| Nom : | Stalwart Group Ltd |
|---|---|
| Date de premier investissement: | January 1994 |
| Pays : | UK |
| Montant Investi : | € 11.5m |
| Activité : | Life assurance |
| Type de transaction : | MBO |
| Chiffres d'Affaires : | € 227m (1997) |
| Taille de transaction : | € 40.6m |
| Membres du conseil : | Bill Robinson |
| Date de la réalisation : | September 1997 |
The Business
The Management
Mike Fuller, chief executive, who led the MBO, had been with Stalwart for a number of years and understood the product and the market place very well. Once the major constraints of funding the growth of the business had been solved through the involvement, Mike, over the next three years, put in place a first class management team. This included Mike Girling, sales director, whom he recruited from a senior sales position at Commercial Union, and Gay Welch, legal and compliance director, who had previously been company secretary of Standard and Chartered Banking Group.
Strategic Development
Having acquired the business, we arranged and secured a substantial line of reinsurance funding from a leading German reinsurer. Shortly afterwards we also arranged for a leading German bank to provide innovative, non-recourse, long term loan finance against the company’s existing portfolio of reversionary property interests. With substantially improved liquidity, Stalwart rapidly grew its sales from approximately £5m per annum in 1994 to approximately £150m in 1997, at the same time as increasing its direct sales staff from three to 25 and investing substantially in television advertising. In 1997 Stalwart enjoyed a dominant market share of some 70%. In September of that year the business was sold to a subsidiary of GE Capital, generating an IRR of 38.7%.
