A team of West Midlands professional firms led by accountants PKF has successfully completed the management buyout of Ealing-based Alstom Energy Recovery Systems.
The "Advised in Birmingham" effort involved Putsmans, Browne Jacobson, Pinsent Masons and Royal Bank of Scotland.
The business has been bought by new company CiTech, headed by managing director Mark Wickham and senior commercial director Dave Normandale who have over 40 years' combined experience in the sector.
ERS, founded in 1938, is a designer and manufacturer of specialist heat exchange equipment supplying the global oil and gas industries.
Its customer base of international companies includes Chevron, Texaco, Shell, RollsRoyce and Statoil.
Its range of products for oil and gas and petrochemical industries include gas turbine recovery units and steam generators, fired earth process heaters and generators and a state of the art multi-functional product for heat recovery, CiBAS.
ERS has been acquired from Paris-based multi-national Alstom Group with debt and equity backing from Royal Bank of Scotland Strategic Investment Group.
PKF Corporate Finance, led by Jat Najran, advised the management team who were also assisted by Birmingham solicitors Putsmans, led by Gary Davie.
The RBS team, which has acquired a strategic equity stake in the new business, were supported by Browne Jacobson, led by Tom Durrant. Alstom Group took external advice from Alice Broadfield at Pinsent Masons in Birmingham and Lovells in London.
Mr Wickham said: "This was not a straight forward deal and we appreciate the role of our advisers in structuring, project managing and resolving some difficult issues that might otherwise have been deal breakers. However, the patent-protected CiBAS product in particular represents a major opportunity for us that has already secured over £13 million of firm orders and which is conservatively forecast to achieve over £20 million in total potential orders by the end of 2007/8."
Mr Najran, corporate finance director at PKF in Birmingham, said: "The management team have worked hard to turn the business round to expected levels of profitability and have negotiated an appropriate funding structure from RBS to secure the new company's undoubted potential.
"They have an in-depth understanding of the key drivers in their business and their innovative engineering capability and established partnerships should provide them with the platform to exploit further growth potential in the competitive off-shore turbine market."
Gary Davie, corporate partner at Putsmans, added: "There were a number of interesting challenges including the need to exchange contracts relatively early in the process as a result of commitments made to the European Commission, a number of intra group debts and other arrangements and, our old favourite, the final salary pension scheme in deficit.
"Overcoming these was a real team effort."
