Leasing helps save precious resources, CEO says

When Bill Stephenson, a former office photocopier leasing agent turned chief executive, looks ahead, he sees a world increasingly threatened by resource scarcity - scarcity caused by today's wastefulness, as used-up products are trashed in landfills.

Not surprisingly, for a man who has made a career in leasing everything from photocopiers to tractors to medical equipment to carpeting, Stephenson sees leasing as an important answer.

Stephenson, 47, leads DLL Group, formerly De Lage Landen, a Dutch equipment-leasing company with its U.S. headquarters in Wayne.

Instead of companies owning and discarding, for example, tractors, forklifts, or MRI machines, they would rent them, returning them at the end of the lease.

Being saddled with a used product gives the manufacturers an incentive to "design products that can be recycled, reused, or remanufactured" as part of a "circular economy," Stephenson recently wrote in a blog.

He provided an example: In Germany, one of DLL's clients is a trailer manufacturer that refurbishes and releases trailers, extending their lives from 12 years to 15 or 20.

Question: How does DLL fit into this vision?

Answer: We're the financing arm of the manufacturers. What happens is that we buy [the equipment] and pay the manufacturer as if it were a cash sale. Now we own it, and then we bill [the customer who uses the equipment].

Q: So you help the manufacturer by making it possible for its client to use the product, financing it as a lease, rather than as a purchase?

A: Yes. We create value to help our [manufacturer] customers sell their product. We also provide solutions. Not only are you financing your [product], but you are financing the service associated with it and you get one bill. At the end, it's a lease, so [the customer] can send it back to us.

Q: Like car leasing?

A: That's probably the closest. Now we're responsible for this product's second life. We take it to auction, we salvage it, we refurbish it, whatever it may be.

Q: But you are financial, right? Not manufacturers or engineers?

A: Right. We need to get to the [manufacturer's] engineers up front [as products are designed].

Q: Do companies care about what happens to their products?

A: We're starting to work with our manufacturers to open their eyes, to say, 'Guys, you have to start taking into consideration that this particular raw material in your product is becoming more scarce.' So how can we recycle the used products that are salvaged back into remanufacturing of the new?

Q: You've been in leasing your whole life. Have you ever been a repo man, seizing equipment when someone didn't pay?

A: It can get very ugly. I had to go to this guy's house - he had the equipment. He refused to give it to us. Then, of course, it was Texas, [so] he had an interesting firearm that made us leave the property. We never got that equipment.

Q: You are chief executive of DLL, a huge Dutch company. Anything interesting about how the Dutch conduct business?

A: They drink milk at every meeting. If we had a lunch meeting, they would bring in cheese sandwiches, milk, and fruit. I've had to add Diet Coke to the executive lunches there.

Q: You visit the Netherlands. How does recycling work there?

A: In America, you'd have garbage chutes on every floor. There, you take your garbage outside and [the bin] is the size of a mailbox. The Dutch don't waste. People just buy what they consume in the next day or two. There are no leftovers.

Title: Chief executive.

Homes: West Chester, Florida, Holland.

Family: Wife, two children.

Diplomas: Florida State Univ., business; Harvard Advanced Management Program.

Saturdays: Golf, 5 a.m.

Recipe: Soak pheasant fillets in saltwater brine, then overnight in buttermilk. Coat with flour. Pan fry. Nestle in cooked wild rice. Cover with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup. Bake at 325 for 30 minutes.

Travel tip: Don't eat on the plane. Use earplugs, eye shades. Remove shoes to sleep. EndText

Business: DLL helps manufacturers sell their equipment by providing financing to customers through leasing.

Headquarters: The Netherlands, Wayne.

Value of leased assets: $43.4 billion worldwide.

2013 profits: $534 million worldwide.

Employees: 5,500 worldwide, 1,200 here.

Specialties: Food, agriculture, health care, transportation, office technology, clean technology, automotive, construction, industrial. EndText

DLL Group's Bill Stephenson on the circular economy. www.philly.com/jobbing

EndText