‘Best and busiest year since 2006,’ says corporate dealmaker

“This year has been the best and busiest year since 2006,” says the head of corporate at law firm, Keebles.

Speaking to TheBusinessDesk.com, Matt Ainsworth, who has been at the firm for around 18 months, said: “It’s a very buoyant market. The South Yorkshire market especially seems to be very busy and it’s not just our firm seeing that.

“Clients are doing some really good stuff and firms have been extremely active.”

Ainsworth, who is based in Sheffield and previously worked at Irwin Mitchell and DLA Piper, added that this included a higher number of overseas deals completing due to the favourable currency exchange rate resulting in “cheap assets” in the region.

His team has grown at Keebles because of the activity rise in the M&A team, which accounts for about half of the team’s output. The team has completed deals totalling £306m in the first half of this year. “Overall, volume has been really high but there has definitely been an uptick in the quality of transactions too,” Ainsworth added.

The dealmaker added that it was positive to see activity thrive and he hoped it would continue without another crash in the coming years; especially as this year has been such a contrast to when Brexit was first announced. The day after Brexit, Ainsworth saw businesses in the region falter and hesitate over deals they had in the pipeline. “But three or four of those came back on. They just had the jitters,” he added.

Ainsworth said that Yorkshire had to pull together as a collective now in order to see the investment it needed to compete with other cities, drawing in investment as well as talent. The pool of talent is small in South Yorkshire as people move towards larger cities to start their career, according to Ainsworth – who names this as one of the biggest challenges he faces. Though, he has had success in hiring people to return to Sheffield because of the way the city has evolved.

Of the dealspace at present, Ainsoworth added: “Manufacturing has had a renaissance over the last few years and Sheffield in particular is well placed for that. The city has also re-shaped its tech offer. In many ways, Sheffield had to play catch-up but we now have an emerging tech space/hub in the city and that sector is really good to work in because they are looking at protecting their IP and their employees are really important to them too.”

The care home market is also a busy space, he said, adding: “It’s a really disparate market and investors have realised that they can get quite good value out of it.”