Renaissance Asset Finance managing director Hugh Sigrist passed away suddenly at his home on Saturday night.

A joint statement from the management team at Renaissance said: "Hugh was an inspirational leader of our business and our loss is enormous. Hugh has built a very strong and able team around him at Renaissance and we are committed to ensure that his legacy continues in a way he would be proud of and as Hugh would have wanted. It is business as usual.

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"Our thoughts are with his wife Louise, his family and all his friends."

Career

Sigrist was a committed leasing professional with a strong entrepreneurial instinct, starting and selling two asset finance brokerages to different lenders over a 31 year career in the UK asset finance industry.

He began his career in 1985, working as a sales executive for United Dominions Trust, part of the Trustee Savings Bank, funding London black cabs.

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Sigrist then spent 6 years with British Credit Trust as a salesman, funding plant, machinery, wheeled assets and dealing both direct with businesses and through a few specialist brokers. He took the top salesman award at British Credit Trust in 1987, where he became sales manager and then its youngest branch manager.

After a brief stint working for Mercedes Benz Finance, he jointly founded Reliance Financial Contracts Ltd (RFC) in 1992, a brokerage business.

RFC dealt with established SMEs and High Net Worth Individuals, funding a range of different asset classes and dealing with 50 different lenders over the 16 years the business operated, before its sale to Close Brothers in 2008, where Sigrist joined the team and built a lending portfolio of over £70m.

Sigrist founded Renaissance Asset Finance in May 2014, winning a £35m credit line from Bank of London and the Middle East (BLME), which was the first step towards the eventual sale of the business to the bank.

Condolences

The team at Leasing Life and Motor Finance would like to express their sincere condolences to Hugh’s family, friends and colleagues at this time.