We were recently offered some funding for our overseas property development company based in the UK from some brokers in the USA, CLS Capital Group LLC, of Toledo, OH. with the funds being sourced from WBC Corp. They offered collateralised funding by means of a Cerificate of Deposit and no European Bank wants to touch it. They have also offered to do the transaction using MTNs that the claim they can buy deeply discounted.
Has anybody successfully obtained funding by this means from this company? I have seen the posting from some time back but there was little of substance about WBC Corp apart from hearsay.

1) How much are you talking about (amount of the loan).?
2) How much are they asking you (as fees). ?
3) What do you have to support (collateral) and justify a loan of such magnitud. ?

Our broker was recommended to CLS Capital Group LLC in Toledo, OH by another broker in France. CLS said they could get funding from WBC. They said our request was too small but as we had other developments planned they said they could advance us their minimum load of $500 million. They would do that by supplying a CD non-callable for 10 years with the interest assigned to them. We would buy the CD for a discount of 50% with the bank paying them $250 million on closing from our account, the bank to hold everything in escrow, and then the CD would be assigned to us and the interest would be paid to them. That way they recoup their investment plus interest over 10 years.
None of the European banks would touch it, saying they didn't deal in Certificates of Deposit.
CLS Capital then said they could raise the money in Medium Term Notes that their broker could purchase at deep discounts, typically 65% i.e. $35 Million for a note with a face value of $100 million plus a 1% brokers fee for the purchase. On completion they want us to buy the MTN for 109% of the purchase price i.e. $39.24 for a $100 million face value note. That would be the end of their involvement and we would collect the interest from the notes, typically 4.5% per annum.
The fees of $4,500 so far have been paid by CLS Capital. We had a registration fee of $15,000 with CLS Capital which included any fees that they had to pay.
No collateral was needed because we would be buying the CD or Notes from our borrowing with our bank and the Bank would hold the security for the term.

It is a pity that you will never see your $15,000.00 ever again, but I am sure that the guys behind CLS have put it to good use (15k less what they paid to their friends at WBC will purchase some nice shiny things).

When appraising these sorts of offers one should really use some good old fashioned common sense. Why would anyone "sell" you a CD at a discount of 50% of value? Why would anyone "sell" a "MTN" at a 65% discount to value?. One of the first signs of trouble should have been the insistence on the $500,000.00 minimum.

If your real estate project stacks up, both in capital value and cash flow terms, there are still a few people out there even in these turbulent times that would provide conventional funding / equity for it. You would be best advised to forget swimming in these shark infested waters and to go the more traditional route for your funding (assuming of course that your project really does stack up - if it doesn't stack up then one can understand why you are wasting time and money with the likes of CLS).

Xavier

don't F--k with strangers in the shade ,

I have been digging up some info on WBC. WBC looks as though it is trying to pick up business by emulating WBC inc using a similar name and a similar website. WBC Corp is World Business Capital Corp, and the other (legitimate?) one is WorldBusiness Capital Inc.
WBC Corp were registered at 3916 Ruskin Street in Las Vegas, as stated in another posting on here.
That turns out be be a rather nice house of 3,369 sq ft and was bought in Feb 2006 for $629,250 and is appreciating at about 15% pa.
Dan Lyons gave his address when setting up WBC in Las Vegas as 627 The Parkway, Richland, WA99352.
This turns out to be an office building and the home to Creditcardprocessors.com run by one Dan Lyons, who is described on a B2B directory as being a Sales Rep.
However 3916 Ruskin St., Las Vegas is also home to ams-leasing.
This company also seems to have an address at 3114 S. Main St, Suite 6b, Santa Ana, CA 92727.
AMS-Leasing also shares some of the same pictures on its website as Creditcardprocessors. The ams-leasing site actually links to National Business Services also at 3916 Ruskin St.
AMS apparently specialises in Business finance and leasing of Company aircraft.
Creditcardprocessors is obviously the main company as that was founded and registered in 1998 and has been at that address in Richland since then.
I would like to know if anybody has been defrauded of fees by any of these companies. PLEASE let me know either on here or by email.

If you want a second opinion, send a copy of the CD to: reknab@hushmail.com and I will tell you what your options are. However, chances are, you may have to kiss the $15G you gave to those folks "goodbye".

I know of an associate who closed a deal with WBC two years back. According to my associate, they closed a $5B transaction with WBC with an offshore Panamanian bank that issued the CD. I thought the program was very unique on how they obtained the funding using the pledged CD as collateral. I am not familiar with CLS Capital, but I have heard positive things about WBC.

Ray,

I think you will find that there is not a single Panamanian bank that has sufficient Tier 1 Capital to issue a CD, or series of CDs, for anything close to $5B.

Xavier