Loans, Listings and Lay-by Recoveries
There are reports today that The AA has appointed Price Waterhouse Coopers to line itself up for a £3 billion stock market flotation. Private equity investment groups CVC Capital Partners and Permira currently own the AA.
The reason why I mention this story on the Blog is because The AA also deals in secured loans, insurance and credit cards.
Well to tell the truth The AA don’t actually deal in secured loans, they are just like the masses of other businesses, for example, all the top supermarkets, who merely act as an introducer for loans to finance companies.
There is a growing trend in doing this, whereby the large businesses exploit their brand name and position to sell things on behalf of others. I suppose you can’t blame them, but 9 times out of 10, the customer must genuinely believe they are getting a loan from companies like The AA.
In the AA’s case it acts as an introducer to Bright Finance . Apparently a 
guy called Paul Hancock in 2001 using only the finance available on his £5,000 limit credit card started Bright Finance. Four months later equal partner Mark Cooke joined him and it now has £12 million turnover and 400 staff.
The AA was bought from Centrica in a deal said to be worth around 2.7billion Euros, so it looks like the Equity companies are going to make another whopping profit at the quoted flotation valuation.
