< p>I am glad that the risk Manager for Paddy Power isn’t pricing risk in the UK financial market anymore following Barcelona’s massacre of Manchester United at the weekend. If he was we may well now be facing a repeat of the last 3 years, (for those of you who have no idea what I am on about the firm offered to refund ALL losing bets if Barcelona won out right within normal time ie-; 90 minutes)…..I’m sorry but did the die hard’s actually believe they were going to beat the best team in Europe for the past decade? If you did you were mental! Mind you my track record in football punditry is somewhat poor so I will stop gloating and shut-up now!!!

 Following my last few words, the market seems to have continued to improve and we have seen the new product range from Precise start to take shape which is encouraging……….It would be nice if one or two lenders actually started to venture outside of London once more as it is starting to feel like there has been an apocalypse and the only people that survived live within the M25 like some huge barrier. The fact is, there are real deals to be done outside and these deals can be very lucrative. As an example, here is a deal I eventually placed last week that some struggled with. Before I take all the glory, this did end up going to a small private funder rather than one of the usuals, but never the less the actual risk on this deal was very low.   Client wanted 59k on 150k had some defaults and minor arrears because the business was starved of cashflow for a period. He had, however within the past few weeks received some cash he was waiting for and had reinvested in the business to bring that side back into line. The security was two one bed flats plus a shopfront, all were tenanted with a yield of over 15%. The client would struggle to borrow traditionally within 12 months because of the adverse but there were already options and frankly the investor who took the deal spoke to the client who agreed to return the property and covenants to him in month 13 if his plans did not work out. This was a real no lose for the rigt investor and the client was more than happy with the terms granted. The big issue for every lender is that it was in Hull. Both funder and borrower have now married and are planning a family (or something similar). The fact is, we could really do with a bit more flexibility in these areas and as I said there are some great deals if you bother to look.   I am off to Manchester this week so we shoud have some interesting times to report for next week   Have another great week and speak soon.