Graham Hill Reviews A Busy Week With The NACFB

Monday, 11. July 2011

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Been a busy week for me this week, had a board meeting of the NACFB, of which I’m a director on Tuesday 28^th followed by a lovely dinner, hosted by an old friend of the association, Bob Lefroy, editor of Business Money. This all took place at the Birmingham NEC Hilton Metropole and what a hotel that is. Amazing in size and activity. Add in a Neil Diamond concert at the NEC that night and the place was heaving. Obviously most were moving around with the aid of zimmer frames with Neil not being so popular with the younger generation as he is with the older baby boomers.

But the atmosphere in the hotel was buzzing. On Wednesday I was at the NACFB Commercial Finance Expo across the grounds in one of the exhibition halls. This was a business to business exhibition providing an opportunity for brokers to meet lenders and vice versa.

It was packed and it had seminars going on all day to compliment the exhibition. There is still a depression around the finance industry generally and my sector, motor finance, is still suffering with the underwrite bar still set too high and too little money to lend but it’s looking a little more encouraging. Small green shoots as they say.

Whilst at the exhibition I met a delightful young lady called Liz Locke, she was in the last series of the Apprentice and did quite well. She is doing much better now as a director of a company called Omni Capital and if my experiences of Alan Sugar are anything to go by she had a narrow escape.

The gorgeous Liz is not only a stunning and intelligent lady she has legs that nearly reached to the roof of the NEC, helped along by the 18” heels. She gave a presentation that was excellent in the seminar hall but was concerned that everyone could hear her.

I could easily hear her at the back of the room so she had no need to worry. Haven’t got a clue as to what she was saying but I could hear her although distracted by those legs, they had me spellbound – wow! A very delightful business lady.

Yes of course I have her business card, don’t be ridiculous. So there ended a very busy Expo, the biggest and best attended in the history of the NACFB. By Graham Hill