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DUE DILIGENCE TEAM OF THE YEAR AWARD


SPONSORED BY THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE WINNER Baker Tilly


Above: Baker Tilly partners Nick Williams (left) and David Copley


Left: The triumphant Baker Tilly team with David Murray (right) of The Business Magazine


This third award was for the new category introduced following feedback from the 2013 Deals Awards and the dealmaking community in general.


Good due diligence improves the scope and quality of information available for deal decision-making and underpins clarity, certainty and commitment.


It also involves painstaking work, researching and investigating the components of a potential deal to satisfy its true values and ultimate acceptability.


Introducing this inaugural Solent award Durden-Smith described due diligence (DD) as “all the background work done by transaction teams to ensure that a deal finally gets to completion“, but today DD is also an increasingly valued professional skill.


Firms showing that DD skill and making the shortlist to contest the award were: Baker Tilly, Deloitte and James Cowper.


Southampton-based DD team Peter Vandervelde, David Copley and Nick Williams are now part of the Baker Tilly brand following the firm’s purchase of RSM Tenon in 2013. The DD team is five- partner strong across the region, and completed over 30 DD assignments last year, notably for corporates and private equity houses.


Deloitte’s south coast transaction services team, based in Southampton, was also busy last year, and among other deals provided financial DD to Hertz for Project Honey, and for Ultra Electronics in its acquisition of Wood & Douglas.


James Cowper is growing its transaction services offering in the south, focusing on deal sizes from £1 million to £30m. Recent work included The Appointment Group’s acquisition of ET Travel.


As category sponsor, David Murray of The Business Magazine presented the award to Baker Tilly.


One nominating client said: “The Baker Tilly team were on our wavelength and delivered a service above expectations … and worked through tricky issues in great detail to robust conclusions.“


Peter Vandervelde and David Copley, partners in Baker Tilly’s DD transactions team, were proud first winners of this Solent award – “We feel really good.


It


is recognition for a lot of hard work“ – highlighting the important role of DD.


“There are a lot of unsung heroes in the industry and this is a move in the right direction, away from those who are clearly the rainmakers towards those who actually make the deals happen.“


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – JULY/AUGUST 2014 www.businessmag.co.uk


“Probably 50% of people involved in corporate finance, people who work long hours, give of themselves and are the real professionals that make deals happen, are involved in due diligence,“ explained Vandervelde.


“Year after year we have come to these award dinners and it is the frontman or lead adviser who get the limelight and I think it is really important that those guys who put in the hard work attending to the deal detail, are now getting some of the limelight too – and that goes for financial and legal due diligence.“


Copley explained the growing need for good DD in today’s dealmaking: “There are two aspects to note: the complexity of deals and the fact that a lot of lessons were learnt pre-recession with people shooting from the hip.


“What we are finding is that acquirers are now getting a lot closer to their targets prior to buying them, and part of that is through the due diligence process.


“While DD is still not totally recognised to the level we would like, people are now getting a lot more out of diligence and acknowledging its value.“


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