Snapshot

• Client: Guy Edmeades-Stearns of Nurstead Court, Kent
• Business: Diversified estate with multiple enterprises and income streams
• Transaction:funding to purchase off-site properties, with planning permissions for residential conversion for onward sale
• Challenge:strong asset base and track record of building successful enterprises, but borrowing restricted by banking appetites and policies limiting future growth
• Outcome: successful acquisition and development programme supported through long-term private banking relationships

Background

Nurstead Court is a 190-acre estate in Kent combining a wedding venue, on-site accommodation, shepherds’ huts, an equestrian centre with cross-country facilities, commercial lets, doggy day care, fitness centre and wellbeing facilities, a forest school, cricket ground and other enterprises.

Guy Edmeades-Stearns has spent many years expanding and diversifying the estate. Since 2015, Rob Lister of Rural & Business Specialists has worked alongside Guy helping secure funding for projects both on and off the estate, through a relationship built on trust, detailed knowledge of the estate, and a shared understanding of the longer-term ambitions for the estate.

Challenge

When Rob became involved in the estate, Guy was banking with a high-street lender. Although the estate had a strong asset value, the profitability profile combined with interest rates at the time prevented the bank from supporting the level of borrowing needed to fund further growth and diversification.

Guy had a clear vision: to diversify income both on and away from the core holding and to acquire and develop residential sites through a joint venture partnership. The existing lender’s internal policies could not support this ambition.

Solution

R&BS restructured Guy’s banking away from the high street, introducing him to a private bank better suited to the complexity and asset profile of the estate. This provided the platform for the diversification and development activity that followed.

Over the following years, as the residential development programme grew, the new bank’s policy did not extend to lending where more capital was being deployed away from the core holding. R&BS worked with Guy to manage a transition to another private bank, allowing the development projects to continue without disruption.

Over more than a decade, R&BS has worked with Guy on financial propositions, introduced and structured funding for multiple residential development sites while building long-term banking relationships that support the estate’s ambitions.

Outcome

Through the relationships R&BS has built with a range of private banks, structured solutions and careful positioning have allowed Nurstead Court to move forward with each new proposition. By securing lending partners aligned with the estate’s long-term strategy, R&BS has enabled Guy to diversify income, expand into residential development and continue investing through changing market and economic conditions.

Using Nurstead Court as security, Guy has been able to build a wider residential development business alongside the Wakeman family, acquiring and developing sites in parallel with the continued diversification of the estate itself.

Today, Nurstead Court is supported by a private banking relationship that reflects the complexity of the estate’s diverse portfolio of enterprises and Guy’s future ambitions — something that would not have been possible within the constraints of a traditional high street banking model.

Guy Edmeades-Stearns says:

“Rob has been involved with Nurstead Court for over a decade. His understanding of how private banks think about estate businesses has opened doors that simply wouldn’t have been available through our previous lender. The continuity of our relationship with R&BS has been invaluable as the business has grown.”

Links

• To see the impressive facilities at Nurstead Court
• To view the residential properties being developed