Cracking open the online stats machinery, Richard Brown gauges the most popular stories of last year
Looking through the graph above, it would appear the dominant interest was, unsurprisingly, the activities of independent finance providers, with a little legal and regulation Tabasco thrown in. Those stories noted on the graph are the ones which at least three-quarters of Motor Finance newswire recipients chose to read.
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It would also appear that news, in general, took a slump around April despite including three eye-catching stories, each regarding a different non-captive finance provider (Santander, Tesco and MotoNovo), before rising for the final third of 2012.
First of all, I was away in April. Also, our website server failed. That the stories still made it to publication and were each read by at least a fifth of newswire readers, is testament to the team. Especially given the importance of stories including another dealer finance record, the launch of a consumer assessment tool by broker Creditplus and a showroom iPad application by Mercedes-Benz, plus coverage of the Finance & Leasing Association (FLA) finance crime seminar.
Definitely playing a part in the rise in coverage were two factors: manpower and a new website. Pete Johnstone joined the team as full-time reporter in the last week of August – you can read his interviews with Glass’s and Private & Commercial Finance in December’s issue – and you can see the upsurge in content from the graph.
At the same time, Motor Finance has welcomed a trio of cub reporters since late summer – Jared Fortune, Hannah Meltzer and Johnny Minter – who between them have contributed interviews with Northridge Finance (August issue), Advantage Finance (September issue), 13 dealerships (September issue) and the bulk of our review of the top 50 people in UK (December issue). Added to that, September saw the first trials and simultaneous running of the new-look motorfinanceonline.com until its official launch in the fourth week of November.
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By GlobalDataThat’s not the entire picture, however. Looking at all stories by timeline and popularity, retail stories, manufacturer and manufacturer captive stories are catching the attention of a consistent proportion of newswire readers.
January alone saw two-thirds of you read the Renault dealership reduction story and half read about Mercedes-Benz Financial Services’ results. A third read our round-up of New Year dealership news.
February, which looks at first glance like a quiet month, was a return to the activities of independents and bulged with popular stories – more than two-thirds of you read our research into loan approvals by independent providers and comments by Craig Rutherford of Marsh Finance.
Half read the news of Carlyle’s rebranding and between a quarter and a third read news of GMAC providing finance of SsangYong, Andy Gruber’s appointment as director at Alphera, Black Horse’s insurance offer and the end of Chris Sutton’s tenure as FLA chairman.
Manufacturer stories continued to prove popular throughout the year, though, with around half of newswire recipients reading news of the apparent happiness at Volkswagen Financial Services in a survey of UK companies in May, Toyota Financial Services’ differentiated revenue growth in July and the next boss of Seat UK in December.
Between a quarter and a third of you also read about the GM-PSA deal in March, the predictions for Renault sales by RCI Financial Services in June and the paperless finance trial by BMW Financial Services in October.
Given the dominance of Ford at retail it is no shock news of Ford Credit remained well-read throughout 2012.
In April, the company was upgraded by Fitch Ratings; in September, it appointed a new head; in October it launched a PCP range; and in November, its global profit dropped by 36%, and, by newswire figures, each story was viewed by between 29% and 56% of our readership.
Depending how we classify GMAC UK and Ally Financial, the story which informed so many others in 2012 centred on either a captive or independent provider. It bled into the sales of a manufacturer’s once-captive partner, a carmaker’s reacquisition, a brand beginning it’s own troublesome manufacturing partnership in Europe, and a rivalry with the lending arm of a bank managing its own UK and international endeavours.
The ditching of GMAC UK in favour of Santander Consumer Finance by Vauxhall to supply the Flexible Finance scheme, the comeback by GMAC UK, the news General Motors may wish to buy back its erstwhile lending facility, the deal with Citroën-Peugeot PSA, the sale of Ally’s individual international operations, the PSA deal being hung-up by a bail out of the French carmakers’ own finance provider, the Santander-Hyundai joint venture, the step-up in retail by Hyundai’s sister brand Kia, and the reacquiring of GMAC UK by its former manufacturer parent, all drew the vast majority of readers to headline stories, with no fewer than a quarter of you reading the background news.
richard.brown@timetric.com
