London, England - Business communications consultancy College Hill announced this morning that it has acquired life sciences and healthcare specialists Northbank Communications. As part of the deal, brokered by Pembridge, Northbank CEO Sue Charles will head College Hill's life sciences industry team and will be come the Managing Partner, Life Sciences.
Pembridge invested alongside the founders of Northbank in 2002 and advised the owners and management team of Northbank as non-executive director between 2002 and 2007. Pembridge will exit as part of the new deal in its fourth investment realisation since start-up in 2001.
Commenting on Pembridge’s contribution to the Northbank success story, Sue Charles said: “It was great having Pembridge as a non-executive and mentor – every CEO needs someone to turn to to discuss strategy, challenges and opportunities. Pembridge’s input was invaluable to me. Pembridge also steered us through the negotiations with College Hill – again acting as a sanity check to ensure that negotiations ran smoothly and we all achieved our objectives”.
Speaking to VentureWire Lifescience about the deal, Charles reflected that the acquisition was the result of a five-year plan that Northbank developed alongside Pembridge to build up the operation, which included actively hunting for merger and acquisition opportunities. "We were looking for everything from large, publicly traded companies to smaller companies where we would be the acquirer," she said. Ultimately, they identified 17 possible candidates, settling on College Hill.
Northbank sought out Pembridge as an investor, Charles said, given its experience in the sector. "They're a specialist investor in marketing firms," she said. "What we really got out of them was their contacts, their knowledge."
David Prais, Managing Partner at Pembridge, said: "We are delighted that this deal came together. With some shareholders leaving and others continuing on new terms, it was a fascinating challenge for our team, led by Rose Lewis, to negotiate a structure that gave everyone what they needed. But we did it, and that's a very satisfying conclusion which further validates the Pembridge business model. The value growth achieved at Northbank was created by the partnership of the team at Northbank coupled with non-executive advice from Pembridge".
Northbank has offices in London, Manchester and Munich, with 34 staff serving some 100 life science clients including Ablynx, Biota, BTG, Cambridge Antibody Technology (AZ), Ganymed, GE Healthcare, LifeCycle Pharma, Midatech, Nautilus Biotech, Nitec, Novozymes, Oxford BioMedica, Perkin Elmer, Santaris Pharma, Sigma-Aldrich and Smiths Detection.
The acquisition is a further step in College Hill's strategy to invest in industry sector teams, bringing deeper sector specialisation to the benefit of its clients.
For more information on how Pembridge can help you prepare and sell your business successfully, please contact Eve Daniels.
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