I had planned to make this week’s Excess Spread a nice rundown of some of the themes and gossip from the SF Vegas conference (including the not-open-to-press ‘how do we deal with fraud’ sessions and the fire in the exhibit hall) but events occurred, and there was exactly one situation which dominated discussions among the UK contingent in Vegas — what’s happening with Market Financial Solutions?
Indeed, the UK contingent in Vegas was skinnier than usual; some senior folk, on arrival in Nevada, flew straight back to London, and some spent a weekend earmarked for relationship-building, drinking, dining, and gambling getting together their responses to the MFS situation.
MFS is a big UK bridging lender. Exact figures are hard to come by, but UK courts have been told £2.4bn, and the company itself, prior to scrubbing all press releases from its website (a very cool and normal decision) had said it was approaching £2.5bn roughly this time last year.
For context, the Bridging and Development Lenders Association said that the total UK bridging loan book was about £13bn last year, so MFS is almost certainly the largest pure player bridging firm — specialist lenders like Together, LendInvest and
