SAF wins deal of the year award
A deal financed by Yorkshire & NE Specialist & Acquisition Finance (SAF) won “Deal of the Year” at the 2008 Insider South Yorkshire Dealmakers Dinner.
Yorkshire Bank backed the £56m management buy out of ESS Steel Holdings; a specialist engineering company manufacturing components for the oil and gas sector, which was also a new to bank trading business.
SAF provided £35 million of facilities and Baird invested £12 million equity alongside a management rollover of £9 million.
Kevin Hambling and Robin Womersley of the SAF team led the Bank negotiations where we were in competition with 5 other banks. We therefore needed to convince management and the private equity house that we understood their business and were able to deliver what they required.
Craig Yeoman of Aberdeen SAF was able to provide us with good background information on the oil and gas sector. The connectivity register on Teamroom made it easy to identify those with expertise in this sector.
Sheffield-based Business Partner, Russell Fitzpatrick, was introduced to management as the relationship partner as part of our pitch, and he led the FSC team in the critical opening of accounts, etc.
This success marks yet another deal where the integration of SAF with the FSCs has yielded outstanding results for iFS.