What do you do?

I live and breathe transactions. Day in day out I’m 100% focussed on providing tax advice to you as a buyer or seller in the run up to, during and after your transaction process.

As a client, it’s likely you’ll be a listed or private business, private equity house, shareholder or management team. You’ll be looking to buy, sell or restructure an entrepreneurial business in the UK mid-market / SME space (a space where our specialist Transaction Tax team concentrate all their time and effort).

Having advised both buyers and sellers alike for many years, my advice factors in the perspective of the ‘other side’. This approach gets deals done without hold up for immaterial tax issues and without unnecessary jargon (after all there’s plenty of it in the world of tax!).

It goes without saying that I’ll work closely with your other advisors (e.g. corporate finance and legal) to ensure the process runs as smooth as it can. I’ll use my experiences and that of the wider team to manage conflicts in a robust but commercial way.

What makes me tick? It’s simple. It’s about helping you navigate your transaction tax efficiently without any nasty surprises. It’s about getting a deep understanding of you, your short-term goals and long-term aspirations and making sure this is factored into the transaction structure. It’s about using my own experiences to challenge the status quo.

I will explore with you our wider ‘value add’ offerings and make introductions as required (there is often a substantial benefit to be had around the time of a transaction, which in some instances can impact price). This could include corporate finance, wealth, R&D, capital allowances, VAT, private client or big business advisory, to name a few.

Why do you do it?

Being a mathematics and financial economics graduate, I’ve always been a lover of problem solving. Complex but logical (most of the time!), always changing and guaranteed to stick around – a career in tax was always destined to be!

Why Transaction Tax? At one end of the spectrum it is the intensity, the pace, the volatility, the need for creativity and the variety. At the other end, but more importantly, it is the fact that transactions are often life-changing events for my clients and there’s nothing better than being (or becoming) a trusted advisor as I guide them through the process. It’s a high-emotion, high-value environment which has me completely hooked. I love it!

What kind of projects have you been involved in?

For potential sellers, I’m typically advising on incentivising key management, sale readiness reviews, pre-sale restructuring exercises (e.g. asset extraction or demergers), vendor due diligence and structuring of the sale process itself (whether a trade sale, sale to private equity, MBO/MBI, sale to an EOT or an IPO).

For buyers, I advise on tax due diligence, acquisition structuring (for both trade and PE), management incentive plans, post-acquisition integration and group rationalisation exercises.

What’s on top of your bucket list?

Being brought up in the Lake District, I have a real passion for the outdoors (and no, contrary to popular belief, my accent isn’t from Yorkshire). I love the solitude of the mountains and the adrenaline of adventure sports. There’s no better way to escape and reinvigorate your mind.

Top of my bucket list is to take this love to the extreme and backpack across the Patagonian mountains in South America. Incredibly remote, volatile and a true adventure. Perfect!