Addleshaw Goddard's Manchester-based Private Equity practice has reinforced its reputation as the most active team of dealmakers in the North-West Private Equity community after completing ten deals in as many weeks.
The team acted for a mixture of private equity houses and vendor managers and recent highlights include acting on:
- BGFs investment in Grace Cole
- ECI Partners sale of Citation
- Sale of Enterprise Ventures to Mercia Technologies
- ECI Partners buyout of MPM Products
- LDCs sale of Independent Group
- NorthEdge Capital's buy-out of Direct Healthcare Services
- The refinancing of LDC's investment in Stroma to finance two acquisitions
- Inflexion's buyout of the animal health & crop business of GfK
- ECI Partners in relation to Project Wales
- BGFs investment in Sofology
In recognition of the team's achievements over the last 12 months, it was last month crowned legal advisor of the year at the Private Equity Awards 2016. The industry award, hosted by Real Deals, saw the firm beat off stiff competition to take home the title of legal advisor of 2016 focused on the UK midmarket - and follows on from them winning the equivalent award at the unquote" Private Equity Awards in October.
AGs Corporate practice completed over £5.75bn of M&A, private equity deals, and IPOs during the course of 2015.
Paul Medlicott said: "2015 was a great year for our Manchester corporate team and in particular our private equity team. In a fairly low volume market, we are really pleased to have continued the momentum into 2016, with a role on almost all of the market's key transactions. The PE Houses and Banks are showing plenty of enthusiasm with good terms available for sellers with strong assets, bucking a soft market created by uncertainty around Brexit and low interest rates. Manchester continues to thrive – as does the community around it – as evidenced by new entrants such as Foresight, new funds being raised by many houses and the recruitment of additional talent by many of the houses. We expect to see a number of significant deals continuing to come to fruition this year which is not only positive for our pipeline but also for the local market more generally."
