Howes Percival completes £477m worth of corporate deals

19th November, 2021

Howes Percival’s rapidly growing corporate, commercial, and banking (CCB) team completed in excess of 80 deals in the first three quarters of the year, with a combined value of £477 million.

Howes Percival’s CCB practice advises clients on significant and transformational acquisitions and disposals and the full range of contractual matters. It also provides a dedicated banking and finance service to banks, financial institutions, funds, and other lenders.

With the aspiration to be the ‘go-to’ firm for corporate, commercial, and banking work in the Central and Eastern region, Howes Percival recently restructured and invested heavily in its CCB team.

The restructure created three dedicated service lines to enable the firm to expand its offering and provide a more specialist service to clients. The firm has also made a series of high-profile appointments and expanded the team by 50 per cent, to over 30 fee earners. The most recent being the recruitment of Paula Dumbill as senior partner and head of commercial, and the appointment of senior associates Danielle Chetwynd and Jeremy Hyde.

The team now has the depth and breadth of experience to handle some of the most complex and high-profile deals in the area. Since the beginning of 2021, Howes Percival’s CCB team have advised on a substantial pipeline of M&A, financing and restructuring transactions for owner-managed businesses, including:

Advising on the management buyout of Falcon Tower Crane Services Limited and Tower Crane Asset Management Holding Limited from the founding shareholders.
Advising on the sale of Corby based foam conversion business Technical Foam Services to the Vita Group.
Howes Percival played a key role in the sale of Eurokey Recycling Group, a UK and internationally accredited recycling company, to the private equity backed buyer, Reconomy Group.
Acting for the shareholders of Drayton Insurance Services in the sale of the company to the Hugh J Boswell Group (part of the Ethos/Ardonagh Group).

Andy Harris, partner and head of Howes Percival’s CCB team, commented,

“We’re emerging from an enforced period of hiatus. Businesses that have been resilient to Covid - in the sense that they may have taken a dip but can demonstrate that demand will return - are still commanding decent prices. Sophisticated purchasers have been able to see beyond the pandemic. So long as the target business isn’t in a sector that has suffered more than most, for example the hospitality sector, companies that were previously robust have often remained so.

“At the same time, there are business owners in their 50s and 60s who were starting to think about an exit before last March and continue to do so. They will still come out with a healthy nest egg, and having trodden water for 18 months, that’s preferable to finding renewed drive and determination for what may only be marginally increased returns. Mixed with this, you have pent-up demand from buyers and private equity, and challenger banks who are stepping in to fill the funding gaps perhaps left by some of the more traditional funders.”

In April 2021, Howes Percival was named Corporate Law Firm of the Year in Insider Media’s Central & East Dealmakers Awards 2020. The firm was also shortlisted for two deals in the ‘Deal of the Year (above £10m)’ category and for another two deals in the ‘Deal of the Year (below £10m)’ category.

For more information on Howes Percival’s corporate advisory service visit: https://www.howespercival.com/services/corporate/

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