GE and ANZ chief risk takers in business finance
GE Capital seems to attract more than its fair share of troubled business loans, though what would be GE's fair share is hard to say, since the company doesn't disclose adequate data about the composition of its financing businesses in Australia.Based on a rough measure of the number of mentions of banks and financiers in the context of newspaper reports on companies going broke, or at least going into administration, GE Capital, or more specifically its commercial finance arm, would have to be one of the top two risk takers in business finance in Australia.The Herald Sun reports today that GE Capital Finance is the primary creditor of Icon Automotive, a company that manufactures internal and external trim components for Ford and Toyota in Melbourne.Michael Dukovic, the director of Icon, appointed Wayne Benton and Rodney Slattery from insolvency firm PPB as administrators to the company. Dukovic bought Icon from Nylex nine months ago.Since Australia's minor boom in company failures and administrations got going over the summer, GE Capital has featured about as often as ANZ Bank, and perhaps more often, in connection with media reports on these failures.GE is associated with classic middle market financing facilities, often in manufacturing, and also presumably with asset finance or lease finance over the equipment, as much as GE takes security over a whole business.The names of other lenders such as Commonwealth, National, St George and Westpac turn up in media reports into company failures much less frequently. That's not to say ANZ and GE Capital are losing much money in business finance. Rather, it looks like it is these two that are taking the risks.