News - Midlands
Dealmakers 2004
COMMUNITY SPIRIT
As you would hope and expect, even more thought than usual goes into the front cover of our annual Dealmakers issue. In recent years - in fact probably every year since this magazine was founded - it has depicted the winner of our overall Dealmaker of the Year title. As such, I hope you'll excuse us for swaying from convention this time around.
However, I'm sure you'll agree that the deviation is justified. In fact, in so many ways the Baugur deals and the role that Midlands advisers played in making them happen - which we explore in depth in our cover story on the following page - are an absolutely perfect example of how the Midlands corporate finance community has changed in recent years.
As we all know, the market has been a tough one in recent times. As such our top advisory firms have had to shape up or suffer the consequences. They've also had to look further and further afield to source deals - not just in the UK but on the continent too.
This is a strength not a weakness. The Midlands market - by which I mean deals involving Midlands businesses - has only a natural number of deals that it can pump out each year. As such our advisers have been forced to broaden their horizons, and rightly so.
And I don't just mean the Big Four in accountancy or the big Scottish banks here. Smaller corporate finance boutiques or VCs have to take an equally broader view on things too.
All of which makes our annual Dealmakers review that much harder to put together each year. For instance, do we limit ourselves just to covering deals involving Midlands businesses? Well, given that we are distributed to thousands of Midlands businesses it is only right that our focus should remain more weighted towards such deals.
But those businesses themselves will trade across the globe and are just as interested in links that are increasingly being developed between Midlands-based advisers and corporates across the world. As such, we should also explore those deals that are being driven by advisers in this region, even if the business itself is based elsewhere.
So, going back to Baugur, you couldn't have a better example. Quite why an acquisitive Icelandic investor, which has taken the High Street by storm over the past 12 months with a string of high value deals, is using Birmingham advisers rather than the City is a very, very good question.
As Mike Yiannis, this year's Young Dealmaker of the Year, tells our round table discussion on page 82, these ought to be London deals. But they're not. Why? Because the level of expertise here in Birmingham is just as good. Sure, the city doesn't charge London rates, but that will always be secondary to a good professional service.
The deals with our Icelandic friends are also testament to the wider Midlands corporate finance community. As Gunnar Sigurdsson, Baugur's chief financial officer, tells us overleaf, a big reason why he keeps using the Midlands is that all the advisers know each other so well. They can act quick when they need to do so - and my word they've had to act quick with Baugur.
All of which comes back to one word - community. The Midlands dealmaking community is arguably the strongest and most close-knit in the country and long may it continue to be so. And these next 40 pages are all about celebrating that community's achievements. I hope you enjoy the read.
How the votes were cast
To the uninitiated Dealmakers is all about corporate financiers judging which of their peers should be crowned top lawyer, banker, VC and accountant over the year, as well as voting for the top teams. This year we made a significant change to the voting process in that instead of giving every corporate financier a voting form, we gave every professional services firm in the region one form and charged the senior partner with coming to a collective decision among his corporate partners as to who should win each category. Firms were not allowed to vote in their own categories.
After reviewing this year's winners Insider strongly believes that the shortlist for each category is an excellent reflection of who has been busy over the past year.
Our other major change this year was to introduce a "Deal of the Year" award covering the whole Midlands region. The community had been pushing for us to introduce this award for some time and we were delighted to oblige.
For the fuller picture,
subscribe to Insider
every month.
As you would hope and expect, even more thought than usual goes into the front cover of our annual Dealmakers issue. In recent years - in fact probably every year since this magazine was founded - it has depicted the winner of our overall Dealmaker of the Year title. As such, I hope you'll excuse us for swaying from convention this time around.
However, I'm sure you'll agree that the deviation is justified. In fact, in so many ways the Baugur deals and the role that Midlands advisers played in making them happen - which we explore in depth in our cover story on the following page - are an absolutely perfect example of how the Midlands corporate finance community has changed in recent years.
As we all know, the market has been a tough one in recent times. As such our top advisory firms have had to shape up or suffer the consequences. They've also had to look further and further afield to source deals - not just in the UK but on the continent too.
This is a strength not a weakness. The Midlands market - by which I mean deals involving Midlands businesses - has only a natural number of deals that it can pump out each year. As such our advisers have been forced to broaden their horizons, and rightly so.
And I don't just mean the Big Four in accountancy or the big Scottish banks here. Smaller corporate finance boutiques or VCs have to take an equally broader view on things too.
All of which makes our annual Dealmakers review that much harder to put together each year. For instance, do we limit ourselves just to covering deals involving Midlands businesses? Well, given that we are distributed to thousands of Midlands businesses it is only right that our focus should remain more weighted towards such deals.
But those businesses themselves will trade across the globe and are just as interested in links that are increasingly being developed between Midlands-based advisers and corporates across the world. As such, we should also explore those deals that are being driven by advisers in this region, even if the business itself is based elsewhere.
So, going back to Baugur, you couldn't have a better example. Quite why an acquisitive Icelandic investor, which has taken the High Street by storm over the past 12 months with a string of high value deals, is using Birmingham advisers rather than the City is a very, very good question.
As Mike Yiannis, this year's Young Dealmaker of the Year, tells our round table discussion on page 82, these ought to be London deals. But they're not. Why? Because the level of expertise here in Birmingham is just as good. Sure, the city doesn't charge London rates, but that will always be secondary to a good professional service.
The deals with our Icelandic friends are also testament to the wider Midlands corporate finance community. As Gunnar Sigurdsson, Baugur's chief financial officer, tells us overleaf, a big reason why he keeps using the Midlands is that all the advisers know each other so well. They can act quick when they need to do so - and my word they've had to act quick with Baugur.
All of which comes back to one word - community. The Midlands dealmaking community is arguably the strongest and most close-knit in the country and long may it continue to be so. And these next 40 pages are all about celebrating that community's achievements. I hope you enjoy the read.
How the votes were cast
To the uninitiated Dealmakers is all about corporate financiers judging which of their peers should be crowned top lawyer, banker, VC and accountant over the year, as well as voting for the top teams. This year we made a significant change to the voting process in that instead of giving every corporate financier a voting form, we gave every professional services firm in the region one form and charged the senior partner with coming to a collective decision among his corporate partners as to who should win each category. Firms were not allowed to vote in their own categories.
After reviewing this year's winners Insider strongly believes that the shortlist for each category is an excellent reflection of who has been busy over the past year.
Our other major change this year was to introduce a "Deal of the Year" award covering the whole Midlands region. The community had been pushing for us to introduce this award for some time and we were delighted to oblige.
For the fuller picture,
subscribe to Insider
every month.