Reward Funding names new business development director
UK-based alternative finance provider Reward Funding has appointed Carl Perry as business development director.
With more than 25 years of experience in the financial services sector, Perry will be based at the company's Birmingham office. He will be responsible for broadening Reward's network of professional introducers and delivering asset-secured funding options to businesses across the Midlands.
Reward Midlands regional director Steph Brown said: 'We're building a hugely talented team here in the Midlands, and Carl is a fantastic addition. It is great to welcome someone with his extensive and diverse lending experience, strong professional connections and the ability to really support the entrepreneurs and businesses we work with.
'I am looking forward to working with Carl to strengthen and grow our relationships with professional business advisors, brokers and accountants across the Midlands, as we continue to expand our regional presence and lending book.'
According to Reward Funding, his career spans commercial banking and senior roles within challenger and alternative finance institutions, where he specialised in delivering asset-based lending and structured credit facilities to SMEs.
Perry said: 'Reward has a fantastic reputation for delivering agile, flexible, property-backed lending solutions – enabling borrowers to access funds for a wide range of purposes. Whether you need to improve cash flow, unlock working capital, support investment opportunities or restructure, Reward brings the expertise and efficiency to get deals done quickly.
'Joining Steph and her team in the Midlands at this growth stage in Reward's journey is extremely exciting. I'm looking forward to building on what is already a strong regional presence.'
In November 2024, Reward Funding expanded its North West team in the UK with three key managerial appointments, aimed at reinforcing client relationships and business development.
"Reward Funding names new business development director" was originally created and published by Leasing Life, a GlobalData owned brand.
The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Journals
23 minutes ago
- Business Journals
Sale of big St. Louis-based cannabis firm closes for $102M
The sale of one of the St. Louis region's largest marijuana firms to a Minneapolis-based public company was worth $102 million.
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Augmented reality can show local residents future building plans in real time — and Tampa Bay wants in
InCitu is an augmented reality platform that lets users see infrastructure projects on a smartphone. Tampa Bay's planning council is using AR to give communities a look at new infrastructure changes. This article is part of "Build IT: Connectivity," a series about tech powering better business. The climate crisis has intensified the frequency and severity of flooding for many communities, prompting cities to turn to climate-resilient infrastructure. At the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, a growing challenge is communicating these solutions to residents and officials. Sarah Vitale, the director of civic technology at the TBRPC, which provides local governments with technology to aid in climate resilience planning, including flooding and hurricane preparedness, often uses 2D images and renders to showcase new infrastructure, such as stormwater drainage systems. However, these tools failed to show the scale of the projects. Last year, Vitale partnered with InCitu, a New York-based augmented reality startup, to give communities a clearer picture of future infrastructure developments. "What better way to do that than to really let them experience it in real time in the physical space?" Vitale said. InCitu's AR platform is designed to help government agencies, real estate developers, urban planners, and architects show colleagues or community members what proposed buildings and infrastructure projects will look like once completed. "I wanted to communicate this type of information so that a non-professional can experience it as they walk down the street," Dana Chermesh-Reshef, the CEO of InCitu, told Business Insider. InCitu's technology has also launched in seven other US cities, including Washington, DC, and New York. Chermesh-Reshef founded InCitu in 2020 after realizing the usual software tools used to present infrastructure projects, such as PowerPoint presentations and 2D renders, struggled to show a project's full scale and scope from various angles. It can also be difficult to imagine a project in an environment like a conference room, entirely removed from where it will exist. InCitu's smartphone-based platform tackles this by turning 3D models into AR visuals, helping people see a project as it would appear in real life. Instead of using an AR headset, users can scan a QR code with a smartphone camera at a construction site — often a building, bridge, roadway, or sidewalk — to view the life-sized AR visualization. "You don't have to download any app. You walk down the street, there's a QR code on the ground or on the construction site," Chermesh-Reshef said. Users can use their smartphones to walk around a project and view it from any angle they can access. InCitu also supports off-site viewing, so users can view a 3D model of the project without visiting its geographical location. InCitu uses geospatial data, which draws on satellite and street view imagery, to decide where an imported 3D model should appear for on-site viewing. Geospatial data is also used to keep the 3D model in the right location as a user moves around it in the real world. Vitale encountered InCitu on LinkedIn in January 2024 while preparing for TBRPC's annual regional resiliency summit. This two-day event brings together roughly 300 elected officials, subject experts, and residents to find solutions for the region's climate risks. Vitale wanted a way to give attendees a scaled, realistic visualization of building changes and infrastructure that can manage flood risks. Vitale used InCitu to show three AR models of new projects during on-site visits near the event: a house elevated on stilts to demonstrate flood-resistant construction, a bioswale showing natural stormwater management, and a living shoreline that uses natural materials to combat eroding beaches. Vitale said that her organization's use of InCitu is still in the "marketing phase" and that its role at the resiliency summit was in part to let attendees and prospective clients know her team can provide AR technology for infrastructure planning. She said the reception so far has been positive. "It's not a big, dense document. It's something interesting that people can engage with and start experiencing a planning process in a new way," Vitale said. She added that AR displays can reduce the "engagement fatigue" that can accompany lengthy meetings and complex 2D visualizations. The technology's effectiveness convinced TBRPC to use InCitu for AR demonstrations at its 2025 summit in May. The organization also plans to use InCitu to educate students at local high schools about bioswales and other infrastructure solutions to flooding. "We can take them to a site that's full of concrete and show them other ways to naturalize the surface, to handle some of the water, when it's pouring rain," Vitale said. She hopes the technology will help students understand alternatives to less permeable "gray" infrastructure, like concrete. Vital said she expects the use of AR tools like InCitu to become standard practice in urban planning as newer, younger graduates with better knowledge of 3D modeling, AR, and other new technologies enter the field. So far, InCitu has made over 5,000 future developments available in AR, and over 250,000 residents have viewed future projects near their communities using the company's AR platform. "I'd like to see planning move in that direction, because of how powerful a communication tool that visualization is," she said. Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Judge sides with city of Austin in lawsuit involving former American-Statesman site
A judge this week ruled in favor of the city of Austin in a case involving the former American-Statesman site just south of downtown along Lady Bird Lake. The ruling denied a motion for summary judgment in a lawsuit filed by the Save Our Springs Alliance, an environmental watchdog group. The lawsuit alleged that the Austin City Council violated key provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act in 2022 when it approved a special type of zoning known as a planned unit development, or PUD, for the former Statesman site. The lawsuit sought to void the council's Dec. 2, 2022 vote to approve the PUD, based on the alleged open meetings violations. The Statesman moved several years ago from the site at 305 S. Congress Ave. to a new location near the airport. In arguing their case before District Judge Jan Soifer on May 15, Save Our Springs attorneys Bobby Levinski and Bill Bunch contended that the council granted the PUD zoning in violation of two key mandates of the Texas Open Meetings Act: proper public notice, and a reasonable opportunity for the public to speak before the vote was taken. Levinski said today that the Save Our Springs Alliance might appeal the ruling. "Given the importance of this case for governmental transparency and proper enforcement of the Texas Open Meetings Act, we'll be evaluating our options for appeal," Levinski said. "This case ultimately impacts the ability of residents to weigh in on important matters that affect their community, including the relocation of the Hike and Bike Trail and removal of the natural, tree-lined aesthetic of the Lady Bird Lake shoreline. Every case has its challenges, and we may need to work on it a little longer to ultimately prevail." More: Lawsuit seeks to halt planned redevelopment of former Statesman site on Lady Bird Lake Casey Dobson and Sara Wilder Clark represented the landowner, the Cox family of Atlanta, along with Austin-based Endeavor Real Estate Group. The Cox family hired Endeavor several years ago to create plans to redevelop the prime waterfront site. The site formerly housed the newspaper offices and printing plant. Cox sold the Statesman but retained ownership of the 18.9-acre site, a property many developers had long coveted and said was ripe for new development. Dobson did not immediately respond to an email for comment about the ruling and what it means for future plans to transform the property into a mixed-use project with high-rise buildings and other uses, which could include housing, office and retail development. Richard Suttle Jr., an Austin attorney and the spokesperson for the planned redevelopment, said he hasn't seen a final judgment yet in the case, so couldn't comment on what it might mean for the future planned redevelopment. Dan Richards represented the city in the lawsuit. Richards said Soifer's ruling, signed Monday, means "the trial court case is basically over." At last month's hearing, Richards told Soifer that voiding the PUD could jeopardize the developer's ability, in the current economic climate, to secure a new amendment offering the same level of community benefits — such as 6.5 acres of green space — at the site. At the same hearing, Dobson and Wilder Clark said the PUD zoning change was properly noticed, and the public was given sufficient opportunity to speak at nine different meetings. However, Levinski said that, while the PUD was listed on the council agenda as a zoning item, that posting was misleading because it failed to provide "full disclosure of the subjects to be discussed." The proposed PUD ordinance encompassed "numerous provisions that extend well beyond traditional zoning regulations," Levinski told Soifer. Those included "sweeping changes" to environmental protections and other city land-use codes, including a failure to disclose height limits, setbacks and the elimination of two restrictive covenants. "There are so many different parts of this (PUD) ordinance that are not zoning, yet it was sold to public as a rezoning," Levinski said. The zoning changes included modifications to the Lady Bird Lake shoreline; the relocation of the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail inland away from the lake; the removal of more than 90 mature trees; code waivers; and "amendments to almost every chapter of Austin's land development code," Levinski told Soifer. In arguing their case before Soifer, Leviniski and Bunch said that the Texas Open Meetings Act requires a public notice identifying these major changes to city standards and a public 'right to speak' on them before council granted the approvals. The Cox owners and Endeavor have the right to build high-rises — up to 725 feet tall — within 140 feet of Lady Bird Lake. The development would be "forever exempt from a plethora of water quality, parkland and lakeshore rules and regulations," according to the Save Our Springs Alliance. "The key here is the Statesman PUD went beyond zoning," Levinski said. "This didn't give sufficient notice to the public to say what is occurring with this zoning." Among other issues, he said the PUD included "non-zoning provisions, including items the council doesn't have authority over." There was a way the city could have described with greater detail what was occurring with the zoning case, "but they chose not to, and it's deceptive that they chose not to," Levinski said. The level of specificity "gets enhanced" when the issue involves matters of "significant public interest," Levinski said. "It's not enough to rely on the assumption that the general public may have knowledge of the subject matter." Dobson and Wilder Clark, however, told Soifer that the public notices complied with the Texas Open Meetings Act. The notices properly and adequately disclosed the subject of the PUD at various meetings on the council's printed public agenda, Dobson and Wilder Clark said. Moreover, all the details that Save Our Springs claims were lacking from the notice were available at "the click of a link" in backup materials on the council's online agenda, Wilder Clark said. "Not only did (the public) get to talk in meetings, but they got to submit written testimony," Wilder Clark said. She also noted that the council postponed meetings on the case. Showing slides of newspaper articles, Dobson said the proposed redevelopment of the Statesman site was front-page news. He said the case was "noticed out of the wazoo." "(Opponents) think this was done in the dark of night, with adequate notice to nobody," Dobson said. "In fact, the polar opposite happened." Dobson said no special notice was required, and opponents "didn't need it. They wrote letters, they spoke at length to (the city) Planning Commission and City Council. This did not take place under the shroud of secrecy," Dobson said. Countering the city's arguments, Bunch said the city "invented out of whole cloth" its position that it upheld the open meetings act, saying "there's no support for that in the entire body of open meetings cases." Early in the hearing, Dobson showed a photo of the current Statesman site "in all its glory," showing a low-slung building surrounded by a near vacant parking lot with lots of asphalt and concrete. Attorneys for the city and the developer stated that "virtually no one" opposes the proposed development, which may include condominiums, apartments, a hotel, office space and retail areas. Noting the site's popularity as a prime location for viewing the famed bat colony under the Ann Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, they emphasized the new development will enhance the bat viewing area. Additionally, they said the project has the support of bat conservation groups. Last year, the Save Our Springs Alliance won a lawsuit contesting the city's creation of a special financing district, a so-called tax increment reinvestment zone, to fund infrastructure improvements within the proposed Statesman redevelopment project. A judge ruled that financing method unlawful. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Judge rules for city in case involving former Statesman site
