West Midlands corporate deals review in association with Clearwater International
The total number of deals recorded in January by the Business Desk stood at 27, a minor decrease on December’s figure of 28 and a fall compared to the 37 in January 2016.
Did someone mention a holiday?
January is one of the busiest months for booking holidays, due the gloomy prospect of returning to work after Christmas and bad weather. Here in the Midlands we saw a number of travel deals. Leamington based Travel Management Group was acquired by its rival Grey Dawes. Travel Management Group has a turnover of £38 million and provides a number of services including corporate event management, sports event travel services and holiday advice.
Furthermore Clearwater International advised the Birmingham office of LDC on its acquisition of Sandy Balls, via its portfolio company Away Resorts. As domestic holidays become increasingly popular due to mounting costs and environmental concerns surrounding international travel, Away Resorts had a record year in 2015. Sandy Balls is one of the largest holiday villages in the New Forest with 20 million visitors a year and looks to help Away Resorts capitalise on rising demand for “staycations”.
Spotlight on Insurance
This month saw two large Midlands based insurers gain new private equity owners, to take them forward into their new phases of expansion. Stoke on Trent claims service provider: the Davies Group was sold to US investor HGGC for £90 million. The recent investment will allow Davies to target new segments of the market and look for overseas expansion.
Equally UK private equity firm Inflexion invested £40m in BlackCountry telematics motor insurance specialist MyPolicy. MyPolicy provides telematics policies for first time drivers and other niche ends of the market. The investment allowed co-founder Mike Quinn to transition out of the business, whilst the former CEO of AXA, Mark Wood becomes Chairman of the company. It will be interesting to see how the businesses execute their ambitious expansion plans under their new ownership.
Tech Innovation still attracting investment
One really positive sign this month was that innovative Midlands-based TMT businesses at different stages in their developmental lifecycle are still attracting the funding they need. Birmingham based SAP consultant Edenhouse Consulting received a minority investment from ECI. Edenhouse, which was established in 2008, has over 300 customers and aims to provide a one stop shop for all users relying on SAP software.
If we move to earlier stage businesses, Mercia Technologies, provided £1 million of funding to Smart Antenna Technologies, a provider of low cost antenna solutions for the mobile device market. Whilst its technology can be used in smart devices and laptops, there is significant excitement around its application in the much talked about M2M and Internet of Things markets. Equally another University of Birmingham start-up Petalite also attracted start-up funding for its technology that supercharges batteries across a number of devices in under 15 minutes. We will watch closely to see if these businesses achieve the growth trajectories they’ll need to attract the sky high valuations in the technology sector.
