Forward East Anglia Market Monitor – July 2017

As the run up to holiday season began to hit, the level of deals dropped a little from June to fifteen.

Eight successful business sales from the region, one of which retains many jobs at Amtek UK after they reportedly hit cash flow issues following years of investment for growth, and one the sale of Ductclean to AIM listed Marlowe plc, another serial acquirer looking for robust recurring revenue generating businesses delivering essential (non-discretionary) services.

Four fundraisings in the region ranged from a £160,000 private investor placing on Seedrs for Hugge Mattresses owned by Paul Francis to a $75m Series D fundraising led by Insight ventures into Mike Lynch backed Darktrace. The other two fundraises in the SME space were £500,00 by Lloyds into Ecotile Flooring to support their growth plans and £5m by Mobeus Equity Partners into the wetsuit outlet. Both very welcome deals in the East Anglian market demonstrating Lloyds’ willingness to lend to their customers in the manufacturing space and great to see SME private equity specialist Mobeus investing £5m of growth capital into one of the regions fastest growing online retailers.

The remaining three deals were acquisitions made by companies based in East Anglia, demonstrating again that more businesses are being sold from our region than are acting as businesses seeking growth by acquisition.

By sector, manufacturing deals are still leading the way in terms of deals by volume – we are continuing to see consolidation in this sector and don’t expect this to slow down.

If we’ve missed your deal, or you would like to discuss a transaction for your business please do get in touch.

Forward East Anglia Market Monitor Jul 17

Rob Smith

Our services

Management Buy Outs / Ins

Management buy outs are another way of buying or selling a business – it is a sale of the business to a management team. However, in most cases, you as a group of managers will not have the funds to buy the business and will require assistance from banks, private equity and the vendor.

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The mention of private equity often scares people off, but it covers a whole range of investor types, and is often mis-represented in the media. Private equity is often synonymous with taking advantage of distressed companies, or with highly leveraged buy outs. But there is another side.