De Montfort lending report’s Maxted to retire next year

Bill Maxted, lead author of the most comprehensive report on UK property lending, is to retire next year.

Maxted, an academic consultant at De Montfort University who produces the report with colleague Trudi Porter twice a year, plans to leave the university next July.

The university and the report’s sponsors have started a search for his replacement. It is understood that Porter will not be taking over Maxted’s role.

The De Montfort Commercial Property Lending Report is known colloquially as the ‘bible’ on UK lending to the asset class and its statistics are widely quoted in the market and by researchers and regulators.

It covers the majority of lenders, both those actively originating in the UK and those with outstanding loan-books, and it carries data series going back 17 years. In addition to monitoring new lending and outstanding debt volumes, Maxted and Porter’s work provides valuable, independent information on trends.

Originally launched in 1997, during the post-crisis period it monitored the level of banks’ soured loans, while the 2014 report revealed the inroads into the UK lending market made by non-bank lenders, with debt funds and insurance companies accounting for a quarter of new loans last year.

De Montfort University owns the intellectual property rights and the research is supported by industry bodies the Association of Property Lenders, the British Property Federation and CREFC Europe plus commercial sponsors.

The university’s Professor of European Economics, Professor Cillian Ryan told Real Estate Capital: “We are strongly committed to working with the stakeholders across the sector to ensure its continued relevance and impact. Working closely with the sponsors, we are currently in the advanced stages of appointing a successor.”

The full-year report is published in May of the following year. The next update is due out this Friday, 18 December, covering the six months from January-June 2015.

The De Montfort report was the inspiration for a German lending market report which is produced by the University of Regensburg and was launched two years ago.

Lending organisations have been prepared to provide their UK data to Maxted and De Montfort because its collection and analysis is independent. The ‘Vision’ working party into the potential establishment of a UK loan database, recently established under the chairmanship of former Lloyds banker and CBRE Capital Advisers MD Richard Dakin, will have this issue along with others to consider early next year.