Platinum Funding Group Completes $80 million Factoring Deal in 48 Hours

Platinum Funding Group announced today it had signed and funded an $80-million accounts receivable factoring facility within 48 hours to Hawk One Security, Incorporated (“Hawk One”), a minority-owned protective services company based in Washington, DC.

Hawk One has been in business since 1992. The company provides security guards to all of Washington, DC public schools, as well as other government facilities in the city. The company was experiencing a shortfall of working capital and was unable to pay more than 1,100 employees, most of them security guards in DC schools — an issue that was affecting the D.C. community. Hawk One worked closely with the city government to ensure that the necessary security personnel would be provided to the city schools while the company was working to resolve the situation.

 We were delighted and very impressed with the rapid response Platinum gave to the situation  
Hawk One previously had a funding arrangement with Commerce Funding Corporation, a Wells Fargo company.

Platinum’s Chief Operating Officer James Bertie oversaw the transaction.

“Platinum Funding Group is the only company in the business that has the capacity to provide this volume of financing within such a short amount of time,” said Bertie. “We were happy to work with Hawk One to help the company avoid default.”

Jeff Bross, the transaction’s referring broker, added that “with over 10 years in the business working with other factors, (I am) highly impressed with Platinum’s ability to manage such a complex deal and fund the transaction in such a short time frame.”

Platinum Funding Group advanced working capital against more than $5 million of accounts receivable within 48 hours of initiating the process.

“We were delighted and very impressed with the rapid response Platinum gave to the situation,” said Oscar Rodriguez, the District’s interim chief procurement officer. “Had Platinum not stepped in, we would have been thrown into a very difficult situation where we would have had to provide security to more than 100 buildings and organize in 24 hours at great expense to taxpayers. They were very professional, very calm and very diligent. It was a pleasure to work with them.”

Craig McFarlane, CFO of Hawk One, said Platinum Funding Group was a “lifesaver.”

“Both Eyal (Levy, Chairman and CEO) and James (Bertie) went out of their way to help us, seeing our potential and looking past our current situation,” McFarlane said.

The firm’s CPA, Mike Pearlstein, added that the Platinum team “did not approach this simply as a business transaction. They saw the human element in it — that 1,100 people, mostly minorities and many of them single parents, were able to bring a paycheck home that night.”