Apparel Companies Continue to Face Cash Squeeze: Bibby Financial Services Sees New Opportunities with High-Quality Credits

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Financing options for the apparel industry continue to decline with even some factoring options getting tougher to come by, Robert Sawyer, Senior Vice President, Bibby Financial Services, said today at MAGIC, the world’s largest fashion trade event being held in Las Vegas, NV.

“It’s been well reported that bank lending has dried up, especially to small and medium-sized businesses. But we are seeing that spill over into other sorts of lending as well,” he said. “The 100-pound gorilla in factoring, CIT, became a bank holding company in January leaving some large, profitable apparel companies with excellent credit scurrying to find new sources for cash. Our own experience is that we are definitely working with more apparel companies and many of them are high-quality operations with solid outlooks.”

Apparel, like all industries, is feeling the pain of reduced consumer spending. The Consumer Price Index for apparel dropped one percent in December 2008, but experts are hopeful that the new economic stimulus package could give the industry a badly needed boost after consumers start to see some extra dollars in their pay checks later in the year.

“Apparel and factoring have been married to each other for more than a century and it remains the most efficient way for the garment industry to thrive,” Sawyer explained. “As a leading global factoring company, Bibby Financial Services has many tools to use with apparel companies – traditional account receivable financing, purchase order financing and export financing, and we are using our flexibility to work with our clients – apparel and those in other industries – in these different ways.”

Notes to Editors

Bibby Financial Services is a worldwide market leading specialist of business cash flow solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises. Its product portfolio includes receivable finance, factoring, export finance, purchase order finance and specialist solutions for staffing and trucking sectors. Its North American offices are in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Nashville, Phoenix, Toronto and West Palm Beach, and it is located in 27 other countries around the world. Bibby Financial Services is a subsidiary of The Bibby Line Group, a 200 year-old privately held company based in the United Kingdom, that provides business-to business services to a variety of industries including shipping, distribution, offshore oil field services, financial services, retail and employment law.

For more information on Bibby Financial Services, visit: www.bibbyusa.com www.bibbycanada.ca www.bibbyfinancialservices.com

For more information on The Bibby Line Group of Companies, visit: www.bibbygroup.co.uk