Steve Hudson, president and chief executive officer of Element Financial Corp., poses in front of a truck he has financed in Toronto, April 8, 2011.J.P. Moczulski/The Globe and Mail
Element Financial Corp. CEO Steven Hudson is putting his old Newcourt Credit Group team back together.
Mr. Hudson's fast-growing equipment finance company has hired David McKerroll as president of its Element Capital arm. Mr. McKerroll will lead the expansion of the company's rail car finance and aviation finance units, continuing a lengthy career in financing such projects that has taken him from co-founding Newcourt Credit with Mr. Hudson to CIT Group Inc. (which purchased Newcourt in 1999) and now to Element.
In a statement, Mr. Hudson asserted that the company sees opportunities in the retrofitting and expansion of rail cars due to the transportation of oil by rail, totalling $3-billion (U.S.). "It will be the job of David and his team to harvest these incremental opportunities," Mr. Hudson said.
Newcourt Credit's spectacular rise as a non-bank lender and financial services company in the 1990s was cut short when it ran into financing trouble stemming from the Russian debt crisis, prompting the sale of the company to CIT, its rival. At Element, Mr. Hudson has pursued a less aggressive strategy than at Newcourt Credit, offering leasing agreements to companies needing financing for the purchase of items ranging from rail cars and airplanes to helicopters and buses.
The company has grown by leaps and bounds, with assets rising from $400-million in 2011 to more than $4.2-billion today, accompanied by sharp increases in the share price.