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CRAIN’S LIST Corporate Finance Deals Q3 - 2009 Page 14 STARTS ON PAGE 13 Banking & Finance Private equity ‘on the way back’ CRAIN’S MANCHESTER BUSINESS VOL. 2, ISSUE 42, OCTOBER 19 - 23, 2009 CrainsManchesterBusiness.co.uk £2 What’s News ■ Manchester City Council has rejected suggestions by the Government that local authorityowned airports such as Manchester could be sold off to raise cash to help pay down the country’s debt. Business secretary Lord Mandelson said on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme last Monday that some airports “could and should” be sold to realise asset values. Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester City Council, said the government could not force a sale. “We believe it would make no financial sense to sell off Manchester Airport Group,” he said. “It provides the ten local authorities in Greater Manchester with a good income and to dispose of it would take that away, forcing us to cut services.” A Treasury spokesman said decisions on the sale of council owned-assets rested solely with local authorities. ■ The new owner of Altrinchambased IFA network Bankhall Investment Management has confirmed that job cuts are likely as a result of plans to merge it with competitor Sesame. The firm was sold by former parent Old Mutual on Friday to Friends Provident for £11.3m. It already owns rival IFA network Sesame, whose executive chairman Ivan Martin said that the rationale for the deal was that “synergies can be achieved”. Bankhall employs around 230 people. ■ Bury-based Brackenhouse Properties has submitted a planning application for a nine-acre housing development on Chester Road in Macclesfield, advised by Manchester-based HOW Planning. Eighty-seven new homes will be built on the land previously occupied by the Territorial Army. The former TA centre has been demolished to make way for redevelopment. The site will include a combination of traditional family homes and apartments. The application also includes plans for a new traffic controlled junction off Chester Road into the proposed development along with new public access routes. ■ Downing Corporate Finance has provided £6.6m to three multiple lessees to buy freeholds from Punch Taverns. Downing provided £4.2m to allow Antic, the operator of 12 pubs led by Anthony Thomas, to buy three Punch freeholds it leased. The finance house also provided £1.5m to allow Pub People Company, led by Kevin Sammoms, to buy two Punch pubs it leased. Downing also provided £900,000 to allow Hoi Polloi Pub Company, owned by Peter Dalton, to buy The Horse and Jockey in Chorlton Green, South Manchester from Punch Taverns, which it began leasing in December 2008. ■ A Hong Kong-born chef is set to Wilson in talks to double size of Klarius Exhaust manufacturer is negotiating another deal to build on Arvin Meritor purchase BY MICHAEL FAHY Cheshire entrepreneur Tony Wilson is on the verge of another deal to expand car exhaust manufacturer Klarius Group He has entered into exclusive negotiations with another manufacturer in the same field and the deal, if it comes off, will “more than double” the size of the company. Two years ago he bought the European after-market installation arm of US-based Arvin Meritor in a deal which is believed to have cost him a knock-down £12m. Wilson, from Tarporley, said that he expects the deal, which is for another manufacturer in the automotive sector, to complete within the next two months, but declined to give any further details about the target. The Klarius Group chairman said the Arvin business had been transformed since he bought it. A French manufacturing plant that employed more than 300 people has been closed down, operations in Italy have been overhauled and more than 100 staff have been added in the UK. As a result, it is a much more streamlined business, with a quoted turnover of £250m at the time of the takeover shrinking to nearer £100m – for which its UK arm is now responsible for around £60m. Wilson said it was now more profitable and had beaten profit forecasts for the past three quarters: “When we took over, we relied on volumes but we’re now specialists in short-line orders. It produced 16 new part numbers in the whole of 2006. We now produce 150 new parts a month. The minimum batch size we produce on a single order run has reduced from 200 to 20.” Wilson said that the firm has used lean manufacturing techniques, introduced by managing director Andrew Jones, to deliver the changes. It now produces exhausts for 97 per cent of the European market, which John Bickley with one of his personalised cards SEE KLARIUS, PAGE 18 New city-based bank ‘could do well’ - rival BY MICHAEL FAHY Plans to create a ‘new’ Williams & Glyn’s Bank could benefit from a wave of support from firms who are disillusioned with their current providers, according to the chief executive of Manchester bank Whiteaway Laidlaw. Speculation has mounted in recent weeks that Royal Bank of Scotland is going to revive the Williams & Glyn’s brand and sell off 312 of its branches in England and Wales in order to comply with European Union rules on state aid. Both RBS and Lloyds Banking Group are expected to be told to sell off assets, with the EU likely to dictate that Royal Bank of Scotland should divest itself of 10 per cent of its current base of smaller businesses. Williams & Glyn’s was a Manchester-based bank taken over by Royal Bank of Scotland when it was looking to grow market share in England. The bank operated under its own name until 1985, when it was subsumed under the RBS brand. Bruce Tyler, managing director of Whiteaway Laidlaw, which is owned by Manchester Building Society, said that a newly-independent bank could benefit from smaller firms who have experienced a rough ride from their own financiers in recent months. “I think it could do well. By the time it might be setting up in 12-24 months there will be a lot of businesses that are in a better financial position who are ready to vote with their feet,” he said. FUTURE FACE OF PHOTO: MARTIN O’NEILL/STUDIOFIVEFOUR.COM GREETINGS BY SIMON BINNS T SEE WHAT’S NEWS, PAGE 2 he co-founders of a personalised greetings card business almost sold their technology to competitors Moonpig. But John Bickley and Alan Oliver decided the seven years spent developing the system meant they should start their own web-based business instead. They have set up Daresbury-based Whamoosh!, which uses a face personalisation platform developed and patented by another of Bickley’s companies, FaceTec Ltd, a spin-out from the University of Manchester. The software imports users’ photographs into the firm’s online card designs. “We nearly did a deal that would have licensed it to Moonpig,” said Bickley. “We’ve been looking for the right commercial solution for the platform since we started to develop it in 2002. We met a few other online card companies to discuss licensing from 2006 onwards, but eventually we decided to do it ourselves.” Bickley and Oliver have set a turnover target of £20m within four years for Spotlight Greetings Ltd, the company behind Whamoosh!. Bickley said this was “conservative” given the potential of a relatively SEE BANK, PAGE 18 SEE GREETINGS, PAGE 18 Leading Page 3 CHOWDERY PUTS IN BID TO BUY BACK THE GRAFTONS http://CrainsManchesterBusiness.co.uk

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