Professionals: Grant Thornton advises on IPO; Six-figure finance deal boosts engineering firm

The Leeds office of Grant Thornton UK has played a major role in the flotation of financial services provider and retailer Ramsdens Holdings.

Ramsdens was admitted to the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange through an initial public offering (IPO) last week.

Grant Thornton, led by partners Dan Rosinke and Mark Overfield, acted as reporting accountant on the transaction.

Rosinke said: “Ramsdens is a business with a clear and well formulated growth strategy and the Leeds office of Grant Thornton has been delighted to support the management team on this strategic IPO.

“Despite wider market uncertainty in the wake of Brexit and the election result in the United States, the UK economy is proving resilient and this is being reflected in a number of businesses outlining proposals to float on the London Stock Exchange.
 
“We are hopeful that 2017 will be stronger than 2016 in terms of IPO activity.”

Ramsdens was established in 1987 in Stockton-on-Tees and has grown to employ more than 500 staff across 127 stores serving a customer base of over 700,000 in its last financial year.

It operates in the four core business segments of foreign currency exchange, pawnbroking loans, the buying and selling of precious metals and the retailing of second hand and new jewellery.

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Yorkshire-based One Stop Business Finance has loaned £290,000 to Odin Engineering, which has enabled the company to complete its biggest order to date.

Odin directors Emily Barker and Darren Browes will use the loan to fund a significant overseas machine tool order, repaying One Stop Business Finance in the third quarter of this year.

Andrew Mackenzie One Stop Business Finance’s managing director, said: “One Stop Business Finance is delighted with the Odin Engineering deal. As is often the case, our client had been declined by several other providers, but this is a high quality commercial transaction around which we were able to be fully secured and which comfortably met all our responsible lending criteria.”
 
Emily Barker, managing director of Coventry-based Odin Engineering, said: “We had exhausted all the funding avenues we knew about, until we were introduced to Andrew at One Stop Business Finance. We were without the funding to be able to complete the biggest order Odin Engineering has ever won. One Stop Business Finance stepped in and not only delivered the necessary cash, but also completed the whole lending process within a week of us first meeting.”

The legal work was undertaken by Ben Slack, Aarti Parmar, Avril Mullin and Hannah Newbery of Clarion Solicitors in Leeds.