Turnaround firm Armitage Jones merges with Montpelier
YORKSHIRE business advisory and restructuring boutique Armitage Jones has merged with Montpelier Chartered Accountants’ newly launched turnaround division.
Chris Jones, one of the founders of Armitage Jones, said the tie-up with Montpelier Business Reorganisation would allow the Ilkley-based business to go national.
Armitage Jones was established in 2008 by former Hammonds chief and TheBusinessDesk.com’s chairman Mr Jones, leading insolvency practitioner Tony Armitage, and property developer and professional investor Simon Padgett.
The trio established the firm as a hands-on alternative to the routine turnaround offering of accountants and insolvency groups by providing rapid and effective remedial advice at board level to underperforming and struggling businesses requiring change management.
They have grown to a team of eight staff and generated seven figure levels of fee income in their first full year of operating.
Armitage Jones, and its associated business, LPA Direct, which specialises in the management of distressed property assets, will now form part of the expanding Montpelier Group of professional services firms, and will operate as Montpelier Business Reorganisation.
Teams from Yorkshire law firms Gordons and Lupton Fawcett advised on the deal, which will see the team relocate to Montpelier’s existing Leeds office which will become Montpelier Business Reorganisation’s first UK location.
Mr Jones said: “Montpelier has a great deal of momentum and the deal gives us the ability to become a national firm very quickly.
“The merger was a compelling offer for us as a relative newcomer, challenged to meet the growing demand for our services.
“Our take on the market is different, and we have an ethos of doing, rather than simply advising, that delivers swift results for underperforming businesses and property assets, as well as access to significant business funding.
“With the additional resources we now have access to as part of a wider group, we expect to make a number of very early hires and plan to have representation in more locations within the year.”
Montpelier’s founder, Watkin Gittins, said: “We have been looking for the right expertise to bring a business restructuring and reorganisation offering to our clients, and we have been impressed by the rapid growth of Armitage Jones into a formidable player in the market in less than two years.
“The mix of insolvency, business and property expertise that the Armitage Jones team brings is a valuable combination of skills that has huge relevance in the new economic markets arising from the banking crisis, and we have made this investment to take these skills to national and international markets very quickly.”
Montpelier is based in the Isle of Man and has more than 23,000 clients across 52 offices in 14 countries.
