London ‘Shadow’ Lender Doubled Profit as It Tapped Fed Program

Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- BSN Capital Partners Ltd., the London-based finance company headed by former Deutsche Bank AG managing director John Burgess, more than doubled earnings last year as it tapped a U.S. emergency-lending program designed to stem the credit crisis.

BSN earned fees from providing advice for three affiliates, called conduits, which borrowed $42.8 billion in aggregate from the Federal Reserve’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility, BSN said in a regulatory filing in April, the most recent data available. Profit in 2009 was 853,300 pounds ($1.4 million), compared with 380,800 pounds a year earlier, the filing shows.

The funding facility, which loaned a total of $738 billion while in operation, was created to “prevent substantial disruptions to the financial markets and the economy” caused by the credit crisis, the Fed’s website says. BSN’s filing shows that not all firms that used the CPFF needed it as a source of lending. The facility gave finance companies loans as many private investors avoided the short-term debt markets.

“Although the conduits and BSN Group did not require the CPFF funding, its presence did bolster profits in 2009,” BSN director Jeremy Nye wrote in the filing. “Results for 2010 therefore are expected to be more in line with prior years, with 2009 being considered an exceptionally profitable year.”

Fed data show that more than $140 billion, or almost 20 percent, of the CPFF’s loans went to conduits such as those affiliated with BSN, which earned fees “linked to the growth or decline of these same conduits,” according to the filing. The conduits were profitable in 2009 even without the CPFF due to “natural market liquidity,” Nye said in the filing.

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Risk free lending facility means almost risk free money.