Hermes Capital

02/11/2026

🏦 Property has solved a lot of business finance problems over the years. It can’t solve all of them.

There’s a good article from MPA on lenders becoming more selective around commercial property and leverage. Worth a read for brokers dealing with clients where the property isn’t doing as much heavy lifting as it used to.
https://www.mpamag.com/au/specialty/commercial/why-are-lenders-playing-favourites-with-commercial-borrowers/591916

I think this matters beyond property. We still see deals where everyone starts with the house or commercial property and works backwards from there.

Sometimes there isn’t enough equity. That doesn’t necessarily finish the conversation.
If it’s a decent trading business, I want to know what else is there.

Debtors. Equipment. Cash flow. Other assets.
We recently had a business needing $5 million where the property only supported about $2 million. Once we looked at the wider balance sheet, there was enough of a borrowing base to get the job done.

If the property doesn’t get the deal done, don’t stop there. Send us the full balance sheet. We’ll look at the receivables, equipment and other assets and see what can actually be leveraged.

Hermes Capital is a specialist provider of cashflow finance to Australian SME’s seeking opportunities to recapitalise or grow their business.

31/10/2026

⚠️ ATO debt gets treated like a flashing red light. Sometimes that’s fair. Sometimes it’s lazy credit thinking.

At our Melbourne Business Dynamism session, David Gandolfo OAM, CLFP, Partner at Quantum Business Finance , and Jeanine Purdie MICM CCE, Managing Director at Business Credit Solutions, both touched on how much context can sit behind an ATO position.

A business can be on an arrangement and still be trading. A default can disappear from the credit file once an arrangement is in place. None of that tells you whether the underlying problem has been fixed.

That’s why I’d rather understand the whole story than make a decision off one line on a bureau report.

What caused the debt? Is the arrangement being met? Is cash flow improving? Has anything changed in the business?

That’s where the useful credit work starts.

Watch the full Melbourne seminar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiNzG18U4Yo

28/10/2026

💰 Brokers sometimes spend too much time defending the interest rate and not enough time looking at the commercial outcome.

What’s the cost of not doing the deal?

Say a business needs a specialised piece of equipment to take on profitable work. The bank won’t fund it. Another lender will, but the rate is higher. The easy answer is to focus on the cost of the money. The better commercial question is what happens if the business doesn’t buy the equipment.

What revenue gets left on the table? What margin does the new work generate? Does the return justify the funding cost?

Higher-priced money can be a very poor solution. It can also be perfectly sensible when the transaction creates enough value to support it. You need to understand the deal, not just the rate. There’s more on this in our latest Business Dynamism recap:

https://hermescapital.com.au/2026/09/18/business-dynamism-finance-financial-stress/

How are you having that conversation with clients when the cheapest funding option isn’t available?

26/10/2026

🧮 Need working capital, but want to know what the weekly repayment will look like first?

Check out our Quicksilver Repayment Calculator. Enter the amount you’re looking to borrow and get a clearer idea of the weekly commitment before going any further.

Quicksilver provides $50,000 to $250,000 in short-term working capital for active trading businesses dealing with things like supplier payments, wages, super, ATO obligations, inventory purchases or a short-term cash flow gap.

Fixed weekly repayments. No lengthy bank approval process. A commercial assessment based on the business, its cash flow and its capacity to repay.

Try the calculator and learn more here:
https://hermescapital.com.au/our-products/quicksilver-by-hermes/

24/10/2026

⚖️ You can have a perfectly sensible restructuring plan and still get stopped by one stakeholder saying no.

That was one of the points Matthew Hudson, Director at SV Partners , made at our Brisbane Business Dynamism Project session. The legislation gives administrators some protections, but it doesn’t remove the commercial reality. Suppliers, landlords and other stakeholders still have their own interests, their own risk appetite and sometimes their own reasons for not playing ball.

The numbers might work. The buyer might be there. The plan might make sense. But someone still has to manage the people around the deal and get enough of them aligned to keep it moving.

We cover more from the Brisbane discussion on capital, restructuring and business transition here:
https://hermescapital.com.au/2026/10/02/business-dynamism-capital-restructuring/

For those working in restructuring, how often is stakeholder management the thing that makes or breaks the outcome?

21/10/2026

📦 The opportunity can be good and the bank can still be too slow. That’s exactly what happened in the Quicksilver case study on our site.

A wholesale distribution business needed working capital to secure extra inventory ahead of its peak trading period. The opportunity made commercial sense, but the bank couldn’t move within the timeframe because of internal approvals and policy constraints.

Without funding, the business risked missing the stock, the sales and the supplier opportunity.

Hermes structured a Quicksilver facility over 26 weeks with fixed weekly repayments, allowing the business to secure the inventory, capture the additional sales and keep supplier relationships intact.

That’s what Quicksilver is for. Fast, short-term working capital for active trading businesses when timing matters.

If your client has a genuine opportunity but can’t wait for the bank, send it through.

https://hermescapital.com.au/our-products/quicksilver-by-hermes/

19/10/2026

⛏️ Winning a $98 million contract sounds like a very good problem to have.

Macmahon has picked up a two-year extension at the Daisy Milano Gold Mine. I’m not suggesting Macmahon has a funding issue. It’s just a useful example of something we see further down the contracting chain all the time.

More work usually requires more cash before it produces more cash. You mobilise people and equipment. You pay wages, fuel and subcontractors.

Then you raise a progress claim and wait.

The bigger the contract, the bigger that gap can get.

That’s why a profitable contractor can be flat out and still short of working capital. For brokers with mining services, civil or construction clients moving into larger jobs, have the funding conversation before mobilisation, not halfway through it.

Read more:
https://mining.com.au/macmahon-gets-98-million-extension-at-vaults-daisy-milano/

Hermes Capital provides Progress Claim facilities from $1 million to $10 million for exactly this sort of funding gap.

Macmahon Holdings (ASX:MAH) has secured a contract extension worth $98 million at Vault Minerals’ (ASX:VAU) Daisy Milano Gold Mine.

17/10/2026

🧾 We talk a lot about access to capital, but red tape can kill momentum before funding even becomes the issue.

David Gandolfo OAM, CLFP from Quantum Business Finance spoke on this at 'The Business Dynamism Project - Melbourne Edition'

If you’re starting a business and you need to work out licences, permits, insurance, compliance and who knows what else before you can even open the doors, that friction costs time. It costs money. And if you get it wrong, it can create a much bigger problem later.

I liked David’s point about insurance brokers too. They often have a better checklist of what can go wrong in a business than most people realise, which makes them a pretty useful place to start. The broader point for me is that starting and growing a business in Australia is hard enough without making the admin harder than it needs to be.

Watch the full seminar here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiNzG18U4Yo

What’s the most ridiculous compliance hurdle you’ve seen a business deal with?

14/10/2026

💼 Opportunities don’t wait. Neither do wages, suppliers or the ATO.

A business can be performing well and still get caught when cash coming in doesn’t line up with cash going out. That might look like:

• waiting on customers while suppliers want payment now
• covering wages or super
• managing an unexpected ATO payment
• absorbing higher fuel, labour or operating costs
• needing working capital to take on a new contract or growth opportunity

Quicksilver by Hermes was built for exactly these short-term cash flow pressures.

$50,000 to $250,000
Up to 26 weeks
Fixed weekly repayments
Fast approvals and streamlined assessment
Commercial assessment, not just automated scoring

If timing is putting pressure on the business, talk to Hermes about Quicksilver.

https://hermescapital.com.au/our-products/quicksilver-by-hermes/

12/10/2026

⚠️ A quick update on the ATO credit card changes.

The ATO has extended the transition period for credit card tax payments until 30 June 2027.

That gives businesses more time to adjust, particularly those that have been using cards as part of how they manage tax obligations and short-term cash flow.

The extension is useful, but it doesn’t change the bigger issue for businesses that are regularly relying on credit to meet the ATO.

If tax payments are being pushed onto cards month after month, it’s worth looking at why the cash flow isn’t covering them and whether the broader debt position needs to be restructured.

For brokers, this gives you a bit more time to have that conversation with clients before the payment method changes.

Read the ATO update here:
https://www.ato.gov.au/media-centre/ato-extends-transition-period-for-taxpayers-using-credit-cards-until-30-june-2027