A friend of mine Evert Bopp is pulling together a team and equipment to help re-establish communications in Haiti.
If you know anyone that can help here is the list of equipment that they need:
http://haiti-connect.org/what-do-we-need/
Please pass this on to anyone who you think may be able to help or may know anyone that can help.
Thank you.
H2O Car Valeting has recieved a £5 Million Loan backed by the SBLGS see more here
http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/birmingham-business-news/automotive-business/2009/12/31/car-valeting-group-making-a-tidy-future-65233-25499988/
The M&A Rainmaker has been made aware that Government backed funding and loans are available to small and medium sized businesses in the Birmingham and West Midlands area.
Discussions with experienced and long established Birmingham based consultancy Genesis Consulting have revealed a particular interest in supporting High Technology ( ICT and Advanced Manufacturing ) companies.
Typical companies might be small ICT start-up teams or ICT companies with a product and intellectual property who need assistance in developing and selling thier products and services.
Other examples might be established Engineering companies of around £1 Million turnover who are seeking to take thier business to the next level.
For further information and an informal discussion contact us here at M&A Rainmaker or give Arun Luther a call at Genesis on 0121 681 6880 and mention M&A Rainmaker.
M&A Rainmaker can provide business strategy, sales and marketing support to complement these loans and grants.
A useful article and reference in Fresh Business Thinking ( which is a great site )
according to
http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/03/top-ten-digital-deals-2010/
This is an interesting review from Icon Corporate Finance of Q2 M&A activity and mentions 365iT as being on the acquisition trail which it is for selected companies that fit the portfolio, such as the acquisition of 5i earlier this year and the very recent acquisition of 7 global.
http://www.iconcorpfin.co.uk/NewsEvents/M&ATechnologyReviewQ22009.pdf
VCR Directory Online is a searchable database of information on 3,000 investors in unquoted businesses across Europe and Israel including business angels, venture capital firms, private equity houses, secondary fund managers and corporate venturers. Go to
https://www.vcrdirectory.co.uk/
for more information.
A few months ago I was at The Comms Business Gala Dinner in London sharing a table with the guys from Fused Group, the Manchester based converged solutions provider, Nortons, the High Tech M & A boutique and Solution 1, a Siemens focussed solutions provider.
Let’s just say that there are some strong personalities at Fused Group !! The guys were having fun and were clearly a very strong and united team. In common with many small to medium sized businesses they were having some “ interesting “ conversations with their bankers and other potential bankers.
Of course around that time some banks staff were running around like headless chickens, half trying to carry out the latest instructions of their failed and bailed out masters – de-risk, de-leverage ?? - and half watching out for their own jobs and alternative places to work. It really depended on which bank you were with as to how much headless chickening you got.
Apparently Fused Group was a financially strong business and a model that was working well so they were looking to expand.
It was great to hear that they secured investment from High Net Worth Individuals ( HNWI’s ) recently enabling them to continue their growth and development.
They have moved into new/larger premises, added demonstration facilities and plan to add departmental management. We will keep in contact with Fused Group and see how they progress in the future.
Banks have never been a great source of funding to the ICT industry – I always think that this stems from an attitude of some bankers thinking that there are no assets to seize if things go wrong. ICT companies are basically people, processes and maybe some Intellectual Property – no really valuable fixed assets like buildings, machinery and equipment.
The current economic crisis has further emphasized that the only people with the balls to invest in ICT companies are, generally speaking, HNWI’s i.e. successful entrepreneurs and not banks.
Banks are not prepared to risk ( unless we are talking about investing is sub prime derivatives which they seem to love !! ) and will therefore not reap any rewards either. It would seem that some banks are destined to become low risk, low growth, money handlers and as such they themselves are not worth investing in !!
I have always been a Chris Evans fan. I loved TFI Friday and pretty well everything else he’s done aswell. It’s funny to think of him on Radio 2 and just about to take over from Terry Wogan though!
Whilst being interviewed on the Jonathan Ross show last night he talked about the time when he borrowed £85 Million to buy Virgin Radio. Probably this deal will be explained in greater detail in his new book.
What caught my attention was the fact that when he was holed up in a room in London, within a taxi ride of all the potential lenders, dressed in a black suit and black polar neck, he had to come up with a business plan and an exit route or strategy for the banks and investors. In essence I guess it was that he would buy Virgin Radio for £85 Million and in 5 years time it would be worth somewhere between £150 Million and £300 Million and he would sell out ( trade sale ) then.
To close the deal the banks asked how much he had – apparently about £2 Million at the time – and that had to go into the pot as the “ junior debt “ to get the £ 85 Million he needed. So, here is a classic case of “ leverage “ using bank funding. £2 Million of Chris’s own money attracted the other £83 Million of bank and other investors money. Within 18 months or so Virgin Radio was bought by SMG for around £220 Million – ahead of plan for the exit and within the range that he predicted – in fact about mid-way between £150 Million and £300 Million. So, he and the banks and investors got their money back – and some !!
Somebody had obviously worked with Chris on the business plan and the financials to back up the strategy which was basically that Chris would take a radio station, add some of that old Chris Evans magic ( Chris had already massively increased listening ratings ), make it worth much more money and then sell it. All within a 5 year timeframe.
Of course whoever bought it probably expected that Chris would stick around for a while. No doubt there was some sort of earn-out and lock-in period. As we know, and Chris admits, he then went
“ off the rails “ a bit and left the purchasers holding the baby.
He then got into a bit of a legal spat with Virgin and SMG and ended up worst off. I think this was also when he started buying Billie Piper Ferrari’s and holed up in Spain !!!
Yesterday I was talking to a business contact of mine who is building a chain of hairdressing salons across the U.K. ( I visited his latest fabulous new salon earlier in the week ). He told me that he only used his bank for some general financial activities – no loan account and no overdraft facility. He managed his business within his available cash and “ was an expert financial juggler “. ( even though it caused a few sleepless nights !! ). Why ??? Because, he said, banks cannot be trusted !! In good times they lent money and in bad times they took it away ( often leading to a crisis for the business ). There was no point building a relationship with your “relationship manager” because when push came to shove the “ credit control department “ ruled ( That faceless, nameless, locationless department ! ).
Having said that I have one relationship manager who is always fighting my corner and is always being told off for what I call his “ Nelsonic attitude “. i.e. He shows initiative and boldness and does not always do things “ the way that they have always been done “ or “ exactly by the rules “. ( It will not be lost on historians amongst us that Nelson did not follow the rules but won major victorys ).
Clearly, one of the reasons why we don’t trust banks in recent times is that some of them clearly forgot all they supposedly knew about “ risk management “, “ appropriate leverage “, “ security “ and “ serviceability “ when they decided to invest in “ derivatives “ of sub-prime loans. Most of them were bailed out of their mistakes by the government using our money. So, nobody pulled the plug on THEM then !!! The inescapable conclusion is that there is one set of rules for their own investments and another set of rules for their “ investment “ in our businesses. To add insult to injury having been bailed out of their multi-billion pound or dollar mistakes they then proceed to try and recover their profits and cash through cancellations of business loans and increasing service charges.
So, going back to my salon friend it is better off not to put yourself in a position where the banks can destroy your business because the likelihood is that they will. The recent “ recession “ is just a very extreme example of what has typically been going on for years – somebody decides to “ re-balance the bank’s loan book “ back in central office somewhere and the relationship manager is the last to hear about it.
Talking to my salon friend reminded me of two things that happened at Voyager. ( Where, by the way, we rarely were at the mercy of the banks ).
Firstly, the reason that we started Voyager’s forerunner, LanSwitch, on our credit cards was that we took our business plan to 3 different banks in Kenilworth ( ok, it’s a long story why Kenilworth !! ) who all said NO !!. Without writing a book on this you need to know that we had negotiated an amazing deal with our main supplier of the time, 3Com. Essentially we did not have to pay them until we got paid by the customer. Since most of our business revolved around 3Com this meant that there were essentially no cashflow issues.
I think that we were asking the banks for something like a £10,000 overdraft facility. Every one of them rejected our request for this facility and they basically did not believe our business plan. ( In hindsight it might not have been a good idea to float an IT company business plan past bank managers who were more used to the car manufacturing industry – which was, of course, dying – and farming !! ).
So we got started ( using our cards ) anyway and like my friend the hair salon man, we just used the bank for basic financial transactions. After a couple of deals won and months we had something like £100K in the bank and a years or so later we had £500K – half a million !!!
Jonny, our Financial Director, called us one day and said that the bank manager had called and asked for a meeting with us. Despite the fact that we had nothing to worry about and they had no control over us we still sort of worried about it. Anyway, when they came over to see us they basically said that the reason that they wanted to meet us was that we had £500K in our bank account, we had gone through a number of their “ business turnover levels “ and they did not know who we were. We just looked at one another and grinned !!
Someone who bought one of my companies has a pretty sanguine approach to banks. Having been given a rough ride over the provision of funding he said that he would put up with banks as long as, at the end of the day, they enabled him to “ leverage “ his money. i.e. if he could get £100K for committing £30-40K that was ok. He accepted all the risks that went with borrowing money from banks for that reason alone.
It is a sad fact that we don’t trust banks anymore or have any confidence in them. This will cost them dear one day as people do not forget this sort of thing. As the Governor of the Bank of England said the other day on the programme “ The Love of Money “, “ The essence of a bank is confidence “. Without confidence and trust in banks what is there ??
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