We start the year with the sobering story of asset finance gone wrong, as the details of the Arena Television scandal start to emerge.
Arena TV was considered one of the UK’s best established outsider broadcasters, with a solid client base and a top-notch credit score. The company which had been operating for over 30 years suddenly collapsed towards the end of last year, leaving in its wake no less than 55 UK lenders who collectively issued the broadcaster with £280m via leasing facilities. It appears that much of the security on which the lending was based simply did not exist, leading some observers to describe it as one of the biggest asset-based lending frauds in recent UK memory.
Administrators Kroll, in their report to Arena’s creditors, said “thousands” of items of broadcasting equipment were simply invented, and Arena’s two directors appear to have absconded, thought to have left the country, with the courts discussing where to serve them papers. Many questions still remain unanswered, but for now only one thing is certain: unsecured creditors can expect huge losses. In this edition, several articles look at the Arena Television debacle and what it means for the UK leasing sector in what is an ongoing story.
We also have a look at an environmental story that affects banking lessors, as a number of Dutch banks with leasing arms have been named in a report putting the Netherlands at top of the EU list of countries providing credit for commodities that are linked to deforestation.
Lastly, we speak to experts in both asset finance lending and invoice finance about what they anticipate for their business sectors in 2022. Happy new year!
Alejandro Gonzalez, Editor