Betting tycoon Fred Done has invested an initial £5m into CorpAcq, and is aiming to propel the group into a £1bn turnover business within ten years.
CorpAcq buys standalone owner managed businesses, providing owners with an exit, and is currently turning over around £60m. It currently holds eight investments in businesses in plant hire and building services.
“I want to invest in solid businesses and this is a solid investment. CorpAcq impressed me as they are a very moral company. I liked the ethics of the company - at my time of life I don’t want to be an asset stripper. It’s a long term investment where I believe over a ten to 15 year period we could be talking about a £1bn operation,” he said.
“I visited every business and spoke to every past owner of the businesses they’d bought. The one thing that shone was they were all impressed with the way CorpAcq had dealt with them. They were very fair, had paid a good price, but CorpAcq had invested in the people.
“I invested an initial £5m with them, but I believe that’s not the end of the story. If they can find the right business then it’s an open cheque book. Finance is still difficult, but I have the cash to invest and will pay a fair price for businesses.”
In addition to his investment into the group, Done says he will also invest on a deal by deal basis into individual companies.
“I’ve invested into CorpAcq, but if I want to invest in single companies as well then I can. If they come to me and say we need another £25m then we’ll look at it,” he said.
Orange, now based in New York, told Insider he saw an opportunity with Done’s investment to take the business to faster growth and is currently looking at ten investment opportunities to double the size of CorpAcq.
“Our ambitions were to grow into a £100m valuation for our business. Now with Fred on board our targets have grown to £1bn. The hardest part is the £10m of profit which we’ve achieved this year on £60m turnover," Orange said.
“We had a number of options to take institutional investment, but Fred grasped the scale of the opportunity. He has a reputation as very fair and very shrewd. He has a similar background to our management team, so there’s none of that City snobbery. We’re just down to earth sensible people who want to do good deals.”
CorpAcq seeks to buy into businesses and support existing management. The current portfolio includes Regency Glass, Vista Panels and Glasscraft in the Building Services division. The Plant Hire division includes: Metcalfe, UK Logistics, Filtermech, Mather & Stuart and the most recent investment, Carrylift Group. Operationally, the business is run from Altrincham by managing director Geoff Robinson, legal director Gary Black and finance director David Martin. The building services division is run by Keith Sadler, who brought Vista to CorpAcq.
Orange said: “We don’t have an exit plan. We intend to build a conglomerate of well run businesses and I’d be surprised if we sell anything for a long time. We’re a long term investor.”
He said that while CorpAcq is an alternative to bank funding, it is also complementary. “The banks have had it tough, but we all hope liquidity will return. We always refinance the businesses with equity and bank funding. We’ve retained good relationships with banks even through these tough times.”
Article taken from Insider Media Limited. To view the main article click the link below:
Insider Article 30th November 2010