Rita E. Garwood,
Editor in Chief,
Monitor

In what has already been a big year for Monitor, I’m excited to bring you the annual Monitor 100. As the home of our flagship ranking report, the Monitor 100 issue is always a special event for us each year, but it seems particularly important as we celebrate our 50th anniversary.

Speaking of special events, we are still brimming with excitement about Converge, our 50th anniversary celebration held this past June in Philadelphia. In our last issue, we provided an overview of the two-day event, but in this edition, we dug even deeper to provide a detailed look at the event’s wholly-unique Future-Focused Conference. We were blown away by the positive response to the daylong conference, which was unlike anything our industry has ever done.

Of course, many of you will pick up this issue and skip straight to the Monitor 100, and who could blame you? We’ve once again compiled the most thorough ranking of the top 100 companies in the equipment finance industry this year, with detailed breakdowns by total assets, new business volume and every other datapoint you could imagine — and maybe even a few you couldn’t.

In addition to the numbers themselves, the Monitor 100 section also features profiles of leaders whose companies are new to the ranking this year, including Vivek Kaushal of Global Jet Capital, Joe Leonard of Oakmont Capital Services, Michael Ward of Prime Alliance Bank, Martha Ahlers of United Leasing & Finance and Gregory Kalescky of Transport Funding. We also gathered executives from five returning companies, including Amrita Patel of Wells Fargo, Dan Clark of BMO, Nancy Robles of Eastern Funding, Steve Grosso of Auxilior Capital Partners and Chris Lerma of AP Equipment Financing, to share their perspective on the recent banking crisis, a looming recession, interest rate hikes, leadership, artificial intelligence and more.

AI will clearly be a part of the equipment finance industry in the years to come, but Paul Bent of The Alta Group takes us far beyond certainties like that to present a vision of the sector 50 years in the future. Channeling his inner Philip K. Dick, Bent describes a world welcoming a brand-new technology: the fully autonomous equipment leasing system.

Getting to the future Bent presents will take decades of innovation, and sometimes it takes a perspective outside your own industry to show you the way. In her regular column, Deb Reuben of TomorrowZone spoke with Emmy-award winning television writer and producer Bill Stainton about how looking outside your own walls and “collecting dots” can lead to breakthroughs for your business. Last but not least, Ken Weinberg of Rimon, P.C., and Moorari Shah of Sheppard Mullin, this year’s winners of the Equipment Leasing and Finance Association’s Award for Legal Excellence, team up to outline the differences (and similarities) between equipment leases and equipment financings.

For everyone at Monitor, we hope you enjoy and gain valuable insight from this year’s Monitor 100. We’ll be back soon with our next issue, the Monitor 101+, before you know it.

P.S. The Monitor Top Private Independents Index, which appeared in the Mar/Apr 2023 Vol. 50, No.2 Issue, contained several errors.

The correct information follows: Regents Capital is headquartered in Costa Mesa, CA; CHG-MERIDIAN USA is led by Simon Harrsen and headquartered in Woodland Hills, CA; Honour Capital is led by Brian Slipka and headquartered in Minneapolis, MN; Jules and Associates is led by Jules Buenabenta and headquartered in Los Angeles, CA; Quality Equipment Finance is headquartered in Carmel, IN; SLR Equipment Finance is headquartered in Wilton, CT; Wallwork Financial is headquartered in Fargo, ND; and Reliant Capital is led by Brian Bernal and based in Irvine, CA.