding base, which in August
reached €1bn. The company offers leasing and fleet management
solutions and has four brands, targeting specific market
segments.

UK brand Automotive Leasing is a
public sector specialist, financing all kinds of vehicles such as
ambulances and road sweepers. It operates in the UK public sector
and works with more than 550 public sector bodies.

LeasePlan’s profit in the first half of this year was €90m and
it has predicted it will achieve at least the same in the second
half.

 

SME Champion of the
Year Award

Close Asset Finance

An increasingly prominent player in the UK market, Close Asset
Finance has thrived throughout the recession on a tried-and-tested
approach to risk management.

As such, it has continued to lend
in sectors abandoned by many of the industry’s largest players.
CAF’s customers are extremely vocal in testifying to the support
they have received in acquiring and maintaining capital assets over
the past two years, and there is no doubting the flexibility the
lender will show in attempting to work with distressed clients.

 

ING Lease UK

ING Lease has supported not just SMEs but the UK’s lease broker
community, for whom it represents the only sizeable port of call
remaining for the placement of SME funding proposals.

Combining impressive scale with
efficient automated credit scoring and anti-fraud measures, it has
stayed competitive and profitable in a market that many have argued
offers only low returns.

ING Lease UK is notably different
from other ING leasing subsidiaries, in that it has no retail
banking presence to distribute through – as such, it has stayed
committed to a unique business culture.

 

Investec Asset
Finance

Investec Asset Finance has taken a risk on the SME sector by
entering into the field of broker-introduced business during a
period of unprecedented market toughness.

By acquiring own-book brokerage
Leasedirect Finance and the portfolio of Universal Leasing, it is
carving out a niche for itself with a similar model to rival ING
Lease. The advantage of a smaller scale is its ability to provide
considerable support and flexibility to SME customers, while still
delivering results.

 

UniCredit
Leasing

UniCredit stands out in this category through the sheer scale of
its operations, including an unrivalled coverage in Central and
Eastern Europe.

An immense internal reorganisation
at the height of the global recession saw UniCredit continuing to
do SME business in regions with some of the most challenging
default levels in Europe. This resulted in the company being chosen
by the European Investment Bank as a delivery route for hundreds
ofms of euros in SME funding.

 

Italian Lessor of the
Year Award

BNP Paribas Lease Group
Italia

BPLG Italia has become one of the
most recognised Italian lessors. It has grown since the early 1990s
to become the fifth-largest leasing company in the country.

BPLG Italia is the country’s
largest lessor in small ticket equipment finance, funding one in
four contracts. In the first six months of this year, it increased
its market share and the volume of new business (8% up to
€701m).

The company is able to take full
advantage of the network of BNL, the Italian bank now fully owned
by BNP Paribas. A framework agreement between the two to distribute
leasing was agreed last year.

 

Sardaleasing

Sardaleasing is a distinctive local
leasing company in Sardinia, relying on the network of its parent
bank for distribution.

It has a strong focus on real
estate, marine leasing and the food distribution sector. In 2009,
the number of contracts increased by 5.7% – the best performance of
the top 25 Italian leasing companies by contract numbers.

 

UniCredit
Leasing

Although its network spans 19
countries, Italy is UniCredit Leasing’s main market. Last year the
lessor began a new strategy to shift from volume to value, to
reduce risk and to improve profitability.

This has meant an overall volume
decrease in 2009, but the profit figure has remained high at €40m
for the Italian market.

The Italian arm of UniCredit
Leasing has received a large amount of credit lines from the
European Investment Bank, and has a current outstanding of
€1.15bn.

It has revamped its redistribution strategy to put more focus on
its banking network, strengthened its back office and collections
activity, and is focusing on growing vendor finance with the
signing of a number of new partnerships with key vendors and
manufacturers.

 

Green Lessor of the
Year Award

De Lage Landen

De Lage Landen’s (DLL) specialty is vendor finance, but the
Dutch lessor has carved out a clear space for itself in renewable
energy, too.

At the beginning of 2010, the
company launched a new clean technology financing business focused
on the commercial and government space. Innovative projects
launched recently include a large number of deals on energy-saving
equipment, heat and cold storage and co-generation in the
Netherlands.

Additionally, DLL’s fleet
management operation Athlon Car Lease signed an agreement with
Renault for the purchase of electric cars as of 2011. DLL has also
launched a co-operation agreement with the International Center for
Sustainable Excellence in Eindhoven to promote leasing within the
renewable energy sector.

 

Dexia Lease
Services

Over the past three years, Dexia Lease has strengthened its
position in renewable energy, particularly in the solar sector,
with the large scale financing of photovoltaic panels.

To make photovoltaic financing more
attractive, the Belgian lessor has developed a financial solution
where the repayment has the same cycle as the revenues that are
generated by the photovoltaic installation.

The scheme was first launched for
government and local authorities, and then extended to corporate
customers. Recent deals included the financing of photovoltaic
panels for international logistics firm Katoen Natie. Of the
company’s new business volume last year, more than 10% was for
renewable energy transactions.

 

UniCredit
Leasing

UniCredit Leasing has an extensive track record in all fields of
renewable energy. Projects financed include hydroelectric power
plants, wind farms and photovoltaic installations with a combined
investment value of €1bn.

The company expects to sign around
€500m of renewable energy transactions (more than trebling the
€150m it financed last year) in 2010. The lessor’s know-how of
renewable energy finance has been centralised in a competence
centre launched in Vienna last year (with an additional office in
Milan for Italian-based transactions).

The renewable energy team’s experience enables the lessor to
deal with small installations in the area of biomass, biogas and
photovoltaic installations as well as structured project financings
for wind-parks, utility-scale PV plants and hydro power
station.