New Leeds office to open for Newcastle's Cavu Corporate Finance

Stephen Moore, the former Rothschild and PwC dealmaker, is opening a Leeds office for Cavu Corporate Finance.

Stephen has joined Shawn Bone, a North East dealmaker who founded Cavu in Newcastle in 2013. He has established the independent advisory firm as a provider of corporate finance advice.

Cavu advises mid-market corporates on disposals, acquisitions, debt and equity finance raising and provides strategic counsel to retained clients. It also supports smaller high-growth businesses with potential to access the early stage equity markets.

Moore spent more than a decade at Rothschild, the family-owned investment bank, and joined PwC as partner in 2015 to lead its corporate finance practice in Yorkshire.

He said: “Cavu is a term used in aviation and naval circles for ‘Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited’, which means an unrestricted horizon and perfect visibility with no boundaries.

“It sums up our approach to corporate finance. It can be difficult for owners of companies to get truly independent advice when dealing with multi-disciplinary firms offering corporate finance, but also trying to cross-sell audit, tax, diligence…

“Cavu fills an important gap in the market by providing robust and objective advice to companies needing access to private equity and mergers and acquisitions markets, with none of these conflicts.”

Stephen is now recruiting for a core team for the Leeds office in Queen Street, while Shawn will continue to lead the Newcastle office. Cavu is chaired by David Wilkinson, a former senior partner at Deloitte.

Mr Bone said: “Stephen has an excellent reputation in corporate Yorkshire and we are delighted that he is expanding Cavu’s offering and geographical footprint to help private companies, shareholders, management teams and private equity investors with his proven expertise and extensive funding networks.

“The Leeds business has already got off to a flying start, advising 25sevenIT on its exit to a Horizon Capital portfolio business and the management buy-in of CoolCare Ltd from LNT Group.

“Out of Newcastle, we have advised on some of the most significant deals in the North East region, including the Elysian Capital investment in Fastflow, the Synova Capital investment into Fairstone and the LDC investment into Patrick Parsons.

“The pipeline is looking strong right across the regions with more deal completions expected in January and these are exciting times for Cavu.”