Suros Capital reports 40 per cent rise in business purpose enquiries

The lender has reported around 55 enquiries about business purposes so far this year.

Suros Capital said that cases include supporting a solicitor interested in buying into a legal property with a loan of £100,000 secured against a collection of watches.

Another enquiry came from a businessman looking to part fund a business opportunity in the hospitality sector and raised £315,000 against his own watch collection. Models included Rolex, Patek Phillipe, Franck Muller and Panerai.

The lender also received a case from a wine merchant and collector who got a £100,000 loan against part of his wine collection. Within that, there was one case of Petrus 1982 valued at £42,000 and one of Romanee-Conti 1990 valued at £16,000 per bottle.

Suros: ‘Luxury assets can add extra dimension’

Ed Blackmore, business development director at Suros Capital, added: “These deals highlight what can be achieved when you work with a lender like Suros Capital that concentrates on providing a service with the minimum of paperwork and invasive personal questions about clients’ financial status.

“Luxury assets can prove to have extra dimensions that can be particularly valuable for their owners. Those assets’ monetary value can be utilised extremely quickly to cover a wide range of needs where short-term borrowing requirements must be dealt with quickly and discretely.

“We just require luxury assets, like these watches or fine wines, to act as security for the loans we make. It is that simple.”