Macquarie provides financing support to Bluestone Group in their acquisition of Basinghall Finance

Macquarie Group (Macquarie), through its Commodities and Financial Markets (CFM) group, today announced that it has completed a capital markets refinancing of facilities provided to the Bluestone Group (Bluestone) in support of the acquisition of the UK mortgage lending and servicing platform, Basinghall Finance Ltd.

The acquisition involved the purchase of mortgage assets and securities related servicing contracts, along with the transfer of staff to Bluestone, forming the core of Bluestone Mortgages’ UK division. The acquisition accelerates the growth of Bluestone’s European lending and servicing businesses which now include credit management, loan servicing and lending operations in the UK and Ireland.

Macquarie provided the funding, structuring and distribution expertise to facilitate both the acquisition finance and the capital markets transactions as part of its strategy of supporting top tier specialist lenders across Europe.

The capital markets refinancing involved Macquarie acting as sole Arranger for two separate transactions:

• an inaugural UK £250million securitisation for Bluestone, Celeste Mortgage Funding 2015-1 plc, placed with European investors that priced in March 2015
• the repackaging and placement of two Net Interest Margin securities relating to two outstanding securitisations, placed in December 2014.

“Commodities and Financial Markets has the complete toolset to provide clients with acquisition finance through to the arrangement of capital markets transactions. Macquarie is committed to supporting the best specialist lenders across Europe on a long-term relationship basis” said Gianfranco Simionato, head of Fixed Income at Macquarie in CFM EMEA. 

“Our relationship with Bluestone dates back to 2010 and we look forward to continue working with them in the future to expand their financing through innovative funding solutions in the capital markets”.

Macquarie has a strong track record in structuring, funding and arranging capital markets transactions for a range of European specialised lenders including the recent arrangement of the seventh securitisation for Paragon Group which priced in March 2015.