Lloyds bags Funder of the Year gong
LLOYDS Banking Group emerged the winner of the Rainmakers Awards Funder of the Year category, sponsored by accountant and business advisers CLB Coopers.
Lloyds beat off the challenge of other big hitters including Barclays, HSBC, RBS/NatWest and Santander to take the accolade at the corporate finance event hosted by TheBusinessDesk.com at Manchester’s Hilton Hotel, in conjunction with Out There Events, in an online poll.
The group has played a major role as a finance provider, including its involvement in helping Together, the specialist finance company, extending is largest funding line by raising £325m.
This enabled the Cheadle, Greater Manchester company to expand its Charles Street securitization programme, bringing the total facility to £1bn, with maturity extending to 2021.
It was also involved in securing the £80m finance packed for global management and construction firm Turner & Townsend, which has more than 200 of its 4,399 staff based in Macnhester. Other banks involved were HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
In February the bank agreed to reset covenants on Matalan’s loans at the Liverpool-based retailer struggled with £500m of debt.
Neil Price, Lloyds director and head of Northern England and Scottish Originations Acquisition Finance, alluded to possible uncertainty following the EU Referendum Brexit outcome when he said: “We’ve been open and supporting different businesses of all sizes, some of which are behind Brexit.
“Most people now want sensibly structured transactions. Our pipeline’s dipped a bit over the last week, but we’re still open for business.”
But the awards ceremony was not all about super-sized deals. The winner of the Small Cap Deal of the Year proved to be the transaction via Enterprise Ventures which saw the IPO of drug developer Evgen Pharma, which raised £7m and gave the company an initial market capitalization of £27m.
Receiving the award, Enterprise Ventures fund manager Doug Stellman said the funding had helped phase two of Evgen’s development of naturally occurring diseases, auto-immunit diseases and cancer.
He said: “This kind of funding is vital for this kind of business which is part of the North West biotech scene.
“There is a gap in the market for this type of business and it’s a good way for them to get to the next stage of their development. They are being to pop up on the radar of the corporate funds.”
Other shortlisted deals in the category included Pentair’s acquisition of US firm ERICO International Company for £1.2bn brokered by Eversheds, and NCC Group takeover of Dutch cyber security firm Fox-IT Holding BV for £93.8m involving Rickitt Mitchell, Peel Hunt and Eversheds).
