Rising M&A sparks expansion at advisory firm

Professional services firm Baldwins is expanding its corporate finance team in Birmingham after seeing rising levels of mergers and acquisitions across the UK.

Malcolm Cook joins Baldwins’ nine-strong corporate finance team at Bank House in the city centre, and will help the firm’s national corporate finance team to build upon a year that has seen them advise on around 100 transactions nationally.

Cook joins as partner and comes with more than 20 years of transaction services experience in a career that has seen him advising banks, private equity and companies on more than 400 multi-million-pound corporate transactions across not just the UK, but also globally during his time with PKF and BDO.

He is tasked with building the Baldwins Group’s Midlands transaction services business.  The Baldwins Group – a CogitalGroup company – already has a successful transaction services team in the South East which advises on around 40 transactions a year.

Cook said: “The weak pound has fuelled some of the interest as it makes British businesses cheaper to buy, but there are two key longer-term reasons for foreign investment too.

“Firstly, for the US – where a lot of the interest is coming from – the UK is seen as a stepping stone to trade into Europe, which opens up wider reach for them.

“The commonality of the English language is also a major attraction for a lot of European countries – and if they can integrate themselves into this network – that also opens up further opportunities regardless of whether Brexit happens or not.

“The Midlands corporate finance team is currently exceptionally busy with businesses either looking to invest or dispose of their assets to another company, which is an encouraging vote of confidence in the economy even at times of uncertainty.”

Mark Selby is the national head of corporate finance for the Baldwins Group which has 99 offices across England, Scotland and Wales.

He added: “The variety of locations and sectors that we are seeing deals happening in is encouraging – especially those from overseas which shows that the UK remains an attractive place to do business.

“To reflect this, we have continued to grow our team of corporate finance specialists in the Birmingham and the wider Midlands area.  Last year was a strong year for us, but this year looks like it could well be significantly better still.

“Malcolm has operated in the Midlands for all of his career and has unrivalled contacts and knowledge of the corporate finance market, making him ideal to develop our team further whilst mentoring new members of the team that we are looking to recruit into our Birmingham base over the coming months.”