Rewarding deals...and the most important deal of all
This summer's Rainmaker Awards series started in Leeds last night with a reminder that there are trade-offs and compromises for everyone involved in a deal
Hello Rainmakers,
The first of our 2025 Rainmaker Awards took place last night in Leeds, celebrating the best deals - and the teams and individuals behind them - of the past year.
We’ll be in Manchester in a fortnight, and Birmingham two weeks after that, to recognise the achievements of our Rainmakers communities in those regions too.
But our Rainmaker of the Year, Squire Patton Boggs’ European head of private equity Paul Mann, mentioned on stage a deal that often gets overlooked and certainly never makes the awards shortlists.
“I’ve a wife and two young kids at home and they are really important to what I do,” he said. “My boy had a cricket match tonight and took three wickets, so it has been a pretty good evening all round.”
The awards are a celebration of the successes of the last 12 months, but they’re also a small part of an answer to the question of whether the exhausting schedules, the ruined weekends and the disrupted holidays are worth it.
Two conversations in the last week bear this out.
One partner, out in the Mediterranean sunshine on a half-term holiday with his family, cheerfully said: “It’s still a full working week, but it’s a much nicer place to work from.”
Then there is the rising star trying to make partner in two different ways. She told me: “It’s really difficult to schedule the next date when I don’t know when this deal is going to close.”
Yet they both love what they do: the fun of the dance, the thrill of the deal, the sense of achievement.
And as the Yorkshire Rainmakers host, comedian Jo Caulfield, said, as she was mimicking one corporate finance firm’s partner quotes on its website: “oh, I’m sure it is very rewarding…”
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This week’s Rainmakers articles for our subscribers:
In an exclusive interview, TheBusinessDesk.com spoke to Lucy Stapleton, Global and UK deals leader and Simon White, deals partner at PwC to provide an in-depth analysis of the current M&A environment across the UK and Europe, the impact of geopolitical and economic events, private equity dynamics, sector-specific trends and the transformative role of AI in dealmaking.
There are lots of different ways to extract value from a complex buy and build. We took a look at the deal by outsourcing giant Mitie to buy its smaller rival Marlowe for £366m, as it looks to fire and security expertise to its range of key sector specialisms.
Known for crafting campaigns for big retail names like Holland & Barrett, Pets at Home, and DFS, True Story is now part of an international crew spanning the UK, Europe, Asia, and the US.
With this move, Ride Shotgun’s headcount hits 190 worldwide, and revenues rocket past £18m.
True Story founder Jayne Mayled said the agency is thrilled to join a team with “global reach” and shared values, calling it “an exciting future for our team” and a chance to “bring even more value to our clients.”
Ride Shotgun, armed with a toolkit covering everything from CGI and immersive content to PR and social media, counts Amazon, HSBC, and Diageo among its clients.
Now, with True Story in the sidecar, the agency says it's set to deliver “more impactful customer experiences” across more channels.
This isn’t just a new chapter, it’s a brand new storyline.
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Worcestershire egg business with over six decades of shelling out success has been snapped up in a deal that could just be eggs-traordinary.
Bumble Hole Eggs, the Bromsgrove-based family-run firm, has been snapped up by Netherlands-based Hardeman Egg Group (HEG), in a move that sees the yolk of UK egg supply shift further into European hands.
Founded in 1961 by David Hewston and kept in the family ever since, Bumble Hole is now entering a new hatch-apter under HEG’s wing.
The acquisition is part of HEG’s plan to lay roots in the UK market, scrambling for a bigger share of demand for both local and EU-sourced egg products.
The deal was sunny side up all around, with legal advice provided by HCR Law and financial guidance from Ballards LLP.
Bumble Hole Eggs' future now looks anything but scrambled.
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It seems you can't keep a good brand down, even when the company that brand was attached to no longer exists. The identity of an East Yorkshire leisure home manufacturer which was wound up earlier this year with the loss of 180 jobs has been reanimated, thanks to a family-owned group of companies - Hull-based Rix Group.
The group revealed this week that it had acquired the intellectual property of Atlas Leisure Homes which traded from 1973 to March of this year. Rix Group, which itself dates back to 1873, says its move will enable it to further unlock the UK home dealer network. It obviously has real reverence for the Atlas Leisure Homes brand, describing it as a "household name" in this industry.
James Doyle, MD of Rix Group, says: "The brand has a huge number of faithful followers, many of whom are intergenerational, choosing Atlas due to the fond memories they have of holidaying in an Atlas leisure home with their parents or grandparents. Because of this, we wanted to bring the brand back to life and align the quality to that of our other brands - Victory Leisure Homes and Prestige."
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