Business owners and directors will deal with a vast array of tasks and challenges over a lifetime of building a company. From buying and selling stock and services, to compliance and recruitment, and IT and finance - the list goes on. However, there are some transformational moments which only come along once in a business lifetime, and those moments tend to be the most important.
Whether taking on funding or investment to accelerate growth, or acquiring another business to expand, or planning, preparing, and completing the eventual sale of your business to fund a long and happy retirement, business owners need to draw upon outside help at key moments to ensure a successful outcome. The key question facing every owner is: who do you trust to deliver?
In a market full of established general practice accountants, the last few years have seen the emergence of a new, highly specialised, independent, boutique firm of corporate finance advisers who are ticking all the boxes for business owners looking for experienced experts to trust with those key moments.
WilliamsAli Corporate Finance arrived in the market in 2019 and has since built one of the largest and most experienced teams of M&A specialists in the North East region, while completing a series of exceptional and high profile transactions.
The two founding partners Phil Williams and Abu Ali are the most active and visible advisers in the team, and this is immediately where the WilliamAli proposition starts to be different. Clients consistently receive the best senior expertise and added value throughout their process, as opposed to some of the more traditional accountancy models where the figureheads are heavily outnumbered by junior resource.
When you are talking to WilliamsAli, you are talking to experts who’ve been there, seen it and done it. Abu and Phil have spent their life in business. They know precisely what a business owner is going through because they’ve have been there themselves. Abu is a chartered accountant who has a background in advising on company sales, management buyouts and fundraising. Phil, with over 20 years of accountancy under his belt, has worked as a finance director for a fast-growing energy firm which he successfully helped to sell to a PEbacked acquirer, and also spent several years as in-house head of corporate finance and M&A at a leading North East PLC. “For any business owner who is looking to either exit the company or hand it on to another safe pair of hands, we can help because we’ve done it so many times before,” says Phil Williams. “We put a huge amount of time and effort into our clients and, in doing so, we build incredibly close relationships. We understand that, as your advisers, we are going to be a reflection of you during a deal and we treat that responsibility with great care. At the same time, we are serious negotiators who will never stop driving value.” “We’re busier than ever,” adds Abu Ali. “The pandemic caused initial uncertainty, but we kept speaking to our clients and once everyone had got used to a new way of doing business, we found that deals could still be done albeit with some delays. Business owners who wanted an exit strategy two years ago still want an exit strategy today. Those who wanted to find funding to take their business forward, still want funding – in some cases even more urgently than before.”
The refreshing thing you discover when talking to Abu and Phil is their devotion to North East businesses. They also place a huge amount of pride in their independence. They are answerable to nobody but their clients, which creates a unique, singular focus on delivering outcomes with no distractions. Their niche positioning as M&A specialists focusing on a single, added-value service allows them to work seamlessly and collaboratively with the various other professionals in the region, including accountants, law firms and funders.
WilliamsAli is due to expand further in the spring, with the addition of a senior, director-level hire with vast corporate finance experience in roles as both an adviser and a finance director. With a busy year ahead, Phil and Abu are pleased to be further reinforcing the strength in depth of the team at just the right time.
Abu said: “We are currently talking to many business owners who are starting to think about their exit plans. They are looking around the market and asking themselves the question: “who do I want on my side?”. It’s incredibly pleasing to find that the answer is WilliamsAli Corporate Finance”.
If you’d like to talk to Abu Ali or Phil Williams, you can email them at info@wacf.co.uk or call 0191 249 1736. You’ll also find additional details on their website: www.williamsali.co.uk
