Sale of leading information and conference business
Corbett Keeling announces that private equity investor Alcuin Capital Partners (Alcuin) has acquired a majority stake in Applied Market Information Ltd (AMI) from its original founders and shareholders whom Corbett Keeling advised.
With offices in the United Kingdom and North America, AMI is a leading provider of information services to the global plastics industry through syndicated reports, databases, digital magazines, consulting and conferences. The company has grown steadily since it was founded in 1986. This year the company will hold over 40 conferences for the plastics industry in Europe, the USA and the Far East – more than any other competitor world-wide.
The team at Corbett Keeling, led by Jim Keeling, Francois Barou and Matt Dixon, advised the founders of AMI on the investment by Alcuin, which completed on 22 May 2015. The founders will continue to be actively involved in the business and have retained a significant minority stake.
Mark Storey, partner at Alcuin, said: “We are delighted we were introduced to AMI by Corbett Keeling and are now investing alongside the current directors to support the continued success of AMI. This is a dynamic business that has a very strong reputation in the plastics industry for the quality of the information it provides and the events that it organises. Alcuin has always targeted ambitious, growth companies with the ability to compete on a global basis and AMI definitely fits the bill.”
Andrew Reynolds, co-founder and director of AMI, said: “We really welcome the opportunity of joining Alcuin and moving the company forward in the next stages of its development. To arrive at this point we were advised over a period of months by the team from corporate financiers, Corbett Keeling; many thanks to them for getting what we believe was the best result from the best buyer for our business.”
John Horgan, co-founder and director of AMI, added: “Not only was Corbett Keeling’s advice always timely, to the point and in our best interest but, crucially, they had outstanding knowledge and understanding of the potential buyers, whether trade or financial and UK or overseas.”