Steve Plaskitt, Head of Corporate Finance at MHA Tait Walker gives an update to the first half of the year.
Despite the Pandemic, we have seen very strong activity levels in the North East corporate deal market in the first half of 2021. Whilst many of our clients have had some impact due to Covid 19, many have found opportunities to continue to grow their businesses and so have been attractive for potential investors and buyers or have been able to spot opportunities to grow and to make acquisitions themselves. It is through our clients’ growth and successes that we have been able to similarly perform strongly and grow our team. It was a great recognition for our team and all their hard work as we were awarded the Insider Dealmakers 2020 Corporate Finance Team of the Year award again in April. This award recognised that our team completed the two largest corporate deals in the North East in 2020 and has continued to grow and progress with technologybased data analytics investment. We have been able to continue to develop and grow the team with John O Sullivan joining from RSM at the start of the year as a Senior Executive and the next recruit at manager level is due to start in July to further strengthen our transaction support and due diligence capabilities. It was pleasing also that both partners – myself and Lee Humble were shortlisted for the dealmaker and emerging dealmaker awards which recognised our strong performance in completing deals last year. The deal market in the year to date has been very busy with many deals completing in anticipation of a much-vaunted potential rise in Capital Gains Tax for company owners in the budget on 2 March. This CGT increase never happened and instead the tax conditions for SME company disposals remain very strong at present – though we all expect that the Chancellor Rishi Sunak will increase taxes in the upcoming budgets. We have advised on over twenty deals in the first half of 2021 including the following completed deals: The sale of CCTV installer Hadrian Technology Limited to Marlowe plc. Hadrian implements CCTV solutions, operating software, digital cloud-based storage, and ongoing maintenance primarily to clients in the supermarket sector across the UK. The Investment by Trimountain Partners into Abca Systems Group, a £25m turnover company firm which installs and maintains across a broad range of fire and security systems. The sale of a nationwide provider of Cloud, Security and Managed Service solutions The acquisition by Victory Innovations, a US medical technology business, of a UK based European distributor. The acquisition of a group of children’s nurseries. We assisted a family- owned business undertake a management buyout which will see value realisation for the long-term owners and ensure succession of the business in the hands of the existing team. The sale to an employee-owned trust of a professional services firm. The most recent twelve months has been the busiest for the team for nearly a decade and that shows no sign of slowing just yet as the economy begins to recover. Conditions for deal making remain strong as investors and acquisitive companies want to make the most of their relatively inexpensive access to funding and the benign tax environment is still attractive to corporate vendors. Furthermore, the North East is in a strong position with recent Government investment in the area and in particular Teesside. Ideally, Covid 19 restrictions will be fully lifted in the second half of 2021 and the UK and North East economies will be able to continue to boom.
