Mobeus Equity Partners (Mobeus) has backed the management team of West Midlands based Arc Specialist Engineering (Arc) in a buyout of the Group. The investment in Arc is Mobeus's latest and largest from its recently raised institutional fund and its fourth in the 12 months since the fund’s first close.
Arc is Europe’s largest producer of high quality non-stick coated steel for the bakeware industry through its Cooper Coated Coil (CCC) division. In addition, it is the UK market leader in the production of rolled steel products for the fenestration industry through its EWS division.
The buyout of Arc sees Mobeus backing Arc’s management team to lead the Group into the next stage of its development. Arc’s senior management team includes Chief Executive Officer Andy Richardson, Group Finance Director Chris Manamley, CCC’s Managing Director Kevin Tranter and the Managing Director of EWS, Merv Richards. Industry veteran Nick Ward will assume the position of Chairman of Arc on completion. The deal was introduced to Mobeus by Ray Harris of Odyssey Corporate Finance, who represented Management in the transaction.
Richard Babington, the Mobeus Partner who led the transaction said, "We are delighted to be backing an extremely high quality team at Arc. I am incredibly excited about the potential for the Group to develop its market leading positions by continuing to invest in the expansion of its operations."
Freddie Bacon and Dominic Draysey also worked on the transaction for Mobeus, while RBS Invoice Finance provided bank debt for the deal.
Mobeus was advised on the transaction by Gowling WLG LLP (Andy Stylianou, Ragi Singh, Neil Hendron, Navin Prabhakar), Mazars LLP (Julian Clough, Adam Foster), CIL Management Consultants Ltd (Jon Whiteman, Laurence Ludgate), Cadence Advisory LLP (Karl Holmes, John Weedon), BDO LLP (Alistair Kirkbright) and Highwire Consulting Ltd (Annie Gray, Sandra Aldridge).
In addition to Odyssey Corporate Finance, Management were advised on the transaction by Higgs and Sons (John Heaton and Jody Webb).