‘Manchester effect’ driving deal volumes for Turner Parkinson
Turner Parkinson, the Manchester-based independent business law firm, completed 15 deals in the first half of the year – a 14% increase on last year – amidst an overall downturn in the volume of deals transacted in the North West.
Deal volumes across the North West were down by just over 30% for the year so far to 325 compared to 2016’s figure of 465, according to Experian MarketIQ’s half year UK M&A report.
Turner Parkinson’s performance places the firm joint third with Hill Dickinson by volume, after Gateley, according to Experian’s league table, moving it up from a ranking of 7th last year.
Stand-out deals for the firm include the $94m sale of Stirling Lloyd Plc to GCP Applied Technologies Inc; Albion Ventures’ investment in MPP Global; and the sale of MESM to VWR International.
James Sheridan, head of corporate at Turner Parkinson, believes his firm is benefitting from being a single location business with all of its focus on Manchester and the North West economy.
He said: “Manchester has emerged now as capital of regional UK. It is becoming recognised more and more on the international stage and it continues to attract great businesses and great people from across the UK and wider afield. This momentum has been building for a number of years, but we are now really beginning to see the economic impact of the city’s progress over the last 10 or 15 years.
“Almost all of our client-service activity has some kind of North West connection, and most of it a Manchester one. Whether it is shareholders based here, a business headquartered here, management living here or finance being provided from here, there is pretty much always a Manchester or wider-North West angle to what we do even if the deals we are working on might be elsewhere in the UK or overseas. Because the North West is our home market, all of our resources are focussed here and that is giving us an advantage.”
However, Sheridan sounded a cautionary note: “Despite this level of performance, we continue to build one brick at a time and are very much aware of the economic mood music which is not necessarily conducive to deal activity growing over the next 12 to 24 months. As a result, we are focussed on our own operational efficiency and maybe one or two very targeted hires where the right people are available and will add the right skills to our team. We want to grow our business, but with no external stakeholders we will do so on our own terms and in a controlled way.”
