Hickton Consultants Limited (“Hickton”), a market-leading provider of Clerks of Works services to the construction sector was sold to Chelverton Asset Management (“Chelverton”), a boutique asset management business with a specialist focus on investing in sub-FTSE 100 equities and unquoted SMEs.
Hickton provides Clerks of Works services to the construction sector; performing a Quality Assurance role on more complex and high value projects, on behalf of Project Management firms, Architects, Contractors and end user clients throughout the UK.
“We are extremely pleased to have advised the shareholders of Hickton on this transaction, which required close co-ordination between investor, management, shareholders and the various professional advisors involved throughout the process. We are confident Tony Mobbs will continue growing the business successfully and wish both Tony Hickton and Peter Newton well in their retirement.”
The company’s shareholders, Tony Hickton and Peter Newton, appointed Strategic Corporate Finance to find a buyer for the business in order to facilitate their retirement.
“Strategic did a tremendous job and took a lot of stress out of the process. The whole team were professional, efficient and proactive throughout.”
Strategic Corporate Finance carried out detailed research to identify potential buyers for the buyers and marketing the business for sale, resulting in the sale to Chelverton Asset Management, a specialist investor in both quoted and unquoted UK small companies, was identified. Hickton’s Managing Director, Tony Mobbs, invested as part of the deal, with other funding from Chelverton’s “Investor Club” and from Yorkshire Bank.
“Andrew, Greg and Marianne split the work between them and were always available to help. They rationalised our plethora of documents, spreadsheets and business plans into succinct information and nothing was too much trouble for them to help finalise negotiations.”