Nick Longley, Group Financial Controller, Titan:
At Titan Europe, we manufacture wheels, tyres, and undercarriage systems, for off road vehicles, servicing the agricultural, construction and mining industries. We operate out of sixteen territories across five continents.
Our previous bankers were an American bank through our parent company, Titan International.
Titan International were looking to de-risk their bank facilities, we quickly realised that we needed a banking partner here in the UK.
James Hodgson, Relationship Director, Barclays:
Titan Europe have been on the radar of Barclays for a number of years they’re a very long established high quality business in the West Midlands. Titan approached Barclays by virtue of an existing Barclaycard relationship.
Nick Longley:
The Barclays relationship director spent a lot of time in one to one meetings with myself, sharing information and data, about the company, trying to understand what the company’s cash flow needs were, both now, and in the future.
James Hodgson:
At Barclays we have industry specialisms, so I’m a Relationship Director that specialises in manufacturing, transport and logistics clients, and are based in the Midlands, which is a key manufacturing hub. Local knowledge and industry knowledge, really gives me an opportunity to get to know the client and understand the client quickly.
I’m able to bring to bear the national and international capabilities that Barclays has.
Nick Longley:
Switching to Barclays was relatively straight forward. Changing over nine bank accounts usually takes a lot of time, it worked well with Barclays, the portal was very user friendly. I’d recommend Barclays just because of the changeover process went so well.
James Hodgson:
When a client’s looking to open accounts with Barclays, as well as myself, as Relationship Director and my Support Manager, we also introduce a single point of contact On-Boarding Manager, who’s able to manage the account opening process from start to finish for the client. On top of that we have an online portal which means that there’s a single place for the client to go to upload documents that we need and it really makes it as quick and easy as possible for the client.
In the case of Titan this meant that we were able to open the accounts and draw facilities very quickly.
We provide primary facilities to Titan, which include working capital facilities and some term debt.
Nick Longley:
We recently put in place a HMRC Bond guarantee, and we are now talking to Barclays around setting up foreign exchange transactions both in euros and dollars, giving us a great deal of flexibility with our funding for the foreseeable future.
What we’re looking for in our banking partner is the ability to grow with Titan. We’re looking for future growth, both in our existing businesses, but then also through joint ventures, new acquisitions, and Barclays have already started talking to us about the future.
James Hodgson:
The future for Titan and Barclays, I believe is really bright. They’ve got some very exciting growth aspirations and I’m expectant that those growth aspirations will be achieved.
