LDS team expansion – FIBA

By Mark Roberts, Relationship Director at LDS

As the development finance market continues to embrace LDS Sales Guarantees we’ve been making a series of key hires.

The expansion of our team is an important part of our ambitions to continue to scale up and bring the benefits of the Sales Guarantee to a wider audience. We’re enabling lenders to lend more, SME housebuilders to build more, and for brokers to do more business.

Let me introduce you to the newest members of our fast-growing team:

Ben Jenkinson joins LDS from Homes England, where he was Head of Development Finance Products. In his four years of senior roles at the Government housing accelerator, Ben successfully delivered more than £2 billion of development finance joint ventures alongside private and public sector partners. His achievements at Homes England included The Housing Delivery Fund – a £1 billion partnership with Barclays Bank, helping SME housebuilders to grow their output through the provision of construction loans and the £250m Housing Accelerator Fund’ with United Trust Bank.

As LDS’ new Regional Director for London and the South, Ben will be working across the market to form alliances with quality lenders and capital providers, combining Sales Guarantees and development debt to harness the massive latent potential for SMEs to build more new homes.

When joining the business Ben said: “I love the product. It’s just what the market needs – a genuinely credible piece of innovation with a hugely important purpose – to help SMEs build more new homes. As well as improving lenders’ credit profile, the Sales Guarantee releases cash to allow SMEs to build more and build quicker.”

He will be based at LDS’ new London offices within the Shard Quarter, London Bridge, and will be recruiting more staff.

Strengthening our communications team is our new head of marketing Jo Street. Jo was formerly Marketing Director at BPP Education Group and Head of Commercial Marketing and Brand at Manchester Airport Group (MAG). Jo is currently in the process of refreshing LDS’ brand identity, launching a new website, and rolling out new products aimed at supporting SME housebuilders to deliver new homes.

Sebastian Blurton joins Jo’s team as Marketing Manager, having previously delivered marketing for Alloga UK.

Meanwhile my team has been boosted by the arrival of Siobhan O’Donnell who has joined as a Relationship Manager from Assetz and Kayee Au who has joined us from LPC Living as Property Investment Administrator.

Bolstering our finance team is our new Group Financial Controller, Anthony McKechnie, who previously worked as Financial Reporting and Treasury Manager at Matalan Group Ltd and played a key role in ensuring continuation of business for the retailer during the pandemic.

He is joined by Group Finance Manager Joel Taylor-Spencer, formerly of Grant Thornton. Joel is a qualified accountant with experience of leading auditing teams across a number of high-profile property projects across the residential, commercial, and housing sectors.

Real estate legal expert Gareth Milner is LDS’ new Group Legal Counsel. Gareth has ten years of experience in real estate finance development and acquisitions from his previous roles as a solicitor within London law firms.

Having been here since the launch of the online engine it’s amazing to see the difference that a well thought through tech platform like our instant Sales Guarantee can make to the life of brokers.

It’s also exciting working with a new team of colleagues and seeing the additional skills they are bringing to our team.

Article covered on FIBA Advantage online (March 2022)