It's make or break for Portillion as it tries to raise £110m by end of Q1
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STEPHEN KNIGHT
MARKETS ARE DISRUPTIVE
Stephen Knight, chief executive officer of Portillion, has admitted that Q1 2011 will be make or break time for the would-be lender.
Knight is aiming to secure £110m of funding but says if this has not been achieved by the end of Q1, the future of the company could be in jeopardy.
Portillion has funding from RIT Capital Partners, Lord Rothschild’s family interests and Knight himself. But this is only providing it with working capital and it still needs £110m in tier one capital before it can apply for its Financial Services Authority licence.
Knight says: “We want to be in a position where we can raise some-thing by the end of Q1. We may get to the end of Q1 and be close to gaining the capital and decide to go on for another three months.
“Or we may get close to securing funding by the end of the quarter but decide not to go forward - it could be either of these options.”
Knight adds: “We have to meet regulatory hurdles and to do this we are trying to raise tier one capital - we are giving it our best shot.
“We are hopeful we can move forward, but I can’t say whether we can or not as the markets are disruptive.”
Last year only two lenders, Metro Bank and Precise Mortgages, were successful in gaining their FSA licences.
Knight adds: “There are three or four firms looking to put a banking application together and none of them have got the funding. Every time a funder gets close to becoming interested in investing in banks, a newspaper article appears saying we should cut the heads off banks.”
Jonathan Cornell, head of com-munications, First Action Finance, says: “There is a strong and ex-perienced management team at Portillion and what is even better for brokers is that it intends to get all its business from them, so we should all be rooting for it.
“I wish Portillion every success in raising funding in Q1. However strong its proposition is, without funding it won’t get off the ground.”
Knight first revealed his plans to launch a lender called Checkmate Mortgages in 2007, which he later rebranded Portillion, in February last year.
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