The international Corporate and Banking team of law firm Hill Dickinson has announced a strong half year performance for the first six months of 2020, having advised on completed deals with an aggregate value of more than £1.1 billion.
The results were achieved despite the challenging market conditions of recent months due to COVID-19 and reflect an intensive period of completed deal activity in 2020 so far, spanning a wide range of sectors, markets and jurisdictions.
Notable highlights included:
Recognition of the firm’s public equity team in the AIM Advisers Rankings Guide August 2020 as a UK top-5 AIM practice (ranked #4) for the number of retained AIM clients the firm advises (34).
Ranked by Experian as second most active H1 adviser in the North West by deal quantum activity and top 10 for deal value.
Successfully advising on over 80 transactions in the period January-June 2020, many of which were completed after the start of the UK’s lockdown period in March. The latter include the first completed IPO (at the time) of a commercial business on any UK stock exchange and one of the largest secondary fundraisings by an AIM company during lockdown.
Continuing to advise the firm’s institutional investor and management team clients on a number of high profile mid-market PE investment deals and buy and build programmes and exits.
Continued expansion to meet client demand. Recent hires have boosted the corporate and banking team to over 70 specialist lawyers across the firm’s offices in Liverpool, Manchester, London and Hong Kong.
In capital markets, significant transactions during the period include advising AIM-listed Johnson Service Group on its £85 million placing through an accelerated book-building process, and advising UK engineering and manufacturing group, Vulcan Industries, on its admission to the AQSE Growth Market and placing. The firm also advised AIM-listed Arc Minerals Ltd on two linked deals: the disposal of Casa Mining to Golden Square Equity Partners for up to USD 50 million; and the disposal of Ortac Resources (UK) to ASX-listed MetalsTech for up to USD 8 million.
In corporate M&A deals included advising longstanding client Stobart Group on its £8.55 million acquisition of Stobart Air and Propius from the administrators of Connect Airways in April; and the sale in May 2020 of the Eddie Stobart and Stobart Group brands to Eddie Stobart Logistics for £10 million, both of which were completed during lockdown.
Hill Dickinson’s Manchester Corporate team also advised the UK’s leading provider of holiday homes, Sykes Holiday Cottages, on its acquisition in January of Pure Cottages Group from private equity investor LDC.
Private equity, venture capital and growth companies transactions were completed across some of the firm’s key specialist areas, including life sciences, esports and gaming, and healthcare. The team advised businessman Jim Mellon of bio-pharma anti-ageing company Juvenescence on his investment in the £3 million Series A funding round raised by psychedelic medicine company Beckley Psytech. It also advised global healthcare communications agency Fishawack Health on its latest MBO backed by Bridgepoint marking the successful exit of LDC and advised private equity firm NorthEdge Capital on the sale of Cubic Motion, a world leader in computer vision and facial animation technology, to Epic Games.
Craig Scott, Hill Dickinson’s national head of corporate, said: "I am delighted to be able to report an excellent performance by our national Corporate team in the first half of 2020. Our teams in Liverpool, London and Manchester all remained very active throughout the lockdown period despite many businesses naturally being forced to re-examine or temporarily pause their plans. That our performance has remained so positive under such challenging conditions for businesses is testament both to the dedication of our people in finding solutions to help support our clients’ ambitions throughout this difficult period and to the continued support and trust placed in us by our clients, for which we are very grateful."
Hill Dickinson has corporate teams based in Liverpool, Manchester, London and Hong Kong.