- Multiple judgement liens
- Multiple tax liens - for federal taxes
- Substantial unpaid payroll liabilities
My colleague tried to explain to this prospect that these liens had their invoices as collateral and that they would not be able to finance them until they were able to get a lien subordination from all parties. By the way - most subordination discussions take more than five days. To add to this, the prospect had not disclosed these issues even though the application asked about them and my colleague was left wondering about any other hidden problems. Needless to say, they were not able to get the factoring line in five days.
There are two points I'd like to make with this post. My first point, one has to have realistic expectations when submitting a business financing application. It's unrealistic to expect quick financing for a company that has various legal and tax problems without addressing them. Clearly the owner knew (or had to know) his company was in trouble and getting funding would not be easy.
And my second point, not disclosing these problems will usually hurt (rather than help) your application. Most factoring companies will perform due diligence before funding a client and will easily discover public record information such as tax liens and judgements. But by not disclosing this your erode some of the trust from your factoring company who will now spend extra time looking for other issues that were potentially not disclosed.
Note: Some aspects of this story have been fictionalized and changed
