Deals round up: Addleshaws’ summer flurry; Altium
THERE has been no sign of a summer slowdown at Addleshaw Goddard’s Manchester M&A team, which has acted on North West deals worth more than £860m in the last three weeks.
The biggest transaction is the Co-operative Group’s £620m sale of its retail pharmacy business to family owned Bestway.
Another key deal, worth around £100m was the investment in online lifestyle retailer The Hut Group by a consortium of investors led by KKR.
The Addleshaws team also acted on Capita’s £18.2m acquisition of Monarch Education, the takeover bid for listed Cheshire construction company Pochin’s and Assura’s acquisition of The One Life Medical Centre. From a private equity perspective there was involvement too in NorthEdge Capital’s investment in Accrol Paper at a value of £66m and Equistone’s investment in Concept Life Science at a value of £58m.
Partner Roger Hart said: “The best businesses do the best deals, and we’re seeing the benefit of having close relationships with most of the top businesses in the north west. Our pipeline of M&A and IPOs is excellent”.
Private equity head Paul Medlicott added: “There has been a real change in pace in the deals market, and in particular, private equity activity”.
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THE MANCHESTER office of investment bank Altium has reported an busy half-year, which has recently seen it complete five deals in two months.
These include: the LDC-backed MBO of energy software firm Stroma; the secondary buyout of Manchester internet services provider Metronet to ISIS Equity Partners; the sale of renewable energy company Monsal to General Electric;
the sale of testing and inspection business SAL and REC by the newly formed Concept Life Sciences, which was backed by Equistone and the acquisition of three Power Generation Sites by Alkane Energy from Carron Energy
Altiums’ chief executive Phil Adams said: “This has been an incredibly strong first half, both for our local office in Manchester and the group as a whole. We have completed numerous high profile deals and ourpipeline for the second half of the year is, if anything, stronger.
“The deal environment is now stronger than for some years, with equity and debt readily available for high quality companies and the IPO market open. The North West continues to be a great market for Altium, and we expect this to be a continuing theme.”
