UK PtPs ill fated in Q1

Latest research from the Centre for Management Buy-Out Research (CMBOR) based at the University of Nottingham in the UK shows the UK buyout market hasn’t got off to a great start this year, despite the wall of money available to invest. CMBOR puts this down to the dramatic decline in public-to-private deals in Q1 this year. Just £3.1bn worth of buyouts were concluded in the UK during Q1 and only four public-to-private transactions worth a combined total of £485m (and £404m of that coming from one deal alone, the take private of Peacock Group) were recorded.

Tom Lamb, co-head of private equity at Barclays Private Equity, which co-sponsors CMBOR alongside Deloitte, said: “Considering the column inches that have been given over to speculation about private equity bids for public companies, it’s astonishing that public-to-privates seem to have dried up?. It seems that private equity houses are having their bids rejected out of hand by shareholders in the hope that a bigger offer will be made, something that so far the private equity firms have been baulking at.”