Financial performance at the top 100 Companies shows a generally positive trend and I would expect to see this translated into a growing confidence. In my experience, business confidence generally leads to positive and decisive actions to try and secure future success.
Click here to view the 2016 Top 100.
A review of this year’s major events involving the Top 100 supports this view, with a number of companies making big decisions with the aim of securing future growth.
The most notable sign of growing confidence is the number of businesses on the list who have been involved in acquisitions. This demonstrates a willingness to invest and take a calculated risk in order to achieve future objectives, and this has certainly been the case with SIG, Servelec and Benchmark who have all made numerous recent acquisitions. Other companies in the top 100 have also invested significant amounts in expanding their activities, with the likes of NFT investing £25m in a logistics corridor and Reticel and M J Gleeson opening significant new facilities.
Other companies on the list have taken advantage of the more positive funding environment to raise finance for their future plans. Significant recent demonstrations of this would be the £73m refinancing of Arnold Laver by HSBC and the £50m funding package provided by Lloyds Bank to Strata homes.
These themes certainly reflect my own experience in the corporate finance market. We are busier than ever helping an increasingly upbeat Shorts’ client base as they make the positive choices to achieve their objectives. These projects include securing development capital from banks and private equity providers, completing strategic acquisitions or assisting owners in selling their company to trade acquirers, private equity investors or management teams.
We are experiencing a buoyant local mergers and acquisitions market and recent research shows that this is also reflected in the UK as a whole, with the number of deals between £500k and £10m in 2015 12% higher than in the previous year. Our recent experience gives us confidence that this is set to continue with current activity levels exceptionally high. With this in mind it will be interesting to see what further big decisions the Top 100 make over the coming year.
Tags: Corporate Finance
