With the UK now in a recession, completing your transactions promptly will become even more critical for businesses to drive growth and make it through the uncertain changes in the industry.
By listening to your needs and focusing on your priorities, our deals and business consulting team have kept transactions moving through lockdown, and we are happy to report our success since March.
Deals completed
With a combined value of £1.5 billion
New wins
For our business consulting team
Restructuring projects
Number completed since March
Aker Systems' acquisition of LDC was a challenging deal, given the early-stage nature of the business and the coronavirus lockdown.
However, we were able to complete the deal for this fast-growing technology start-up, which offers highly secure migrations into the public cloud for government departments and corporates looking to manage and share large, complex and classified data sets.
Our strong experience in balancing the thorough evaluation of private equity firms with the dynamic style of entrepreneurial teams enabled us to keep the deal on track.
RJD Partners acquisition of Improve secures the future of this innovative business, delivering training to veterinary practitioners via an online solution. We provided due diligence, tax due diligence, SPA advisory and tax structuring.
Our dedicated transactions tax team provided structuring advice on Inflexion’s £150-million acquisition of Rosemont Pharmaceuticals and H2’s acquisition of RAM Tracking.
Our transactions tax team was appointed as fund-level advisors to a number of private equity clients which will give us access to further transactions these firms pursue in future.
We provided debt-advisory services on the £50-million fundraising for Mole Valley Farmers Limited, funded by PNC Business Credit.
Mole Valley is a farming cooperative serving farmers and their local communities via production of animal feed and through their retail country stores.
Given the nature of ownership the focus was on delivering value to its members, ensuring customers benefit from the best possible pricing whilst leaving enough funds in the business for future investment.
Elogbooks is a cloud-based FM software supported by integrated helpdesk and end-to-end building monitoring solutions.
Our teams advised on the £12 million sale of Elogbooks to Marlowe plc and also supported Marlowe with due diligence. The team’s extensive technology-led business services sector knowledge and relationship with Marlowe were critical in designing the best solution for our client through the pandemic.
While private equity buyers are proceeding cautiously, and the bar remains high, there is appetite to deploy capital and invest across the cycle from many funds, particularly for bolt-on opportunities for existing platform investments.
Notwithstanding the practical challenges of completing due diligence across borders, international trade acquirers remain active and interested in UK assets.
UK corporates are increasingly focusing on what is core to their future plans. We believe non-core disposal programs are likely to come to the fore in 2021.
Meanwhile, public markets are also showing signs of life with ten IPOs completed since lockdown, while capital markets continue to be tapped for secondary equity both to shore up balance sheets and provide ammunition for acquisitions.
Debt market appetite is starting to recover with a focus on quality and recurring revenues.However, challenges exist in evaluating underlying earnings which is providing a brake on multiple leverage, but liquidity is there for the right opportunities.
High street banks are primarily focusing on existing clients and selectively looking at new business, but challenger banks and alternative lenders are very much open for new business.
The most resilient sectors for M&A activity have been:
Also, while government support has pushed back liquidity issues to Q4 2020 and beyond, we are experiencing a rise in accelerated M&A and restructuring opportunities; particularly in sectors that have suffered during the pandemic - travel and leisure, retail, aviation, events and commercial real estate.
