Taking on the role of President, Richard will be responsible for overseeing the operations of all Oakwood’s Group companies.
Richard joins Oakwood’s management team following five years as Chief Executive of Pepper Homeloans, the company he co-founded in 2001 with Oakwood Chief Executive Mike Culhane. Since it was founded, Richard has grown Pepper Homeloans into one of Australia’s leading specialist residential mortgage lenders, with cumulative originations of more than A$1.2 billion (€ 750 million) and reported originations in 2005 of €241 million.
With a 16-year track record in the residential mortgage lending sector, Richard has held a range of senior positions at a number of leading international mortgage companies.
These include Director of Operations at Future Mortgages, where he worked closely with Mike Culhane, international market development manager at IMCC International, and Operations
Director at Preferred Mortgages Limited.
Mike Culhane commented, “Richard has a great deal of experience in the industry and a proven track record of building successful businesses and, having worked closely with him
over many years at Future Mortgages, and later at Pepper, I know him to be a highly respected and effective operator. Furthermore, Richard’s close links with Oakwood give him an in-depth understanding of our business and our ambitions and we are delighted to have him on board. His role in implementing our long term strategy to build a strong group of speciality finance businesses in high-growth markets will be instrumental in Oakwood’s future success.”
Richard Klemmer added: “Oakwood is an innovative, fast growing business with an already strong portfolio of companies covering a broad spectrum of the lending industry. This is a
rapidly developing market and one where we see a continuous flow of new opportunities.
Oakwood has already established a reputation as a market leader in this space and I am looking forward to working with Mike and his team to build a portfolio of international businesses across the entire lending spectrum.”
Pepper Homeloans also announced the appointment of John Empey as chief executive.
John joins Pepper from ING Bank (Australia) where he has been executive director, Retail Mortgages since May 2002. In this capacity, he was responsible for ING Bank’s mortgage
business in Australia including acquisition, credit processing, servicing and collections and was instrumental in ING becoming the sixth largest lender in the Australian mortgage market.
Oakwood’s portfolio currently comprises six wholly owned companies – Pepper Homeloans, Ktesios, the largest independent distributor of salary-secured loans in the Italian consumer credit market, Blue Motor Finance, a non-prime motor finance business; Spanish Mortgages Direct, a specialist mortgage brokerage business in Spain; One World Leasing, a small ticket leasing company; and a new company to be named that will later this year launch a business in the UK mortgage market.
