Issue 5 2019

Acquisition International - Issue 5 2019 5 News : from around the world Capitalising On Bigger Opportunities Albion colleagues will join Fluxx, growing the team of strategy, insight, creative, digital and business design talents. The move will strengthen Fluxx’s specialismof experimental ‘test, learn and scale’ rapid innovation incubation - creating transformational products and ventures with client colleagues. Jenny Burns, Albion CEO, will join Fluxx as Executive Partner, complementing a leadership team of expert practitioners, each with more than 20 years’ experience working with leading brands on projects across Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the US. Richard Poole, Fluxx Founder & Managing Partner said: “We’re really excited to be able to bring Jenny and the team into Fluxx. Today, we work at pace with some of the world’s greatest and most innovative companies. With Albion colleagues under the Fluxx brand, we’ll be able to offer more to our existing clients and accelerate our growth into new markets. “We’ve driven our success by building an excellent team with diverse innovation talents - from creative technologists to ex journalists and business analysts. Jenny and the Albion team have proven skills that will catapult our ambitions. We already share a common culture and history of helping organisations release potential and create market leading products and services. “We’ve worked with Jenny for some years as a client and partnered alongside Albion successfully already, with a feeling of mutual respect for the work we’ve done. This is a natural step, to reinforce our unique blend of capabilities for clients.” Jenny Burns, Albion CEO said: “This is a fantastic move for both companies to come together and take advantage of a massive market opportunity - as all industries are disrupted by the challenges of the digital age. Of all the companies in this growing category, we’ve always viewed Fluxx as one of the most impressive, and having already worked with them closely in the past we’ll be better placed to capitalise on bigger opportunities together. “In taking this step, we’ll provide great service to our existing clients and we’ve identified significant new opportunities already - where our combined capabilities and experience can deliver more ambitious projects with new clients.” The acquisition comes amid wider changes in the marketing services and management consultancy sectors. Digital disruption, in- housing, consolidation and the blurring of lines between product development, marketing and organisational transformation means brands need new partners - to help them use digital technology to bring ideas to market with greater agility and lower risk. This has created a newmarket for smart agile, lean innovation specialists that combine strategic brand thinking, digital, product and proposition design with new ways of working for clients. As a larger operation, Fluxx is now best placed to take advantage of this growth category, with its greater scale and collaborative approach to bringing talents together with clients. Albion, founded in 2004 as a challenger creative shop, later repositioned as a full- service digital marketing agency before evolving into one of the UK’s leading creative innovation consultancies. Albion’s previous owner has decided now to divest the business, to focus its own offer on marketing services - providing the opportunity to create the larger Fluxx business. Between them, Fluxx and Albion have an impressive recent track record of rapidly converting ideas into real products and experiences. Recent successes include creating digital clean transport subscriptions for Greater Manchester with Atkins, reinventing retirement services with Just, delivering financial services innovation with Zopa and Lloyds, building smarter healthcare with AI-drive ‘Ada’ and Innerstrength behaviour change savings for the NHS, protecting water supplies with more agile working at Thames and Southern Water, creating a major new media partner event for News UK , and many, many more. Fluxx, the UK’s leading independent product and service innovation company, acquires Albion team to accelerate growth plans. Firm brings ‘Big 4’ capabilities to small and medium-sized businesses and lower middle- market companies. Joseph C. Finnerty, CPA, a former Big 4 accounting firm director, has founded CenterSquare Advisory to bring his experience and capabilities to small and medium-sized businesses and lower middle- market companies. CenterSquare Advisory advises corporations, private equity firms, and family offices evaluating the acquisition or divestiture of businesses, among other value-add accounting and finance projects. Most recently, Finnerty was a director in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Deals Practice. He has advised on more than 75 merger and acquisition transactions in various industries, including consumer products, manufacturing and distribution, with distinct experience in business-to-business and business-to-consumer services. “There is a lot of consolidation going on in highly fragmented services, such as pest control, commercial landscaping, plumbing & HVAC, transportation & logistics and managed information technology, because investors love a company with a solid book of recurring revenues with strong predictable cash flows,” says Finnerty, who worked on 16 deals in the pest control industry alone. In his previous role, Finnerty primarily represented large corporations and private equity firms that were evaluating buying smaller companies. He noticed the smaller businesses were often underrepresented from a finance and accounting perspective. “Needless to say, this led these businesses to leave a lot of value on the table and sometimes even derailed an excellent opportunity over an issue that could have been prevented,” he says. “That is exactly why I founded CenterSquare Advisory: to assist investors and owners of smaller enterprises and lower middle- market companies in maximizing value in their businesses and the strategies they pursue. I am confident in saying the years of experience, knowledge and capabilities CenterSquare Advisory brings to the table at such a competitive rate are bound to give our clients an excellent return on their investment in our services.” CenterSquare Advisory, based in Philadelphia, offers a robust suite of value- add services, including financial due diligence, post-deal advisory & reporting, mergers & acquisition intermediary, data analysis and interim management & project support. Finnerty Launches CenterSquare Advisory