Industrial entrepreneur looks to Germany amid fears of ‘bungled Brexit’

Amin Amiri

A Manchester-based industrial entrepreneur with an empire of 15 companies with a combined turnover of £140m is lining up new acquisitions in Germany as he bids to mitigate what he believes could be a “bungled Brexit”.

Amiri Enterprises (AE) is a mini conglomerate of mid-market (£5m to £100m turnover) manufacturing companies controlled by Amin Amiri, the founder, funder and chief executive of a2e.

The 60-year-old Iranian-born businessman has been wheeling and dealing in companies since 2000 after working the corporate environment with companies like Deloitte and Grant Thornton.

Since that time he has bought a total of 38 companies, five of which could not be saved, and 10 more were sold on.

His portfolio of mid-market companies has an aggregate EBITDA of £16m with net operating assets of £23m and 1,100 employees worldwide.

But now he is looking to Europe to buy companies in order to preserve his wealth, having become disillusioned with the Government’s handling of the Brexit process.

“Brexit is becoming a big issue,” he told TheBusinessDesk. “The people who are doing the negotiating, most of them have never been in business and they’re not prepared to listen to business people.

“This is despite the efforts of the CBI – of which I am a council member – and the IoD (Institute of Directors). They seem to be negotiating in a vacuum.”

Amira said what he was most concerned about was the supply chain for very large industries being moved to Europe within the EU and the UK becoming just a “trading in” nation.

“The economy will be completely unbalanced and we will be at the whim of those nations who have goods to sell,” he went on.

“The problem is that the majority of the services sector is there to serve the manufacturing sector – design houses, PR companies, software companies, etc.

“CBI research published recently said that the manufacturing sector represented 10% of GDP, but spent two thirds of the R&D money in the UK was spent by the manufacturing sector.

“To ditch that research effectively is reckless, because the more that we go proceed along the industrial revolution we are going through at the moment, it will be important to use technology which can only come through research.

“Look at graphene (the super-strong material discovered at the University of Manchester). The UK Government has put £50m behind it, but in China, India and the USA, they are putting billions into graphene.

“UK universities have always been at the forefront of Europe in terms of R&D. It will be impossible to maintain that without a proper link into Europe and the USA.

“Whether the politicians want it or not, Brexit is creating a barrier and obstacles for common research projects which are so vital, not only for the health of the UK economy, but also the universities.”

Amiri pointed to the example of US companies which have a very big domestic market of about 350 million people.

“You will see that when there is a nearby domestic market, business can get much bigger than what they are now and they can grow,” he said. “Europe is supposed to be our domestic market.

“There’s nothing wrong with leaving Europe, but it’s the way you go about it that counts.

“Norway’s not in Europe but they paid their dues to stay in the single market. I’m not questioning the will of the people, but there are ways of achieving the same thing.

“The dogma of saying we want to be out of the single market is ridiculous. I favour something along the lines of the Norwegian or, even better the Switzerland model, which does not have free movement of people and is not subject to European Court of Justice law. What we need is a transitional arrangement.

“If you ask any of the voters who voted to leave the EU, they would probably not want to have barriers to trade with Europe. People’s problems were with out of control immigration. I know if we are in the single market that would still exist but we can tidy a lot of these things.”

Amiri also criticised one Government junior minister who claimed the UK could find viable markets for its products outside the EU

“If you deal with Australia, Brazil or New Zealand you can trade with about 100 million people, compared to 500 million in Europe,” said Amiri. “It’s ridiculous.

“Half of my companies make parts for Airbus. You can’t find another company in Australia, New Zealand or Brazil  making Airbus components.

“This idea of ‘let’s go and find other markets’ has come from a standpoint of complete ignorance.”

Amiri is a graduate of Manchester Univeristy with a degree in maths and economics and is also a qualified chartered accountant.

After qualifying, the company now known as Deloitte gave him a scholarship to do an executive MBA at Harvard in the US.

He then went to New York and engineered the Spicer and Oppenheim New York office corporate finance team.

“I came across a totally different way to business in the area I was interest in which was investing in private companies” he continued. “I learned an awful lot from the big shots.

“Back then, in 1989, 1990 and 1991 – a lot of the practices on Wall Street were tough and unethical.

“People in big banks had no regard for their clients. I saw it first hand. There was no ethics or morality.”

Towards the end of 1991 he came back to be Grant Thornton as head of corporate finance for Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds, created a corporate finance team which became one of the most active in the North.

“By 2000 I had enough of being in a large corporation. I couldn’t do much more than I had already done,” he said.

“I had this passion for doing what I’m doing now. The reason I am doing it is very simple. By about the mid-1990s, it became evident that the fourth industrial revolution was in full train and it was going to affect all businesses.

“For the first time in business history, you would fund a small manufacturing business (£5m to £10m) would be subject to the same level of competition as a large corporations in the international markets. They had to make themselves fit for the 21st century.

“But 90% of them were not fit to upgrade themselves and take advantage of the opportunities.

“Not a single one of the private equity houses here or in London has a specific focus on manufacturing companies – less so manufacturing companies which are not doing well.

“I went to a niche, and created another niche within it which is under-performing manufacturing companies.

“A lot of the PE guys, they buy a business and they don’t get involved. They do ‘helicopter management’, or ‘pigeon management’, where they just fly around the room dropping the **** on everyone.

“I get fully involved. I come up with a plan. I provide the vision and a plan. We have to lift their spirits. A lot of them have been ignored and don’t know what to do.

“Half the businesses we have bought, a lot of them would have disappeared.”

Amiri cites the example of Coventry-based radiator specialist Covrad.

He added: “We bought it for £1.7m in 2005. We refit the factory, refocused the business and spent £5m on the factory and sold it to Sun Capital for £15.9m.

“That business would’ve closed. It was 104 years old.”

Click here to sign up to receive our new South West business news...
Close