UKSF is a financial engineering business, established to provide real estate investment banking services. Staffed with experienced bankers qualified in a number of specialist fields, UKSF offers expertise in project, tax and accounting driven finance (“Structured Finance”). UKSF began trading in November 2003, although the team came together in 1999 within the Company’s predecessor and before that at Hambros Bank Limited since 1992.

Traditionally, the funding of real estate has been polarised between those financing solutions provided by institutional funds and those provided by banks. UKSF’s unique approach is its ability to provide clients with solutions drawn from property and accounting disciplines alongside those from the debt markets. Such an alignment reflects the convergence in part driven by the increasing move towards securitisation and the impact of the Private Finance Initiative (“PFI”) and other regulatory and accounting changes. Uniquely, UKSF is able to advise and procure solutions derived from across these traditionally distinct markets.

For example, we have developed a core focus of UKSF is the financing of public and quasi-public sector property. We have developed a method of financing student accommodation using charitable vehicles (“Student Villages”).

Using a similar charitable vehicle model, we are also working with local authorities in order to solve their immediate bed and breakfast accommodation problems with a bespoke funding package called Safe Haven. Safe Haven has already secured funding of £67m and has re-housed over 500 homeless people in West London.

UKSF has a 100% delivery record on its projects, having brought a fully funded and structurally sound proposal to each transaction where it has been selected as preferred partner. Our skills in Finance and Legal Structuring were learned within the UK corporate banking sector and honed at Hambros Bank Limited, then the leading asset financiers of the investment banking sector. Having funded over £1.3bn of Higher Education assets in a range of tax and accounting based structures, the team’s move to UKSF has seen the addition of the charitable structuring that is so apt for these deals. In student accommodation, the UKSF team worked with several universities and has acted as principal to establish borrowing vehicles, entered into the design and early build contracts and incurred the initial expenditure for new bed schemes. Our Student Villages structures lie behind almost 15,000 student bedrooms in the UK today with our transaction tally now exceeding £2bn of debt.

Development skills are often required too. UKSF has worked with the Universities of Dundee and Aston to completely refit their student accommodation and demolish and rebuild the bulk of their on-campus stock. This process was originated by UKSF and project managed by them also (on the construction side as well as the legal and financial transaction). The new buildings were finally completed in 2016 after some £240m of works and £275m of debt. The charities will continue to manage the stock for some 35 years. UKSF oversaw the planning and design process too, as well as the procurement of construction partners and the actual build of the stock.

Skills in working with the charitable sector continue to be utilized in most areas of our deals. In completing and managing the ongoing Safe Haven portfolio of social housing, we learned new and relevant skills for charities, taxation and VAT treatments that can all be brought to bear within the quasi-public sector and maintain our position as the UK’s market leader in delivering socially responsible finance.

UKSF is very experienced in such project delivery and has no capacity issues. It was founded by Alexander Ward and Jared Fox, who are both associates of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and colleagues at Hambros Bank.