Reply to: SJD Accountancy & Nixon Williams sold!

[AptoAccounting]

Not surprising!

There have been a number of recent high profile acquisitions of umbrellas and freelance accountancy practices recently.

I'm certain that there will be more in the the next 4 years as the market consolidates.

[administrator]

Yes, can confirm that the poster is who he says he is. Welcome to the forum Simon

[d000hg]

Admin to authenticate...?

[Simon C]

Hi,

Firstly apologies for the late reply, I’m the new Group CEO of SJD/Nixon Williams and as you’ll have seen Simon at SJD and Alan and Andrew from Nixon’s have sold their businesses to a PE firm called Sovereign Capital. Despite the holding companies changing from private hands to essentially institutional hands; the companies and their services will remain largely unchanged, both businesses were acquired due to their performance and service delivery. We have so far held off from making a formal announcement to clients due to the reasons debated earlier in this thread which are mainly because we didn’t think clients would be too interested
There are no plans to make wholesale changes to either company and certainly no plans to merge the brands or services provided. There will be plans however, to share best practice across the group. Sovereign bought both companies because they loved the individual business models so wouldn’t want to make any fundamental changes that would negatively affect performance. As for fee increases, there are no plans to make any changes to current policy, fees historically increase to reflect the cost of doing business, but we believe both businesses offer genuine value for money.
Sovereign are a buy and build specialist so do expect enhancements plus the odd acquisition, with 10,000 accountancy practices out there, there is plenty of opportunity for future growth.
I’ll be keeping a close eye on the forum, which is without a doubt the most read contractor forum out there. I trust that this note has cleared away some of the mystery,
Kind Regards,
Simon.

[saptastic]

Must admit it would put me off using either of them now, well done to the owners nice profit for them not so sure the buyers have really understood the client base though.

Why have they not understood the client base?

[TheFaQQer]

You could be dealing with criminals then and you wouldn't know. No very smart.

I suspect that those who were using Darren Upton knew who owned the company, and that didn't help them much.

[ELBBUBKUNPS]

Must admit it would put me off using either of them now, well done to the owners nice profit for them not so sure the buyers have really understood the client base though.

[saptastic]

I am sure they have done plenty of due diligence and therefore is a sign of confidence in the Limited Company contractor business model.

[Martin at NixonWilliams]

It is not possible for this to be communicated to clients beforehand for the reasons mentioned by Ebenezer, and the decision on whether to inform our customers about the transaction lies with the investor, not Nixon Williams unfortunately.

It is business as usual here. There are no immediate plans to combine the services of Nixon Williams and SJD in any way, although best practice may be shared between the two if it improves either business.

Martin

[Unix]

Should be fine from our standpoint, and hey at least it answers the old "NW or SJD" question!

Neither

[bracken]

Private Equity ownership

In my experience, Private Equity ownership leads to:

• Futher acquisitions in the sector
• Consolidate of back office functions
• Offshoring everything possible
• Charging customers for every 'extra' possible
• Rising customer fees generally
• Huge drive to save costs
• Lower customer service
• Bad staff morale due to things like pay freezes, higher productivity demands
• High Returns for the Private Equity company

B

[Ebenezer]

You could anyway. Just not ones who have been caught.

Regardless, you don't need to be told in advance. Being told within a month or two gives you plenty of opportunity to bail before any changes actually take place.

Additionally the company being bought stops being its own entity and therefore probably/possibly CAN'T break the news off their own bat, potentially only the parent company has the authority to let them do this? Anyone?

I work in this field. PE is very secretive indeed, there's no way anybody would have been able to talk about the deal until it was announced - the PE fund wouldn't want anyone else knowing what they were up to and the selling shareholders wouldn't want to risk rocking the boat.

[cojak]

SJD Accountancy & Nixon Williams sold!

Sovereign capital are looking at acquiring more contractor firms in the coming months:

Sovereign creates leading accountancy services group - Sovereign Capital

I wonder who is next.............

Well if they grab my accountants (not as big as SJD or NW but contractor specialists) I'm offski.

I'm not happy about this and will go to a local accountant who I've recently spoken to, I have no loyalty to Sovereign to worry about.

[stek]

Must admit, I'm a bit reticent, HMRC, all eggs in one basket?

[PerfectStorm]

"continuing as separate companies" is acquisition speak for "knock them together and make redundancies eventually"

Should be fine from our standpoint, and hey at least it answers the old "NW or SJD" question!

If you like your accountant, make sure they get a good reference from you.