Revenues at advisory firm hit £180m

Global advisory firm GCA Altium, which last year opened a Leeds office, has continued to expand its international presence across Europe and Asia in FY18 as total revenues reach £181m.

Revenues for the firm increased 35% in comparison to FY17 and have increased threefold in the last five years. Net income also increased by 115% compared to the previous year. Over the course of 2018, the firm closed 145 deals globally – up 30% on the prior year. Over a third of these transactions were cross-border.

The group opened five new offices across Asia and Europe in Taipei, Ho Chi Minh City, Leeds, Paris and Nagoya. The new office openings are in line with the company’s global expansion strategy, which is focused on establishing a strong presence in all key markets with robust corporate ecosystems and transaction dynamics.

Across Europe, the firm completed 74 deals worth a total of £11bn in 2018. 31 transactions were led out of GCA Altium’s UK offices with an average transaction value of over £100m. Active sectors were technology, consumer, business services and industrials.

Major transactions included advising UKFast on its investment from Inflexion, in a transaction that valued the cloud hosting provider at £405m; advising Wakefield-headquartered video games label Team17 on its £217m AIM IPO and advising online watch specialist Watchfinder.co.uk on its sale to Swiss-based luxury goods giant Richemont.

Phil Adams, Chief Executive at GCA Altium, said: “Our business has enjoyed huge momentum in recent years and we started this year with a strong, engaged pipeline, and a highly favourable level of new engagement activity. Our 20-strong global office network, diversified client base and impressive results mean we continue to retain and attract exceptional talent to the firm, giving us further fire-power to meet clients’ needs worldwide. We look forward to building on our momentum in the year ahead.”