£21M MBO FOR WEST’S GLOBAL PIONEERS IN SPECIALITY LABORATORY PRODUCTS
December 2006

West’s top MBO advisers back their own advice in Bristol’s fast-growth science business

Having become the West’s top advisers on successful management buyouts (MBOs) in their first year of operation, Momentum Corporate Finance has begun its second year with the completion of a £21 million MBO for Tocris Cookson Limited – the Bristol based global leaders in specialist laboratory reagents.

Founded in 1982, Tocris has customers worldwide and the Company's catalogue of over 1,500 products is sent to more than 50,000 scientists annually.

A winner of the Queen’s Award for Export, Tocris has recently been short-listed for global chemistry awards.

The MBO was led by Tocris Managing Director, Laurence Ede, and Finance Director, Andrew Birnie, with other members of the company’s management team also taking an equity stake.

MD, Laurence Ede, said: “Tocris has a leadership position in our field and by transferring ownership from our founding investors to our front-line management team, we look forward to investing further in that leadership and growth”.

Lead advisers for the MBO were Momentum Corporate Finance in Bristol, whose partners, Tony Kenny and Rob Crews, backed their own advice by investing in the purchase of the company from its former owners – a consortium of individual shareholders.

Legal advisers to the management team were Bristol based Burges Salmon with a team led by Rupert Weston. The vendors were advised by Grant Thornton corporate finance with a team led by Adrian Smith and Paul Oldham and lawyers Osborne Clarke with a team led by David Ferris

According to Momentum’s founding partner, Tony Kenny: “Tocris is a superb business which is now owned by the managers who have made it such a world leader. We were delighted to be able to back our judgement of this MBO by investing our own money to become minority shareholders”.

The MBO leaders, Laurence Ede and Andrew Birnie, were members of the former shareholder-consortium, and chose to invest their proceeds from the sale in the MBO purchase.

Momentum partner Rob Crews commented “This significant investment by the management team demonstrates their confidence in the business. It also meant that all external funding was able to be provided by bankers the Royal Bank of Scotland plc”.

Nick Evans led the deal for Royal Bank of Scotland in Bristol.

Tocris employs some 30 people at their Bristol offices and production facilities, and has an office in the USA.

The Tocris transaction is the latest in a series of top-level MBOs arranged by Momentum Corporate Finance, which has made them the leading MBO specialists in the South West.

Momentum’s other recent MBOs include Integral, the UK’s leading independent building maintenance specialists, Hall & Kay, the UK’s number two installer of fire sprinkler products and Origin Publishing, purchased from the BBC.