Fisher & Paykel Finance, owned by China’s Haier Group, may transfer its Equipment Finance Ltd (EFL) unit to its immediate parent in a further restructuring of the charging group after changes including the start of a securitisation programme last year.
EFL, which offers finance for plant, machinery and business equipment, has more than 13,000 business clients and partnerships with more than 250 diverse equipment dealers in New Zealand.
The proposal to move EFL, whose receivables were valued at $25.9 million at Dec. 31, outside of the company’s charging group is detailed in the prospectus for the sale of up to $300 million of secured deposits. The charging group is the company’s non-bank deposit taker says BusinessDesk.
Haier acquired F&P Finance as part of its takeover of F&P Appliances in 2012. The Chinese manufacturer opted to retain the finance company after initially considering it for sale. In calendar 2014, following a change of balance date, F&P Finance reported net interest income of $35.5 million from $33.4 million in the year-earlier nine months. Profit almost tripled to $31.8 million, helped by a revaluation gain on the transfer of a subsidiary.
In 2014, a strategic review of the company concluded it would benefit from a more diversified funding base and restructuring. As a result, it established a securitisation programme last August under which it made an initial sale of $275 million of receivables from its Q Card to Q Card Trust, owned by immediate parent F&P Finance Holdings.
BusinessDesk reports that F&P Finance also ‘sold’ its consumer insurance services unit, which offers insurance and product protection policies to retailers and consumers, to parent F&P Finance Holdings for $20.1 million in December. The charging group’s software and intangible assets were also sold to the parent for $7.3 million. And in a note on post-balance date events, accounts payable and payroll processing was transferred in the same way.
Company executives weren’t immediately available to comment on the changes to BusinessDesk.
