Entrepreneurial spirit
Steve Monnington of Mayfield Merger Strategies rounds up this month ’ s M & A activity and says there are signs of great entrepreneurial spirit
There are several transactions to report this month but two stand out as epitomising all that is good in entrepreneur related M & A .
Northern grit It ’ s 19 years since Thom Hetherington took over the running of Northern Restaurant and Bar ( NRB ) and , along with his small team of loyal employees , built it into the primary hospitality exhibition for the North culminating in a 2022 record breaking event with 8,416 visitors , 296 exhibitors , and around 60 speakers . Along the way he has had to contend with the recession in 2012 which put the company out of business and more recently with lockdown which in March 2020 forced him to cancel the show during build up .
Perseverance in the face of adversity has paid off with the sale of the business to Diversified Communications where it joins a portfolio of events including lunch !, Casual Dining , Commercial Kitchen , and Natural & Organic Products Europe .
Hetherington ’ s reaction to the sale is what one would expect of an entrepreneur who has been through the rollercoaster of event creation , development and ultimately sale . “ Although talent and hard work are important for any entrepreneur , not least an exhibition organiser , I think it is a truism that what really counts is bloody-minded tenacity . We never lost faith in the huge potential of NRB , nor the ability of our team to deliver it , and once you have that certainty then a global pandemic just becomes another bump in the road to negotiate .”
Sterling effort Going back even further to the start of her journey , Lauren Sterling created Sterling Events in 1992 . In the 32 years since , Primary Care and Public Health has become the major event for GPs , trainee GPs , managers , podiatrists , physiotherapists , nurses , midwives and dieticians working in primary and community care . The other show in the portfolio , Health and Wellbeing at Work , launched 17 years ago , is the UK ’ s largest event dedicated to improving the health , wellbeing , safety , behaviour and culture of today ’ s workforce . Sterling ’ s journey has been less frenetic but she chose healthcare and hospitals rather than hospitality .
“ We have been extremely fortunate over the years to have built up a strong following of exhibitors , delegates and speakers and been at the forefront of pioneering events that have become blueprints for the industry . Our USP since inception has been all about the content
and this has enabled us to continually position our events so highly within what has become a competitive marketplace and our growth has been a steady one , thankfully without the rollercoasters that others may have experienced .”
The culmination of this long term effort is the sale of the business to Mark Allen Group ( MAG ) which has a strong stable of publications in both primary care and HR . This is the third acquisition by Mark Allen Group this year following the acquisition of REGEN ( regeneration ) and EMEX ( energy management ) and comes a few days after MAG reported a record
08 — December