Introduction

Corporate Finance comprises the two disciplines of Lead Advisory and Transactional Support and is heavily supported by the specialist Transactional Tax team. We are widely regarded as the leading Corporate Finance team in the Thames Valley consistently advising on 50+ transactions each year in a variety of sectors.

The department was established on the inception of HMT by Andrew Thomson and Bruce Morrison who have been corporate finance specialists operating in the Thames Valley for 20+ years. As owners of their own business that they have taken from start up, they have a lot of empathy for the people they advise.

In addition to Andrew and Bruce, Andrew Wall is our third Corporate Finance partner having previously led KPMG’s Corporate Finance team in the East Midlands and Peter Barrand and Simon Jordan are both Directors. Peter joined us from PwC where he was a Director advising across a variety of sectors but with a particular focus on Technology, Media and Telecommunications and Simon has been with us since 1997 specialising in Transactional Support.

The key to the consistent quality of our delivery is our top heavy structure with five client facing partners/directors supported by a team of specialists providing real strength in depth.

HMT has consistently enjoyed an extremely strong dealflow in its core £5 million to £50 million transaction size range. Click here for details of recent transactions successfully completed.

Lead Advisory

Whilst some of our clients are experienced in transactions, for many these are areas in which they have little or no expertise. When undertaking a process that will have a crucial bearing on the future of a business, it is essential to have the best advice.

As a result of our wide range of practical experience, we are ideally placed to advise on any of the following areas:

• Start ups/ initial fund raising.

• Management buy-outs and management buy-ins.

• Public to Private transactions.

• Corporate acquisitions including searches and subsequent negotiation and fund raising.

• Funding growth, replacement capital or equity release.

• Shareholder exits such as trade sales, management buy-outs, institutional buy-outs or flotations.

We invest heavily in research and other upfront aspects of any transaction and will often “think outside the box” to ensure that we can originate the optimum transaction for our clients. Indeed, this commitment continues throughout the execution stage with the following principal delivery standards:

• Detailed Negotiation- sufficient partner/director time is committed to each transaction to allow them to undertake rather than oversee detailed negotiations with both principals and funders.

• Information Memorandum-  we ensure that any financial or other information produced by us is robust and that the subsequent due diligence is purely a verification and not a discovery process with key commercial, tax and financial matters identified and appropriately dealt with at an early stage.  

• Completion- we will be highly visible and pro-active throughout the process to include project managing and coordinating all parties rather than just getting involved when things go wrong. We appreciate that management have their “day job” and will seek to minimise the disruption to them from a transaction.  

Transactional Support

In addition to Lead Advisory, HMT has an extremely active Transactional Support team undertaking due diligence work for most of the clearing banks and many venture capitalists and other financial institutions as well as a number of active trade acquirers both in the UK and abroad. Additionally, we have a great deal of experience as reporting accountants in respect of stock exchange compliance and in litigation support roles (including appearing in Court as expert witness) as well as assisting in fraud investigations and share valuations.

The feedback that HMT typically receives on its investigation work is that because of the hands-on involvement of the partners and directors on each assignment, our reports are always thorough and address all the key financial and commercial issues.

In ensuring HMT consistently delivers a quality product, our principal delivery standards are:

• The partner is always heavily involved in the initial scoping exercise, working with you to identify the key risks associated with the transaction and agree the appropriate areas of focus and the timetable.

• HMT always ensures that the assignment is staffed with sufficiently experienced personnel who specialise in the work undertaken. Usually this will mean that a manager is on site throughout the duration of the fieldwork. This ensures that the target company staff are not asked inappropriate questions by inexperienced staff.

• HMT believes in "real time" communication and will immediately notify the client of major issues which might impact the transaction as soon as these are identified, rather than wait until we are due to formally report. You will be briefed on all key aspects of the transaction before we formally report.