Andrew left specialist brokerage Voltaire Financial in November 2019, where he was a director for over nine years.

He will now lead London-based Pure Structured Finance, which aims to find and tailor funding for unique projects and properties, offering a “personal approach” to UK property investors, developers and businesses.
 
While Voltaire gave him his start in the industry and taught him everything he knows, he told B&C that it “was time to leave” and start something new.

“This opportunity was too good to miss, in terms of being able to create something a little bit different, join forces with Ben [Lloyd, director and co-founder of the Pure Group, and managing director at Pure Commercial Finance] who I get along with and share the same views of the industry in terms of relationships,” he said.

“The timing was right.”

The brokerage will cover a wide spectrum of transactions, and at all levels of debt, including bridging, development and mezzanine finance, commercial and residential investment, and equity. 

It will target larger-value transactions with more complex debt structures and aims to attract sophisticated investor clients, due to having more experience working on deals of the “higher end”, as Andrew puts it.

Andrew’s background involves dealing with more complicated debt arrangements, longer-term deals (such as five- to six-year regeneration programmes), convoluted ownership structures, and legal borrowing entities from across the world, in addition to dealing with institutional lenders and equity partners.

“I think that [launching] a new brokerage … with experience of dealing with the bad guys in the market as well as the good, and to know what to look out for … is key at the moment.”

Pure Structured Finance can provide access to over 60 lenders, from high street banks to private funds.

Andrew told B&C that its core group of lenders had been around for a long time and “weathered a few storms”. 

“…We know how they act, and they know how we act, and that will continue; we are conscious that there are other good [lenders] coming to the market as well,” he said.

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Andrew aims to apply the same standards and success that the Pure group has achieved to larger transactions.

“There is this assumption that bigger clients know what they’re doing and they don’t need as much hand-holding, but that probably couldn’t be further from the truth. 

“We want to take the care that you get [for] a smaller transaction, which Pure has built its reputation on, and apply that to the larger, more complicated transactions.”

The team at Pure Structured Finance includes founding member and director, Harry Hodell, who brings a specialist lending perspective to the business, having previously worked at Westbrooke Alternative Asset Management and Fiduciam. 

The company also benefits from the experience of Krystal Jevons, group operations director, and Lewis Peach, relationship director.

Lewis spent several years working as a relationship director at sister company, Pure Commercial Finance, where he worked on numerous deals that required mixed capital stacks, large equity tickets and good relationship and negotiation skills.
 
Krystal has also held positions at Pure Commercial Finance for a number of years, in addition to spending over a decade at Santander.
 
Ben said that the launch of Pure Structured Finance will help to drive the group forward to become “bigger and better and grow our market share across all product sets”. 

“We had been in discussions with Andrew for quite some time, so were naturally very happy to reach agreement with him to come in and launch Pure Structured Finance with us as head of the business,” he told B&C.

“Andrew brings a wealth of experience and his reputation in our industry is outstanding. 

“The Pure group of businesses has seen very positive organic growth over the past few years and we are now entering our next phase of growth, which started with the launch of Pure Wealth Management last year and continues with Pure Structured Finance this year. 

“The group will have more announcements in the coming months.”