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Q3 Mergers & Acquisition activity summary – Thames Valley region

Rockworth’s roundup of recent deals across the Thames Valley

November 17, 2021

Q3 2021 was another busy period for M&A activity across the Thames Valley. Rockworth tracked 55 notable deals involving companies in the region between 1st July and 30th September. This included 17 company sales, four Private-Equity buyouts, one debt-funded MBO, 31 acquisitions and two IPOs.

 

Q3 deal types – Thames Valley

35% of deals involved technology companies, including software developers, telecoms specialists and data infrastructure providers.

Tech highlights included:

  • Wireless Logic (based near Maidenhead) continued its international expansion with the acquisition of Milan-based Things Mobile.
  • Halma (Amersham) acquired Ramtech Global, a wireless infrastructure provider based in Nottingham.
  • Pulsant (Maidenhead) was sold to Antin Infrastructure Partners, by former owners Oak Hill Capital and Scottish Equity Partners. 

There has been significant M&A activity in these sectors, partly because of the seismic shift towards doing business online and operating distributed workforces, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. This trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, resulting in high levels of M&A activity well into 2022.

There were four prominent deals within Healthcare and Life Sciences – another sector for which the Thames Valley is well known. Oxford Nanopore Technologies hit the headlines in October with its IPO. The company’s turnover more than doubled in 2020, in part due to its ability to manufacture Covid-19 tests. After its first month as a public company, Oxford Nanapore’s market cap sits at around £4.3 billion.

Amongst smaller deals in the healthcare sector, the sale of Insignia Medical Systems stands out. Based in Basingstoke, Insignia provides software for capturing, storing and communication images from medical scanners. The business was acquired by Intelerad, a Canadian medical imaging business with more than 2,000 customers around the world. 

Business-to-business service providers, including marketing consultancies, financial and professional services firms, accounted for 12 of the 55 tracked deals. Examples include The Marketing Practice’s acquisition of Omobono. Based near Oxford, The Marketing Practice’s combined group now employs 250 people across the UK, US, Germany and Australia.

Find out more

At Rockworth, we specialise in supporting the owners of private companies as they work towards growing and selling their businesses. Our approach is focused on maintaining confidentiality and creating a competitive bid process, designed to maximise sale values and ensure our clients’ businesses are in the right home for the next phase of their development.

If you are thinking of selling your company, either soon or in the coming years, we would love to hear from you. For a confidential conversation, just send us an email or book a short video appointment using the buttons below. 

 

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What our clients say

  • Thank you all for your excellent and urgent support in finalising our deal.  I appreciate that it was all rather late in the process - but you never flinched once. Your ability to get up to speed so quickly and provide great intervention and solid guidance is a credit to your professionalism. I was particularly impressed with your patience in providing expert help at a time when our stress levels were running high.
    Stewart Hollington
    Director, Analytical Services International
  • Time and time again as we went through the process, I was relieved that we had Rockworth at our side. They have excellent contacts and were able to unearth a wide range of suitors for the business.
    Neil Cameron
    Co-founder, CHL Software
  • The relationship we have built with Rockworth over the last five years helped to lay the foundations of a smooth and successful transaction. Selling a company I have built up over the last 20 years comes with some mixed emotions. It has been quite a journey. But I am delighted with the outcome that Rockworth helped to achieve, and I am looking forward to seeing the business continue to thrive under new ownership.
    Dr Donald Gibb
    Founder, The Birth Company
  • Thank you for your hard work and trustworthy advice on this deal - your focus and patience have been incredible. I've been hugely impressed at all stages on how you've guided me through this process, and how you've kept cool heads when it must have been very challenging to do so. Extremely happy to recommend Rockworth.
    Andy Crysell
    Founder & CEO, Crowd DNA
  • Thank you everyone at Rockworth for your guidance, advice and pragmatism during what has been a very quick turnaround. It has been a pleasure.
    Andy Whittard
    Managing Director, Cherwell Laboratories Limited
  • Rockworth provided the support, experience and the technical knowledge that we needed to secure a successful sale.  Lawrence and his colleagues are all high calibre individuals, and I would certainly recommend them.
    Alice Watson
    Founder, Porge Research
  • During the whole process the team at Rockworth was always available to answer questions, no matter how banal, and held our hand throughout. I can honestly say that without the Rockworth calm hand on the tiller I am not sure we would have got through it in such an easy manner.  
    David Bilton
    Director, CadCam Technologies Limited
  • We chose to work with Rockworth on the basis of their approach, networks and reputation. Lawrence and his team provided excellent support throughout the entire sale process and enabled the company to achieve an outstanding result. Whilst there was a great deal of complexity at times, it was managed with great care and my colleagues and I enjoyed working together with the Rockworth team throughout. I would have no hesitation in using Rockworth for future transactions and would recommend them very highly to others.
    Martin Lucas
    MD, Kittiwake Developments Ltd
  • I would like to thank you and the team for the major contribution you made to the sale of Cromptons Healthcare. It turned out to be a very complicated deal and I have to say I was staggered by the commitment and effort that was required from us all. I was impressed by both the professionalism and the support that Rockworth provided, which proved to be absolutely essential to me. I had not fully appreciated beforehand just how necessary that support would be.
    Martin Calhoun
    Owner, Cromptons Healthcare Ltd
  • Lawrence, many thanks to you and the members of the Rockworth team for achieving such a great result. It is the best possible outcome we could have achieved, both for ourselves as shareholders, and for our staff, ensuring not just the continuation of the company but positioning it for further growth. We were very pleasantly surprised at the range of potential acquirers that you introduced us to - we had no idea initially of the types of acquirer that you would manage to find from outside our direct industry.
    David Black
    Managing Director, Young Black IS Ltd
  • Rockworth was the ideal guide and partner in our search for a buyer for our company. Their process, insight and people skills were the perfect antidote for our inexperience and were a major factor in achieving the smooth path to our desired outcome. From the start their approach suited our needs as a privately owned company with limited resources to run the business and undertake a transaction. They were invaluable in helping us understand what was needed and what we might reasonably expect. I cannot recommend them highly enough.
    Tim Champion
    Managing Director, H.Squared Electronics Limited
  • From initial preparatory work and advice through the deal process and to final completion, we found your work to be invaluable. I was particularly impressed with the careful and thorough management of the due diligence process: the consistency and detail-oriented manner in which this work was carried out was much appreciated and ensured that the deal completed smoothly, even accounting for the different languages and countries involved.
    Fabio Antoniazzi
    Founder, La Credenza Ltd
  • As a family-owned business, it was extremely important to us that we had an advisor who took care and paid attention to the detail of our business. Lawrence and his team demonstrated real commitment to the deal, both in researching appropriate potential acquirers and following this through in a diligent and extremely supportive manner. I know that without Lawrence and his team we wouldn’t have achieved the successful outcome that we did.
    Rachel Bush
    Owner, Bush & Company Rehabilitation Ltd

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