CORPORATE FINANCE TEAM OF THE YEAR
Sponsored by:
Winner: Spectrum
Soon the possibility of a Deals Awards ‘double-double‘ arose. Meridian Corporate Finance had won this award last year and with Meridian‘s Michael Barcia having already regained the Corporate Finance Adviser of the Year title, the opportunity was there. ..
There were four strong contenders: • James Cowper Kreston • Meridian Corporate Finance • Spectrum Corporate Finance • WK Corporate Finance
The seven-strong CF team at James Cowper Kreston completed 24 deals in the qualifying period, with a total aggregate value of over £120 million. Deals have included disposals, fundraising, buy-side assignments and AIM flotations. Local transactions ranged from the Lambert Brothers‘ sale to Kinaxia, Altitude investment in Chameleon and the Specialist Tours acquisition of New-York based Lindstone Travel.
The team at Spectrum, which during 2014 opened an office near Southampton Airport, had another record year, with 16 deals across the south in the qualifying period, including the £25m equity and debt fundraise for Bargate Homes, the Pitmans acquisition of Lamport Bassitt, Premium Crops disposal, the buyout of Kondor and MacuVision‘s disposal to Alliance Pharma. The aggregate value of the activity was £440m.
WK Corporate Finance, led on the South Coast by Philippa Robinson, acted on the £2.3m sale of Basingstoke-based Procius to Mitie Group, with Robinson advising the Procius shareholders and identifying Mitie, a leading UK plc, as a strategic purchaser – while remaining, according to clients, “great fun to work with“.
During the nomination period, Meridian completed 12 lead advisory transactions ranging in value from £1m to £12m. They included Ocean Safety, HCR Group, Coopers Fire, Koh,
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – JULY/AUGUST 2015
Corporate Finance
Continuous Insight and Wessex Fertility. Meridian once again proved itself a leading Solent CF advisory house, winning acclaim from clients and fellow advisers.
Attention was keen as Nick Spong, director of large corporates at HSBC‘s southern banking centre announced the winning team – Spectrum Corporate Finance.
Spectrum‘s MD Ian Milne (second right), 2008 Solent Dealmaker of the Year, later spoke about being especially proud to win this title in the Solent region, having opened its office at Southampton Parkway in November last year. The company has also previously won a similar Thames Valley Deals Awards title.
“It‘s fantastic and extra rewarding because both myself and Simon Davies (fellow MD and a former Solent Corporate Finance Adviser of the Year) live down this way. This is where we kind of established ourselves really, so it‘s always been an ambition of ours to open a Southampton office and cement the number of deals we do around here.
“The Thames Valley is a great market which gives us access to London, but the Southampton market is very strong for us too, because if you look at the business base here, there are lots of owner-managed, entrepreneurial and mid-range businesses. That‘s great because we can leverage our London and wider contacts towards that market community.
“Having a presence here is important. It‘s difficult to do business in a place if you don‘t have a foothold,“ explained Milne, while stressing that Spectrum offices don‘t operate separately. “We have one P&L.“
Local client referrals and working alongside the professional advisory community were key to Spectrum, he added.
“We have been getting access to bigger deals, but we still remain true to our roots. It‘s very important to us to do the full range of deals – that‘s actually why we called ourselves Spectrum.“
www.businessmag.co.uk
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