The recent news involving financial firm Salans is going to further shake up the mortgage market in the UK. Recent news has not been positive for the mortgage markets in the United Kingdom where mortgage approval rates have been at an eight month low following constriction in the flow of financing for homes and other property loans. Salans has stated that the sale is connected to the fact that it wishes to focus on other businesses instead of its mortgage arm. The sale will be completed early 2011 with the restructured mortgage situation showing its effects sooner rather than later.
The financial firm sold its mortgage firm and its debt processing arm of the business in Bromley and Thetford. This will show the firm’s presence in the United Kingdom restricted just to its London office. Salans sold its two offices in December 2010 to the legal firm Solex Legal Services. Solex Legal Services has been known to supply the community with legal services for mortgage and lending issues. Specifically, Solex Legal Services supports mortgage companies in the UK. This current move will have Solex accepting responsibility for all eighty-one office employees from the old Salans offices. Included in this group of professionals are eight lawyers.
The details of the sale of the Salans offices to Solex have not been officially released. The price is currently unknown, but the other results have already been manifested. The managing partner of Bromley, Caroline Havers, has stepped down from the Salans partnership. She has since taken a position at Solex. For the remainder of her term at Salans, Caroline Havers will act as a consultant for the new business changeover. Havers joined Harris Rosenblatt & Kramer over twenty-five years ago.
The history of this large mortgage deal started when Salans merged with Harris Rosenblatt & Kramer in 1998. The office in Thetford was then set up. This particular office focused on giving advice to lenders on how to structure their new loans, especially in the re-mortgage field. The firm handled debt recovery as well. The offices were sold by Salans because of the fact that the corporate board decided to restructure its focus away from this type of business. Instead, the company is focused on international and cross-border transactions and business.
The managing partner for Salans, Howard Cohen, stated that the businesses of Bromley and Thetford were quite profitable until recently. Because of this, they kept running the business. However, with recent changes to the firm, it was shown that this type of mortgage and lending business was not the core competency of the company.
For Salans, in these financially difficult times, handling a mortgage company which is not connected to any other parts of its business does not make good business sense. Thus, the company has decided to sell of its stake in such business activities. Instead, the firm will move further into its core competency, which is assisting companies with international and cross-border deals. This will likely be a boost for the UK mortgage market, because the mortgage industry will have an increase in quality mortgage providers who are dedicated to fixing the mortgage situation in the UK.