KPMG notches hat-trick of deals in as many days
THE deals team at KPMG is enjoying a purple patch of completions including a hat-trick of significant regional transactions within three days.
The latest deals – the tertiary buyout of Neville Johnson , the £47m sale of Aimia Foods to Canada’s Cott Corp and Bglobal’s £16.5m sale of subsidiary Utiligroup to private equity firm NorthEdge – mean the firm’s running total is now nine in seven weeks.
Jonathan Boyers, the firm’s Northern head of corporate finance said benign trading conditions, improveed confidence and a backlog of activity were the key factors behind the recent flurry.
“We have been pretty prolific, not just in the North West but in Yorkshire and the North East.
“Quite a number of the recent completions have been in our pipeline for some time. In a way completions are a bit like buses – you wait for one and then three appear at once.”
With overseas trade (AIMIA), an IPO (Flowtech FluidPower) and several private equity transactions, it is difficult to identify a consistent theme, he said.
“Deals are tending to be more straigtforward than they were a year ago. If you have got a decent business and can generate some interest, competitive tension will drive completions as long as trading holds up.”
He said the firm was hopeful of completing of several more deals over the summer and is now building a pipeline for 2015.
