Chris Sutton of Black Horse has announced he
will step down as the chairman of the Finance & Leasing
Association (FLA) in May, to be replaced by Philip Ross.

Speaking at the FLA’s annual dinner this week,
Sutton thanked the board and staff for their support over the
previous two years.

During those two years the association has
signed up nearly all of the UK’s top 30 dealerships to its
Specialist Automotive Finance programme, passed 1,300 recovered
vehicles – worth over £21m – in conjunction with the ACPO Vehicle
Intelligence Service and convinced the government over its concerns
to apply a Financial Services Authority model regime to
consumer and small-business credit.

Over 1,400 representatives attended the dinner
at Grosvenor House, Park Lane, to commend a year in which £52bn of
new credit had been made available to consumers, finance was
approved for the purchase of 1.67 million cars, and FLA members
accounted for 63% of all private new car purchases in 2011, up from
53% in 2010.

The numbers, and the work to achieve them,
drew praise from Liberal Democrat peer Lord Ashdown of
Norton-sub-Hamdon during his speech on the future of
geo-politics.

The FLA used the event to announce the launch
of a new Business Finance Directory of lenders and brokers run with
the help of the National Association of Commercial Finance
Brokers.

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Ross is the current chair of the Motor Finance
division of the FLA and general manager of Honda Finance Europe.
Both he and Sutton have contributed
predictions on regulation in 2012 to this month’s issue of
Motor Finance
.

richard.brown@vrlfinancialnews.com