Rivermore Asset Finance (Rivermore), which marks its 10-year anniversary in 2014, is on the expansion trail. Just in case there is any reason to doubt its ambitions, in addition to a steady, selected staff recruitment programme, it has just opened a new office in central London.
Adrian Langford, Rivermore’s managing director, told Asset Finance International that the company’s specialism is in the materials handling equipment sector.
“The equipment range varies widely,” he said, “from forklift trucks, reach trucks, powered pallet trucks, container handlers, side-loaders, tele-handlers, order pickers and many other types of warehouse, yard, dock and depot equipment.”
“Generally, our business can be described as financing the equipment that moves and stores materials, parts, inventory, product and produce throughout the UK.”
Household names
Rivermore’s customers are involved in just about every industry from brewing, electronic and printing to transport, pharmaceuticals and textiles. Just under 20% of its end-user customers are large well-known household-name companies. “The remainder,” Langford said, “are mostly well-established, small- and medium-sized businesses which are specialists in their industry niches.
Langford, who has an extensive career background in the asset finance sector, formed Rivermore in 2004. Starting his career in North West Securities (Bank of Scotland Group) he specialised in materials handling virtually from the beginning. With it came a sound knowledge of creating and operating successful vendor operations. Immediately prior to establishing Rivermore he was a senior manager at the BNP Paribas Lease Group’s UK leasing operation from 1999 to 2004.
“For the first three years we brokered all our business at Rivermore,” he explained. “Then, having built up sufficient cash reserves we began writing our own book, initially with smaller deals but with a steadily growing portfolio. In this way we had all the risk – and all the rewards.”
In 2012 a principal funding source, ING Lease, exited the UK market. Langford admits to adopting a sanguine approach when some others were considering it an earth-shattering event. “Well, my first thoughts were that no-one can really assume that the market will stay the same forever. In any event, although the company itself disappeared its staff members didn’t – they moved on in their careers to alternative havens at the likes of Hitachi Capital, Aldermore and Investec.”
Updating capital assets
With Rivermore’s client base spread over a wide range of industries the company managed to avoid a big dip in new business in the worst of the recession. “Materials handling equipment is essential for industry,” he explained, “and companies that are continuing to trade need to have, and update, their capital assets.”
Rivermore works with a number of manufacturers but most of the company’s vendor relationships are with independently-owned dealerships which are usually franchised to manufacturers and which total around 120 throughout the UK. As a result, Rivermore is tasked with training sales staff in product knowledge at the point-of-sale. It also provides them with Rivermore’s own highly-effective software package designed in-house for originations.
In May 2004 Nigel Pratt joined Rivermore as director of operations and he came from Albury Asset Rentals (part of BNP Paribas Lease Group) where he was responsible for key account development and the provision of finance solutions to companies of all sizes throughout the UK via manufacturer and distributor channels.
Martina Seaton joined the company in 2009 as office manager and this January Mark Stephens was appointed head of general asset finance. Stephens had been divisional manager with BNP Paribas Lease Group for over 10 years and has enjoyed a career in asset finance and leasing for 25 years. At Rivermore he has the responsibility of arranging the funding of non-materials handling equipment for customers as the company works to broaden its asset-range capability for clients.
Experienced non-executive director
In addition, Rivermore invited Lindsay Town to be non-executive director. Town is an industry veteran with over 38 years’ experience of leasing both in the UK and US. His sector knowledge ranges from point-of-sale motor finance to cross-border marine and aerospace structured financing.
He has held senior positions in various organisations including Barclays, Lloyds, HBOS and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Latterly, Town was the managing director on the Bank of Scotland corporate board in charge of asset and vehicle finance at HBOS plc.
In addition, Town is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland, a founding fellow of the Leasing Foundation and a former board director of the Finance & Leasing Association.
He told Asset Finance International that Rivermore is a company with vast potential for growth. “What Rivermore does,” he explained, “is help companies to sell goods that make things - and make things happen. It assists vendors and distributors in growing a very wide range of UK industry and supports their wealth creation.”
Coming, as he does, with a career background which included the financing of plant & machinery, enables Town to admire Rivermore’s activities as an independent lessor in the materials handling sector. “The sector itself,” he stressed, “has massive subsets and facilitates a whole range of different industries. Moreover, as an independent materials handling lessor, Rivermore has a very strong focus on its sector and the skills required for success. Its expertise in the sector’s risk management, qualitative support, and technology requirement is very high.”
Lindsay Town’s non-executive participation should assist the current management in capitalising on their existing knowledge and skills and develop the business to the next level.
The company’s growth has recently been around 20% year on year, and Langford has firm aspirations to grow market share. “We are very ambitious in the marketplace right now,” he said, “and having built a good platform we’re ready to scale the business – but always with due regard for quality.”
Looking ahead Langford is insistent on adhering to his favourite motto: “believing in the ethos of doing one thing really well”. If that spirit succeeds, his aim of making Rivermore “the first port of call for finance in the UK materials handling industry” is very likely to come true.
