Specialist commercial finance broker Christie Finance, which has an office in Bristol, has released £70m of funding for the healthcare, hospitality and retail sectors.
Some £50m is available exclusively for clients seeking to invest in the care home, pharmacy and children’s day nursery sectors with £20m for clients in the pub, hotel and retail sectors. An initial £20m tranche for these sectors released earlier this year was massively over-subscribed.
Christie Finance’s head of UK business mortgages David Grant said the move showed a return of confidence among lenders and business borrowers.
“There have been some encouraging recent signs that some of our lending institutions, including those that remain part-state-owned, are coming back to the sectors in which we operate – namely, hospitality and leisure, care and retail,” he said.
“Traditional lenders are once again supporting and financing new businesses, taking a new pragmatic approach to lending in some sectors.” Christie Finance had noticed that its clients were taking advantage both of this and the subsidised rate of borrowing offered by the Government’s new national Loan Guarantee Scheme (NLGS), he said.
“The 1% discount on interest rates from the NLGS has provided a real fillip in tough trading conditions,” he added. “We have also seen clients take advantage of a less-publicised element of the NLGS, a cash-back facility. For example, a £1m loan would qualify for a cash-back lump sum of £50,000 upon drawdown of a loan. This is a great aid to cash flow or to covering the costs of buying or refinancing a business.”
A clear sign that confidence is also being restored was the significant increase in the number of borrowers completing their deals in the year to date, compared with the same period last year.
“At this time last year around 30% of borrowers did not proceed to completion, while in 2012 around 90% are moving forward to complete their deals – this is a sign of more realistic loan terms being offered by lenders and improved customer confidence in the potential for new business purchases,” Mr Grant said.
