Deals round-up: Mills & Reeve; Shoosmiths; Knights; Cowgill Holloway
LAW firm Mills & Reeve advised the Wellcome Trust on its £249m acquisition of the Co-op’s farm business.
The deal involved the purchase of 40,000 acres across 15 farms in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and East Anglia.
Michael Aubrey, head of agriculture at Mills & Reeve, who led the firm’s 40-strong team on the acquisition, said: “This was a large and fast moving deal requiring both agricultural law expertise and experience of advising on high profile, complex corporate acquisitions – a combination which few law firms can boast.
“Many of our specialist agricultural lawyers were involved, together with lawyers from our tax, real estate, corporate and commercial, IP/IT, environmental, employment and pensions teams, working together to ensure the Wellcome Trust achieved the outcome it wanted within the desired time frame.”
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LAW firm Shoosmiths has advised Palatine Private Equity and Bridgepoint Development Capital on their £75m sale of the Hallmark Hotels Group to Topland.
Palatine and Bridgepoint established the Hallmark Hotels Group in October 2007 to pursue a buy-and-build strategy of acquiring underperforming three-star hotels.
Since then the group has made eight acquisitions in Manchester, Carlisle, Derby, Bournemouth, Hull, Croydon and Gloucester.
Shoosmiths has advised the group on the last two of these acquisitions, with corporate partner Mark Dawson having brought Hallmark as a client from his previous firm where he acted on the initial investment and the other deals.
The Shoosmiths transaction team was led by partners Mark Dawson and Karen Procter with support from solicitor Kelly Harvey, senior associate Tom Wilde and partner Karen Fletcher, while the property aspects were lead by partner Andrew Pattinson.
Mr Dawson, said: “This completion represents a further success story for Manchester’s thriving private equity community and Shoosmiths are proud to have acted on behalf of Palatine and Bridgepoint to achieve this significant return.”
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CHESTER law firm Knights has worked on Adams Food Ingredients’ (AFI) £1.2m acquisition of Dairy Crest’s FoodtecUK.
Leek-based AFI, a subsidiary of the Irish Dairy Board, is a food ingredient and powder blending business which specialises in sourcing, blending and packing food ingredients for manufacturers in the UK.
Knights advised AFI, with Sally Wightman heading up the legal services. She said: “This was an interesting transaction, which called on a number of the services that we offer at Knights – we provided corporate, employment, real estate and intellectual property advice in connection with the purchase of the business and assets of Foodtec UK”.
“AFI is a growing business and this acquisition is an exciting opportunity for it to expand both its own offering and that which it has acquired from Foodtec UK. The purchase also comes as part of the Irish Dairy Board’s growth strategy.”
Founded in 1994, FoodTec UK has two manufacturing sites in Crewe and provides powder blending services with a focus on gluten free, bakery and other specialist nutrition products.
Eversheds acted on behalf of Dairy Crest.
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The corporate finance team at Cowgill Holloway has sold welding equipment provider Hember to Red-D-Arc Limited, a subsidiary of US-based Airgas Inc.
The Warrington firm has four depots located at Barton, Bridgend, West Thurrock and Southampton and operates throughout the UK hiring out a wide range of welding equipment.
The Cowgill Holloway corporate finance team was led by partner Paul Stringer and senior manager Robin Prestage.
He said: “We were delighted to lead this complex transaction and with continued consolidation being seen in the industry and a history of dealing from both sides of the table in this arena, we are positioning ourselves as a leading advisor in the plant hire and overall SME sector.”
Khurshid Valli of Gateley provided legal advice to the vendors.
