The restaurant franchise nobody wanted to fund

The client was no first-timer. Decades in his industry, several years successfully running his own operations, and he had recently sold one of his sites, so half the purchase price was sitting there in cash. The target was an established restaurant franchise on the Central Coast, trading well under a recognised brand. A non-bank commercial lender declined it. So did major banks. Franchise hospitality with a change of ownership is a file plenty of credit teams simply do not want to read.

We took the transaction over end to end: due diligence on the target's trading first, then the documents. The group servicing workbook consolidated the business and personal position into one page a banker could read in a minute: income adopted conservatively from the most recent year only, repayments sensitised above the offered rate, every liability on the table, and the client's 50% cash contribution front and centre.

Servicing passed with a clear annual surplus, the finance was approved, and the client acquired the site. The deal that two categories of lender had walked away from was the same deal. The file was not.