Corporate finance

Andy: The corporate finance team at PKF Francis Clark has got over 50 people in it now, and we have continued to grow across a range of sectors and a range of specialisms. So whilst the current year has been challenging, we’ve continued to grow the team in terms of the people we’ve got and the range of transactions we’ve worked on.

So in terms of staffing, we’ve recruited across all grades in the current year, we’ve taken people from big four, from mid-tier, but it’s been fantastic news that we’ve had three internal promotions, to partnership across a range of specialisms in terms of our due diligence, transaction support and in terms of our M&A.

I think one of the differentiators we have as a team here is that the individuals really care about what they do. They like building a great relationship with the clients and helping them to achieve what they’re really wanting to do.

That’s a very different approach to people who just see it as a job and as a result of that, the relationship we build with our clients often results in not just one transaction, but if we’ve been involved in assisting them, they recommend us to others or if they’re undertaking something else again, we have a great repeat track record.

Matt: There’s been quite a few standout transactions and outcomes for clients this year, but I think there’s one that stands out in my mind, and that was where a client had been approached by a private equity group and they’d had an indicative offer on the table.

We got involved, looked at the business’s underlying performance, and it was a growing business so we could project out the increase in performance and profitability and really demonstrate to the buyer that it was worth more than their offer, and we were able to negotiate the deal up by about 50%. So huge added value to a client from our involvement.

Nick: So corporate finance market is quite exciting at the moment, it has been a challenging market, but actually what does that mean? There’s a lot of latent transactions. There’s a lot of shareholders and business owners that are interested in looking at transactions and opportunities. There’s sort of a lot of activity in the market, a lot of funding available, big shifts in terms of the private equity involvement in the market.

We’re seeing that continually grow and then obviously technology coming into unlocking sort of how we’re working with businesses, how we’re finding buyers. People you know, being able to demonstrate more in terms of data is sort of making the market shift and the dynamics within that are changing.

Paul: There’s so many more options for clients to unlock wealth or investment. And so our sort of toolset has to be much bigger. And as a result, we’ve got more people around us with specialisms. And being able to unlock that for our clients is really exciting.

Andy: And that’s why I’m very grateful for the team’s expertise, the advice we’ve given to clients, making this the fifth year in a row that we’ve had a record performance.