WORKING WITH US

Ocean’s longest partnership to date is with Chargeurs, a world-leader in wool production.

Christophe Pothier, their CFO, was kind enough to share his story of working with us.

I’ve known Pedro since 1998, when he was working at Merrill Lynch. At Chargeurs, we were going through the difficult process of trying to monetize our assets. The traditional world of banking at that time could not see what we wanted to achieve. Pedro could.

Already back then, Pedro had big ideas for realizing the potential of asset financing. We were happy to find a fellow traveller who shared our vision. A few years later, he introduced me to Edouard when they were setting up Ocean together in 2002. We’ve been in business with them ever since.

Chargeurs has done four transactions with Ocean, each with a maturity of between three to seven years. When entering into a transaction, Ocean’s objectives are always clearly stated. Their approach to each deal strikes a good balance between the data required from us and the operational constraints of our business.

It’s become a real collaboration in a way that I had never encountered in any previous transaction. Edouard and Pedro have helped us achieve our vision, adding insights of their own at the execution stage, then providing whatever support we needed for the duration of the deal.

Our shared outlook on the world makes doing business both easier and more enjoyable. But such a philosophy is meaningless unless your finance partner also understands your objectives and your business constraints.

Ocean’s focus on our needs across our business chain really opened up a way of bringing cash into our enterprise in the way we had been seeking for a long time. Their willingness to roll up their sleeves to understand how our assets really work—a special kind of fanaticism for getting the details right—has kept us renewing the terms of our transactions.

Our company and Ocean have come a long way together. Spend some time with Edouard and Pedro and you may find yourself coming around to the philosophy the three of us share. I hope we’ll do business for many years to come.

Will the accountants approve?

Absolutely. Many clients’ first reaction is that it sounds ‘too good to be true’. In fact, our company is regulated by the Financial Services Authority and we are a member of the Hedge Fund Standards Board. Our techniques are inspired by the spirit of the Basel II and IAS/IFRS principles and designed to meet their rules.

For more on the ethics behind our business, see our philosophy.