Despite the continuing pessimistic outlook on the global and national economy, there is cause for optimism, albeit guarded, in the corporate finance market in Northern Ireland. This can be attributed to a number of factors, two of which are that a large number of subsidiaries of multinationals have been taken over by local management by way of management buy-outs (MBOs) and the large majority of businesses in Northern Ireland are owner-managed and not subject to the fortunes of the stock exchange.
A good example of this is the recent MBO of Fujitsu’s Irish Telecoms Engineering Division by locally owned Asidua. Another recent high profile MBO was the £111.4m MBO of Open + Direct’s financial services and retail credit businesses from Viridian. Is this type of transaction set to become the norm?
