Dealmakers at Grant Thornton, which was recently named by Experian as the most active UK financial adviser in 2015, have reported a strong end to the year, with its Midlands’ Transaction Advisory Services team advising on four transactions which completed in December 2015.
The four deals came hard on the heels of the sale of a majority stake in Logson Group, the £185m turnover Coalville-headquartered packaging business, which was brokered by Grant Thornton and completed in November last year.
Mark Taylor and Alex Hyde acted as reporting accountants on the Placing and AIM IPO of Purplebricks Group plc, which completed just before Christmas. The estate agent and lettings company, which has an innovative and disruptive hybrid model combining an advanced technology platform with local property experts, raised gross proceeds of £25 million with a market capitalisation of £240 million.
The team also provided financial and tax due diligence advice to the £1.6bn turnover Rigby Group on its investments in One Point and Zycko Group. Zycko is the second acquisition for Rigby Private Equity, which is building an EMEA-wide value-added software distribution business.
Rigby also took a controlling stake in One Point, adding mobile voice and data capability to complete its Cloud Delivered Managed Services (CDMS) proposition. One Point becomes Rigby’s third major unified communications investment in 2015 following investments in Fluidata and SIPCOM earlier last year, on both of which Grant Thornton provided financial and tax due diligence services.
In addition, Grant Thornton advised Akcros Chemicals on its acquisition of the Italian-based PVC additives business of Lamberti. With a turnover in excess of 100m Euros, Akcros Chemicals is a global company owned by Stratford-upon-Avon headquartered Grove Industries, and supplies additives to the polymer and coatings industries.
Mustafa Abdulhusein, who leads Grant Thornton’s Corporate Finance Advisory team in the Midlands, said: “2015 saw the Midlands team working closely with a wide range of clients to help them achieve their goals via both M&A deals and financial due diligence assignments. It’s great to have retained our Experian ranking as the top UK financial adviser for the fourth consecutive year and early indications are that the appetite for cross-border deals – both inbound and outbound – is also set to continue in 2016.”
Grant Thornton has its East Midlands office in Leicester, where it has approximately 160 staff providing business and financial advice across Corporate and Personal Tax, audit and assurance, employer solutions, corporate finance, and sustainability, to organisations across the East Midlands.
