making business work
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07976 426547
desmond.high@emcltd.co.uk
Desmond is an experienced Chartered Accountant who qualified in 1979. Since leaving the accounting profession in 1992 he has enjoyed a successful freelance/portfolio career as part of EMC\'s team, and is the director of the Kent office.
Desmond\'s particular strengths and expertise lie in identifying and shaping business strategy and in commercial project management. Projects are too many and varied to list but generally fall into three categories:
Projects
For many of the SMEs he has worked with over this period he has acted as de facto CFO and dealt with any number of finance and commercial issues that typically affect growing businesses.
As well as just advising, he was also a director and shareholder in a fast-growing service sector franchise which grew from zero to 35 franchises during the period of his involvement, and was successfully sold to a major Plc in November 2006. He is currently a director and shareholder in an early stage software business.
He has handled the sale of owner-managed businesses in a number of sectors from software to occupational health services. In each case he has worked with groups of shareholders over an extended period, project managing the entire sale process from finding buyers, to deal negotiation, to managing all parties to completion. These situations have typically involved a high degree of complexity, for example multiple shareholders with differing objectives, complex earn-outs, or dealing with overseas or large Plc buyers. He has helped several people to become millionaires.
In the early 1990s he worked with several turnaround/distress situations and in more recent times has revisited that part of the market, taking board level responsibility in two highly intensive projects.
In early 2008, along with fellow EMC director Martin Stanton, he took over the management of a long-established but ailing West Kent £10m contracting business. In spite of significant surgery during the first half of 2008, it was unable to survive the double whammy of a sharp downturn in activity and a complete halt in incoming cash as major customers stopped paying. The business was placed in administration in February 2009. Desmond has since negotiated with the bank to allow the shareholders to retain the main property asset, and managed the transition from empty warehouse to a redeveloped tenanted building.
In summer 2009 he spent four very intense months on a turnaround project as interim CFO of a £40m soft drinks manufacturer which ended with a pre-pack administration and sale of the business to a private equity buyer.
Prior to EMC
Desmond trained with a Kent-based general practice, leaving to join Ernst & Whinney (now Ernst & Young) on qualifying. He spent three years in London and three in Sydney, Australia, working on the audits of major national and multinational companies. On return to the UK in 1986 he decided to specialise in corporate finance and became a partner in Chantrey Vellacott, a Top 20 accounting practice, in 1989. He went on a two year secondment to the Department of Trade & Industry, working on confidential investigations, but at the end of the secondment decided that a freelance career beckoned. He met Nik Askaroff through a mutual contact and joined the fledging team in 1992.
Other stuff
In early 2007 he was awarded the Institute of Chartered Accountants Corporate Finance Qualification, and in September of the same year shortlisted for South East Dealmaker of the Year at the Awards organised by The Business magazine.
He has presented regularly at seminars on the subject of funding growing business, and co-authored a Commercial Guide to Management Buyouts published by Business Link Kent in February 2003, as well as instigating the concept and authoring several of EMC\'s successful Ten Tips series. He has developed an exit scorechart which allows SME owners planning a disposal to assess saleability and valuation issues and identify a pre-sale action plan.
He is a Member of the Institute of Directors, a Graduate of Common Purpose (West Kent 2006) and now a member of the Common Purpose Kent Advisory Board. He is also a Board member of Applause Rural Touring Limited, a not-for-profit business based in West Kent which promotes rural arts touring.
He can be contacted on 01622 685734, 07976 426547 or by email to desmond.high@emcltd.co.uk
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