Busy year for Addleshaw Goddard’s Manchester team as M&A deals exceed £2.1bn

Law firm Addleshaw Goddard’s Manchester-based corporate team has reported high activity levels during Q2 in what it called a “very busy” first half of 2017.

After advising on £1.5bn of deals during Q1 of the current financial year, the company said its Manchester corporate team has advised on 18 transactions at a total value of over £677m in the second quarter so far.

Five of the Q2 deals were transacted in a space of three days earlier this month.

Among the deals were retailer B&M’s £152m acquisition of Heron Foods; Phoenix Private Equity’s £208m sale of Key Retirement Group; the sale of comic writer Mark Millar’s business to streaming giant Netflix; investor Foresight’s £3.45m backing of Indian dining brand Mowgli Street Food; and investment banks Zeus Capital and Jefferies International’s £130m fundraising for e-commerce company boohoo.com and its shareholders.

Addleshaw Goddard also advised molecular diagnostics group Premaitha Health plc on the $5m (£3.9m) extension of its investment agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific; Endless on the buyout of luggage company Antler from private equity firm LDC; and LDC on its £24.7m exit from The Creative Engagement Group.

Roger Hart, Addleshaw Goddard partner, said: “We’ve had a very busy first half of 2017, which is especially pleasing given some of the economic and political issues which have impacted levels of M&A activity recently.

“We’ve worked hard across both private equity and mainstream M&A, with only ECM activity continuing to be relatively subdued, although we’ve seen that change in the last few weeks with several IPOs and fundraisings coming on stream.”

He added: “Our pipeline across the board is fantastic.”