People: Altius; Hurst; CBRE

Business broker Altius has appointed Vickie Elson-Hood as the head of Altius Corporate Finance, the group’s newest brand. The Preston-based division of works with businesses across the UK to support exit planning, business sales, growth strategies and acquisitions.  She joins from boutique advisory firm, Spring Top Group Ltd, where she was a director.

She will spearhead development of the ACF brand, targeting medium-size businesses across the UK.

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Accounting and business advisory firm Hurst have promoted Ben Bradley and James Thompson, as corporate finance and tax partners respectively.

Bradley joined Hurst as a graduate trainee in September 2011 following a 12-month university placement. He qualified as a chartered accountant in 2014 while working in the business services team, then joined the corporate finance team in 2015 following a secondment in the United States.

He has progressed through the ranks to manager, associate director and then associate partner, which gave him a seat on the Hurst board.

Bradley has advised on transactions with a total deal value of over £1bn. These include company acquisitions and disposals, raising growth capital, management buyouts and takeovers by employee ownership trusts, across sectors including food, pharmaceuticals, IT services, engineering, manufacturing, healthcare, consultancy and marketing.

His transaction highlights include advising on the 2016 sale of Comms-care, a north west based provider of outsourced IT services, to Fortune 500 company Ingram Micro in a deal worth more than £50m. Thompson also advised on this deal.

In 2021 Bradley advised The Sun Valley Nut Company, a Wirral-based supplier of high-quality peanut and nut-based snacking products through the private label, food service and food ingredients channels, on its sale to Germany-headquartered food group Zertus.

Last year he advised Stockport-based Red Rose Packaging on the company’s sale to Logson Group, UK’s largest independent supplier of corrugated packaging.

Thompson joined Hurst in 2015 and has more than 20 years’ experience. He was promoted to associate partner in 2019 from senior manager.

He provides tax advice to family and owner-managed businesses and is a specialist in research and development tax credits which save his clients thousands of pounds.

He also advises a number of private equity owned companies and is well-versed in the tax challenges that arise as a result of the PE ownership model.

Hurst partner and head of the tax team Liz Gallagher said: “James has been an integral part of the tax advisory team for the last seven years. He has a passion for tax and uses his expertise to provide exceptional advice to our entrepreneurial clients.

“His promotion to partner is well deserved. He is a great example of someone who has worked hard to become a key member of the team.

“He adds greatly to our capabilities and has been instrumental in our strong growth over recent years.

“I look forward to working alongside James and the other partners as we continue to enjoy unprecedented growth.”

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CBRE has appointed Jordan Saleh as head of flex for the North to drive growth within this fast paced and evolving sector.

The new role further bolsters CBRE’s investment across all areas of flex, acting for and advising occupiers, operators and investors.

Saleh joins from WeWork where he spent five years as sales director covering the northern region and brings a wide breadth of knowledge, expertise and client-base to provide CBRE with insight across the whole flex ecosystem.

Working nationally within CBRE’s super region structure, his business development/occupier flex role will focus on developing, co-ordinating and managing opportunities throughout the UK.

Joe Rigby, CBRE’s head of office agency – North, said: “We are delighted to welcome Jordan to the team in this new role as we see rising demand in the UK flexible office space market.  The managed workspace market has seen a huge amount of change in recent years with more entrants to the sector such as Industrious, Huckletree, Orega, X+Why and Gilbanks all taking space in 2022.  Jordan has an excellent understanding of the flex market, as well as established relationships within the sector which can be leveraged.”