Founder of Dragonfly Property Finance, Jonathan Samuels, is to launch Octane Capital in May.

Octane Capital is a joint venture with investment management firm and will see Samuels be reunited with Mark Posniak and Matt Smith, who he worked with at Dragonfly.

Samuels will be Octane Capital’s CEO, Posniak will assume the position of managing director and Smith that of director of risk.

Tom Clark, previously head of bridging at Wellesley and senior development manager at Shawbrook Bank, also joins Octane Capital as sales director.

Other hires include Robert Graham, who was previously finance manager at Dragonfly, as head of finance.

The new lender will offer residential and commercial bridging loans, medium-term buy-to-let products and development finance. Loans will be sourced primarily through brokers and master brokers. Octane Capital will offer a full range of specialist lending products and will focus on complex, non-standard and larger than average loans that brokers may struggle to place with other lenders.

Samuels said: “It’s fantastic to be back in the industry and working again with some of the most respected names in specialist property finance. In Pamplona we have an exceptionally strong and experienced funding partner that will position us well from the outset and enable us to lend at will.

“Our focus will be on complex, non-standard loans that are outside the comfort zone of most other lenders but which we believe play to our strengths. We are certainly not here to make up the numbers.”

Nitin Bhandari, partner of Pamplona Capital Management, added: “We are very pleased to be partnering with Jonathan and the Octane Capital team, whose experience and ability in this market are second to none.

“I have no doubt that Octane Capital will make rapid inroads into the specialist lending sector and it will have our full support and funding to do exactly that.”