United Trust Bank’s Bridging Department has completed a number of multi million pound portfolio refinances.
The bridging facilities were each in excess of £5m and mark a growing use of short-term bridging finance for customers with more complex financial requirements.
In each case, the customers were experienced property people whose existing facilities with High Street lenders required repayment almost certainly as part of the drive of these lenders to reduce their balance sheets notwithstanding the underlying quality of the customers and the security.
The loans also had a degree of complexity. As is often the case with property portfolios, ownership was spread across several structures including individuals, corporations – both onshore and offshore – and in one case, a trust.
The Bank’s customers required a flexible bank which could understand their complex property portfolios and provide a bespoke service so enabling them to restructure and refinance or sell part of the portfolio on an individual basis.
As an experienced lender, used to dealing with complex structures, UTB was able to dedicate the time and resource and bring the necessary skills to the table to enable these complex refinances to take place.
Alan Margolis, head of bridging at United Trust Bank said;
“There is no rule that short-term bridging loans have to be straightforward or simple. We have now completed several large bridging loans which are far removed from the stereotypical, single property ‘completed in days’ facilities one often reads about.
“The Bank and solicitors on both sides required a high degree of professionalism and expertise to ensure that the loans were structured correctly – for some loans, teams of solicitors within a firm were utilised to ensure as swift a completion as possible.
“Our customers will be repaying their loans by way of a combination of the sale of various assets and the refinance of others – what is key is that their bridging loans give them control over how they manage their assets.”