Press article from Leasing Life.

Oak spreads its branches

Careful sector choices and partnerships lead the way for UK broker.
Despite the grim outlook for the UK broker sector, one resilient lease arranger based in Gwent seems to be weathering the storm through careful placement of deals across the whole of Europe, seeing £15 million of business during March alone.

Oak Leasing, founded in 1992, is targeting the European shipping finance market in 2009, currently processing around £30 million in nautical business sourced in Turkey, the Netherlands and Germany.

Vendor partnerships

In addition to this, the broker is pursuing vendor partnerships with manufacturers in the tech and office equipment sectors.
Oak started the year by arranging a large UK import and lease arrangement of medical equipment from a US supplier, and didn’t stop there.
Now, fresh from launching a vendor arrangement in Germany and the UK with photocopier supplier Utax, Oak is now preparing to embark on three new partnerships in April.

One of these will target the education sector, while another will involve a major funder from the Far East.

But despite these focuses for 2009, Oak intends to pursue beneficial deals in all markets. Next month, for example, will see Oak finalise a deal with a local authority in Amsterdam, for the lease of a state of the art amphibious bus by Volvo. Funding will come from a well-known German provider.

Managing director John Barter, who saw out the 1979 recession with Hamilton Leasing, and founded Oak in the middle of 1992’s downturn, says that Oak’s continued health rests on knowing which areas to invest in – and which areas to avoid.
Talking about the office equipment sector, he estimated that the UK’s major banking lessors historically accepted roughly 80 percent of photocopier lease proposals – but that this figure had now withered to around 30 percent.

His plan for Oak is to pick up the deals left by the wayside in this fashion, placing them with a selection of smaller and independent funders.
When 2009’s full year reporting takes place, he suspects that big balance sheet lenders may have deserted the office sector further.

The start of March saw Oak take on two new board members: NACFB director Stephen Bassett (formerly of Wyse leasing); and Jonathon Silver, who has experience both as a funder and as a lawyer.

IT push

In addition, Oak’s continued push on the IT and photocopying front will be reinforced by the addition of Derek Basten to its sales team, bringing more than 20 years of sales-aid experience to the broker’s table.
Also in 2009, Oak will continue to develop its web presence with a leasing blog (http://oaklease.blogspot.com/), and a highly active website that claims to be the UK’s most popular site belonging to a leasing company.