Mia Drennan is the Founder and CEO of GLAS - a global provider of third-party agency and trustee services in the institutional debt and equity markets. The firm’s offering focuses on restructuring and special situations, direct lending, capital markets and leveraged finance. Here, Mia speaks to Finance Monthly about setting up her company and restructuring trends in the UK.
What was the idea about GLAS born out of?
I have always been an entrepreneur at heart and prior to starting GLAS, I leveraged my entrepreneurial skill set for my previous clients and employers. I spent a large proportion of my career in the trustee and agency space working for a large American bank. My success was based on the standard of service my team and I provided to our clients, picking up the phone and returning emails in a timely fashion and being able to be solution driven. Following the crash in 2008, this mentality changed, and these institutions became hard to deal with. After leaving the bank, I had always wanted to establish my own agency and trustee business. The lightbulb moment came at the time of the credit crunch and the need for institutional debt to be restructured. Banks were selling loan portfolios to credit funds and looking to exit from the ancillary roles and that was the angle. It took three months and 400 meetings in the City of London to get our first deal but it was worth the effort and I have never looked back. Today, we are a global business across all continents with over sixty-five employees.
What are the typical clients that you provide loan agency and trustee services to?
Since our inception, we have always tried to differentiate ourselves from our competition, we want to provide a ‘front office approach to a back-office service’. Our focus is on developing expertise in different sectors, which covers the sticky end of the scale, restructuring, work-out and special situations, direct lending – the alternatives and funds we work with, love the fact that we are totally independent and we see the delivery of our services as an extension of the lenders. Within the Capital Markets, we can provide a more commercial and pragmatic approach on Institutional Transactions and Loan Services working on large syndications which we can do more efficiently and partner with the arranging Banks. Our client base is wide. We work with lawyers, advisers, corporates, institutions, accountants, banks, debt funds and institutional investors. The great thing about our business is that is has many touch points and we have many stakeholders and clients.
Which sectors would you say are faced with restructurings more than others in the UK?
The sectors which are under stress now are those which are (I) real estate heavy; (ii) over leveraged and (iii) have not invested in technology. Retailers have suffered specifically and companies which over expanded and have not kept pace with the consumer trends towards online retail for example. The challenge for creditors is the lack of covenants in the credit agreement which provide creditors with a trigger, making it difficult to carry out a debt restructure. There is still a lot of money searching for good businesses and management teams and these tend to go down an ‘amend and extend’ route and have new money or equity invested. Additionally, we are also seeing Company Voluntary Arrangements (CVAs) as flavour of the month right now.
As CEO, how do you ensure you are directing the company in the correct direction?
The journey for any true entrepreneur is all about growing something. It gets hard when you go beyond the football team size! I am lucky to have an amazing business partner and that I have assembled a great executive team around me. We are constantly reviewing and aligning our plans, so we can keep growing and maintain a position as a trailblazer in this space.
How do you advise your team to make the correct decisions for the company alongside clients?
We have invested in our central function which comprises, risk, compliance and product development. We have various governance processes and procedures which allows us to remain nimble and solution driven but doesn’t put the business at risk.
What challenges would you say you and the firm encounter on a regular basis?
The main challenges are around keeping the competitive edge, delivering innovation and preserving the family feel culture. I spend my time working on our culture to ensure that our original values and the mission we created live on in throughout the organisation. I strive to do this through communication channels and ensuring new joiners are made aware how we got here and where we came from. Coming into this business today is very different to what is was like in the first year!
Contact details
Direct: +44 (0) 20 3764 9318
Mobile: +44 (0) 7917 446580
Email: mia.drennan@glas.agency
Website: www.glas.agency
Wayne Beecham, Director of Progressive Property, the UK's biggest property education and investment company below gives Finance Monthly his reaction to the Queen’s speech’ plans to ban landlord’s charging letting fees.
"Following the Queen’s speech we once again receive confirmation that a tenancy fee cap/ban is on the cards in the future, this has been a headline subject in the industry and I have heard many landlords, property professionals and property companies/ agencies groan at the thought of an outright ban on fees, in many ways I agree as an out-right ban tends to undermine the work and effort put into to the processes of renting properties and the hard work applied by a good quality agent who understands the importance of these fees to support the work required for a harmonious tenancy cycle. Though many people forget that the lettings industry has continued to fall short when it comes to regulations and change over the time and in some ways the landslide of changes we have been encountering over the last 10 - 15 years has been a result of the industry trying to catch up with the limited changes and regulations applied to the private rental sector and we should see these changes as a positive step forward to a better regulated, safer and fairer industry for all involved.
"I agree that an outright ban would not be a positive move forward for the industry and will encourage more agents and landlords to cut corners to try and achieve the outcome they require, a simple fee cap would be adequate to ensure consistency and fairness across the industry as well as acknowledging the works required to protect all parties in the private rental sector. Following conversations with referencing agencies a fee ban would merely promote more creative strategies to be implemented to the industry which would fundamentally cost tenants more money and completely undermine the purpose of a fee ban, as referencing agencies may look to increase their fees to tenants who require referencing for the purpose of renting a property and look to share this fee with letting agents the tenants will ultimately end up paying more to support essentially two fees. I agree any good agent is happy to promote more regulations within the industry which would ensure less bad practices and unscrupulous landlords who look to cut corners and potentially risk lives for their own personal gain, but we also need to ensure we are promoting becoming a property investor to ensure supply of good quality properties continues into the market place to keep up with demand and the shortage of housing we currently face.
"We have already seen a number of regulation changes which have failed to live up to their original objectives, this is clearly seen in the introduction of the protection of deposits and the choice of two different schemes. One scheme has met the objectives set and has a positive impact on the sector by holding the funds and therefore ensuring the purpose of the scheme to protect the tenants monies from any wrong doing or foul play, whilst the other has made little change and following personal experiences of bad practice by an agent the tenants and there deposits which were meant to be safeguarded where unfortunately left in the same situation they would have been if the scheme did not exist at all. We have also seen this with local councils and the eviction process as councils now inform tenants to stay even when legal notices have been served and even worse after county courts have instructed the tenants to leave, this short sighted advice has left many tenants in an even worse situation and delayed the inevitable outcome that they require alternative accommodations, following this advice they are now left in emergency housing or a hostel with a CCJ against their name and therefore narrowing their options for housing going forward and in many cases leaving them with the option of council housing which is already in short supply. By introducing a fee structure within the industry we would ensure consistency and transparency and therefore achieving the outcome required, if any agent or landlord was seen to be ignoring this structure a simple fine process would be enough discouragement."
In addition, Finance Monthly heard from Adrian McClinton, Associate Solictor at law firm Coffin Mew, on the Tenant's Fees Bill:
"Will the banning of letting agent’s fees help tenants? In my view probably not as much as hoped.
“Many of those renting do not want to be renting, but they cannot afford to buy because properties where people want/need to live are too expensive. On the flipside, landlords have seen their margins fall and therefore will understandably want to maintain already slim margins whilst still using the valuable services of letting agents. We have also seen an increase in competition within the letting agent market, recently joined by online providers.
“I think that landlords will stand firm and we will see the cost of this proposed ban being partly shouldered by letting agents, by reducing their prices and internal cost cutting, and by tenants, through an increase in rents, which is possible because of the huge demand for housing.”
