Bahrain-headquartered First Leasing Bank (FLB), a strategic partner for Gulf Industry Fair for the second consecutive year following on its success of 2008, will present leasing opportunities that enable clients to keep costs down and grow their businesses.

FLB, an affiliate of Ithmaar Bank, is successfully developing the growth of equipment leasing and is  committed to high-quality asset-based financing across the region in a market with an estimated potential value of more than $10 billion per year.
Says Greg Brinkerhoff, chief executive officer of FLB: “As our leasing business grows in the region, FLB continues to align closely with both buyers and sellers of capital assets with Gulf Industry Fair providing a perfect forum to meet, listen and understand the needs of manufacturers, distributors and end-users of industrial equipment, which is one of our core portfolio asset classes.”   
FLB specialises in Shariah-compliant lease structures and offers both finance leases and operating leases for most asset classes including: telecommunications, IT (both hardware and software), industry, construction, healthcare, printing, press and media, office equipment, maritime, transportation and manufacturing.
Core asset classes in FLB’s fast developing lease portfolio are construction, industry and IT equipment.
The bank conducts its business and governmental transactions across all GCC states from its regional headquarters in the Addax Tower of Bahrain’s Seef district. It combines local knowledge and international expertise in lease-financing dealing primarily in transactions of $500,000 and above.
A wide range of products and services for lessees and vendor partners are structured by FLB to facilitate transactions in close liaison with all parties. Essentially, FLB acts as a financial facilitator providing fast and convenient sources of capital and allowing the lessee to conserve capital and more effectively manage debt capacity.
Depending on its structure a lease may be ‘off balance sheet’ in order to facilitate improved key financial ratios such as cash flow. Contrary to traditional financing, FLB looks to finance up to 100 per cent of the total asset using securitised deposits as and when appropriate.
According to Brinkerhoff, the greatest difference between finance leases and operating leases is the impact each has on the balance sheet. A finance lease is treated like an installment sale whereby the lessee recognises the asset and fully depreciates it in the balance sheet. Less common in the region are operating leases that are treated as long-term rentals where the lessee only pays for the time that he uses the equipment. Typically the lessee will return the equipment at the end of term and thereby expense the payments without impacting the balance sheet. In Islamic terminology, an operating lease is called ijara and a finance lease is called ijara wa iqtina.
“FLB is a local and regional financial institution and the opportunities and potential for equipment leasing across all the different businesses from banks to industry is huge. It is a very much a win-win situation for larger organisations when making high-value purchases,” says Brinkerhoff.
Importantly, leasing is a valuable financial resource creating a facilitating solution that bridges the gap between internal restrictions such as budgets and the demands of the marketplace and leads to improved medium-term budget planning and forecasting. Importantly, heavy capital outlays such as front-loaded project costs are deferred with payments spread over time and there is the avoidance of large upfront investments and optimised vendor pricing.
Oracle is a world leader in using lease financing as an instrument for payment solutions for its global services. In addition, leading global banks, telecom companies and energy and IT companies use lease finance instruments to provide finance for high-value purchases. 
FLB has introduced the two concepts of finance lease and operating lease. Each of these economic models optimises capital expenditure which allows clients to better invest in their core operations.
Globally, equipment leasing plays an active role in virtually all economic sectors and equipment types. These lessees include capital leasing companies which are leasing to finance their own house leasing. There is also an enhanced version of capital leasing in which the company finances not only its own products but also the equipment of other manufacturers.
Brinkerhoff says that the Middle East is relatively an underdeveloped market for equipment leasing partly because of the liquid assets available and the tradition of making many purchases on a cash basis. There is also a mentality of owning your own assets with the option of leasing not considered.
Today, during critical evaluations of cash flows, all companies are looking intensively at using their resources as efficiently as possible. Finance leasing for high-value equipment offers efficiencies that can contribute to economic growth and companies are starting to realise that they do not have to own their assets to benefit from the planning of strategic acquisitions.
Brinkerhoff emphasises the importance of Bahrain as a regional financial and banking centre and the robust regulatory aspects of his business. The Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) is currently devising a code of practice for financial services that include equipment leasing.
Brinkerhoff outlines some of the opportunities available to clients with FLB acting as a facilitator that can enlarge specific deals to the advantage of both parties. For example, in the IT sector, corporate business requires large capital outlays above and beyond the recurrent expenditure planned on a yearly basis.
This can involve significant hardware equipment and software applications including banks, major corporates, SMEs, government and the healthcare sector. This is where FLB can step in to provide IT packaging transactions, allowing the clients to have attractive payment structures. It also allows fixed income and a steady cash flow which is good for government and corporate clients.
Brinkerhoff is looking to generate business of more than $100 million within two years and is examining commercial leasing opportunities available across the region. FLB is taking a measured approach of business growth and will double the staff by 2010 from a measured and conservative approach of business opportunities.
FLB has recently secured a major finance lease for a leading bank in Bahrain, providing it an IT package to meet its growth needs. Brinkerhoff feels this will be one of many of important sectors.
It has also secured a deal in Qatar in the field of construction and transportation equipment and in early 2008  the bank signed a deal of $23-million to enable one of Kuwait’s medical facilities to buy medical equipment.
FLB was the first institution in the region to provide equipment leasing although some regional commercial banks offer finances to leases products. FLB is the only specialist bank which is providing equipment leasing and with the success of recent transactions the application of leasing structure is set to grow quickly across the range of products and services for the benefits of lessees, investors and vendors.
Equipment leasing worldwide is a $600-billion industry.