Maritime completely revitalised a loss-making portfolio, restructuring and refinancing and winning a legal battle to transform it into a highly profitable residential property business.
We worked closely with a north London family who had regrettably fallen into a difficult relationship with a high street bank, after they were sold a series of unfavourable swap deals.
The family-run business was operated on traditional lines, with paper files and no centralised system to help them run a £60m portfolio of London residential properties with around 600 tenants.
Family members each ran separate parts of the business, but there were no clear lines of communication.
The portfolio was chronically under-performing, and the lack of up-to-date systems meant it was difficult to collect rents, invoice efficiently, conduct maintenance and log any problems.
Due to interest rate changes the business was struggling to service the debt and was perilously close to failure.
The portfolio required a complete financial restructure with an alternative lender.
Once engaged, we performed a thorough review and analysis of all the properties and implemented operating and management systems to properly manage the assets.
We managed to clear arrears from specific tenants and analysed every building to boost rents, performance and capital value.
Through a lengthy due diligence process and the integration of a new analytical management system the portfolio was successfully placed with an alternative lender.
Our work completely transformed the business from loss-making into a highly profitable, viable portfolio.
Simultaneously, we argued that many of the swap deals associated with the portfolio had been missold, and there was a claim for liability.
Previously, many banks had encouraged customers to take out swap deals without their full understanding of the product and its potential financial implications if interest rates fell.
We sought and engaged specialist legal partners, built a dialogue with the bank and arranged a series of meetings between the parties, presenting the best case possible for the client.
We managed to successfully argue down their swap debt liability by 75%, agreeing a deal for several million pounds in compensation.
