Fiduciam chief Johan Groothaert, says the firm is brimming with pride at the business's new-look Spanish team following the recruitment of three new members of staff.
The additional team members mean that Fiduciam now boasts a Spanish team of eight and this follows a summer recruitment drive which for the business misty be incredibly encouraging given that they only started lending in Spain in January last year.
All of the new staff members -- the most recent of whom joined this week -- will be based in London but fully dedicated to the Spanish market. And it seems that they will have plenty of work to get stuck into with Fiduciam currently handling a pipeline of €70million of loans due to close by the end of October in Spain.
And Groothaert, who is the chief executive officer of Fiduciam, says there has been an element of surprise at the strong uptake of the business's loan solutions in Spain. He added:
“We are incredibly proud of our Spanish team. Even though expectations were already high at the outset, we are surprised by the strong uptake of our loan solutions in Spain.
"Fiduciam’s lending infrastructure is optimised to handle multiple jurisdictions and currencies, and we have invested substantial resources in widening our platform to cover Spain. With the new team members joining, we now have a real Spanish community in our London office; some of us have even started learning Spanish. It is a great country so it is always pleasant to look at projects and to meet with borrowers there.”
Fiduciam says there is some surprise at how many job applications it receives from Spanish women and how few from Spanish men -- and as a remarkable result this means all of its Spanish team are, in fact, women. A spokesman adds:
"The strong emphasis in London on genuine gender equality through initiatives such as Women in Finance has certainly had an important impact.
"The Fiduciam team combines experienced underwriters who used to work for Spanish banks and debt funds, with younger professionals who have recently graduated from university. The existing team has already moulded into a strong and dynamic group and the new members will contribute to this.
"It's fair to say that Fiduciam has found an incredibly captive market for its bridging solutions in Spain, hence the rapid growth rate of its Spanish business. It is filling a vacuum left by the mainstream banks. Until now, only Madrid-based specialist debt funds were offering a solution, but at substantially higher interest rates than those applied by Fiduciam -- whereas Fiduciam uses the same interest rates in Spain as are typical for the UK bridging market."
Fiduciam’s Spanish business covers the whole country and caters for both the international cross-border borrower and the entirely domestic Spanish borrower. Clients in Spain include British ex-patriates, who are now real estate developers in Spain, but also large family-owned Spanish industrial companies that need solutions for special situations.