STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Oct. 2, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Intrum Justitia (Other OTC:INJJF), Europe's leading Credit Management Services group, listed on the Stockholm Exchange (Stockholmsborsen), has reached an agreement with global investment bank Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) (AMEX:GDX) to establish a joint venture to purchase portfolios of written-off debt.
The joint venture will seek to invest in several European countries, excluding the Nordic region. Collection services will be provided by the local Intrum Justitia subsidiary in the debt's country of origin.
"While our core competence is collection, purchasing written-off consumer receivables is an essential complement to our service offering," commented Jan Roxendal, CEO of Intrum Justitia, "in particular since this is a service that many of our big customers would like to exploit as an alternative to traditional collection. It is also an important source of new collection cases, which is a way of increasing our profitability."
"The joint venture with a renowned investment bank like Goldman Sachs is a significant step in our strategic effort to extend into large portfolios of delinquent debt multiplying Intrum Justitia's current capacity for investing in debt portfolios," Mr Roxendal continued. "We will combine our geographical presence and collection capacity with Goldman Sachs financial resources, which allows us to participate more actively in the tender process for larger portfolios."
"Besides sourcing for new investment opportunities, partners like Goldman Sachs and Credit Agricole Indosuez bring knowledge and experience," added Kari Kyllonen, who heads Intrum Justitia's Purchased Debt service line. "Intrum Justitia will continue to buy small and medium sized portfolios of written-off debt, but joint ventures give us the capacity to take part in the continuing trend for banks and other credit institutions to divest large portfolios of debt to specialized service providers."
"We are very excited about our new joint venture with Intrum Justitia and look forward to working with them across a range of European markets," said Peter Cirenza, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs'.
Intrum Justitia gross invested SEK 266 M in delinquent debt portfolios in 2002 and at 30 June the purchases amounted to SEK 47 M. In June 2002 a similar joint venture was established with Credit Agricole Indosuez, which is active in the Nordic markets.
Intrum Justitia is Europe's leading credit management services group. The group has revenues of SEK 2.8 billion and has about 2,900 employees in 21 European countries.
Intrum Justitia's objective is to be a leading provider of RMS in Europe through excellence in local client care, ledger administration and debt collection and by measurably improving clients' cash flow and long-term profitability. The group offers efficient high quality management of commercial and consumer receivables in all phases in the RMS process. Intrum Justitia has a growth strategy and aims to take active part in consolidating its industry. Intrum Justitia is listed on Stockholmsborsen, the Stockholm Exchange, ticker IJ. For more information, please visit www.intrum.com
Goldman Sachs is a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a wide range of services worldwide to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high net-worth individuals. For more information, please visit www.gs.com
This information was brought to you by Waymaker http://www.waymaker.net
The following files are available for download:
http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2003/10/02/20031002BIT00080/wkr0001.doc
http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2003/10/02/20031002BIT00080/wkr0002.pdf