Secure Trust Bank has appointed Chris King and Andy Thomson to lead the firm’s Real Estate Finance division across London and the South East, as the Bank targets more landlords and developers across the region.
An experienced credit professional with expertise in the leverage, real estate and large corporates sectors, Chris joins Secure Trust Bank from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), where he worked for 10 years. In his most recent position as the Head of Commercial Real Estate Finance, Chris led the delivery of origination, deal execution and portfolio management across a circa £1bn portfolio of development and investment assets.
Andy Thomson, who was previously Head of Debt Advisory at GVA, is an established real estate finance professional with experience across loan origination, credit, relationship management and restructuring. Over the course of his career, Andy has held responsibility for the origination, negotiation and structuring of over £1.6bn of property debt finance and syndicated debt structures totalling £2.8bn.
Both join as Head of Real Estate Finance in London and the South East at Secure Trust Bank Real Estate Finance, each managing a team of experienced relationship directors. They will be responsible for driving performance and growing the business across the regional real estate finance subsectors.
Secure Trust Bank launched its Real Estate Finance business in 2014 to support SMEs in providing finance, principally for residential development and residential investment. The division, which has enabled the development of new build property, commercial to residential conversions and refurbishment projects nationwide, recently reported a strong period of growth with lending balances increasing 29 per cent to £580.8 million in the year to 31 December 2017.
In recent months the team has helped deliver loans against a variety of property types and schemes, including:
- A facility in excess of £20m to a student accommodation provider against their fully-occupied, new-build, purpose-built student accommodation scheme in Durham
- A five-year loan to a London-based property development and investment business against their existing residential property investment portfolio in the South East and North West England
- A £4.5m loan to a new-to-bank customer secured by a portfolio of over 500 ground rents from residential units in Central London
- A loan of £12m to a highly experienced property development family against a land site in East Anglia with planning consent for 490 houses
- A £26m development facility to a new customer to fund the build of a pre-let commercial property in North London
- A loan of £1.5m to a residential developer to fund the build of four houses in Buckinghamshire
Andy Scott, Head of Real Estate Finance, Midlands & South at Secure Trust Bank Real Estate Finance, said: “2017 was a strong year for the Real Estate Finance business, in which we generated our strongest pipeline to date and increased lending balances significantly – importantly, whilst assisting and working to the needs of our customers.With the continued resilience of the property investment and development markets in London and the South East, we are now in a position to strengthen our services even further.
The appointments of Chris and Andy underline this commitment. Both bring with them a wealth of leadership experience across real estate and financial services having sourced and structured multi-million pound facilities across the UK. Both will be key assets to the team as we continue to actively support landlords and property developers to achieve their aspirations.”
