Double win for EMC at the Dealmaker of the Year Awards

EMC Corporate Finance and our CEO Nik Askaroff were the big winners of the night when Insider South East handed out its annual Dealmaker of the Year Awards at a glittering ceremony in Crawley on 4 February.

We walked away with the two top trophies. Our sale of Lewes-based Ivy Press to the world’s leading illustrated books publisher Quarto Group Inc, was named Deal of the Year (under £10m) and Nik Askaroff retained the Dealmaker of the Year title he won in 2015.

It’s the third year running that EMC has triumphed at the Insider awards – widely considered to be the ‘Oscars’ of the corporate finance industry in the region.

In 2014 we won the Deal of the Year crown for our part in the sale of $100m freight forwarding and logistics company Bellville International Ltd to OIA Global of Portland, Oregon. And last year Nik Askaroff was named Dealmaker of the Year for the first time after judges praised his “shrewd eye for successful dealmaking” and his “ability to bring deals from London to the regional corporate advisory community.”

This year the judges said that Nik’s “ability to initiate deals and to see them through to completion, as well as his strength in attracting private equity and foreign investment, make him the outstanding dealmaker in the region.”

More than 370 of the region’s top professionals attended the awards ceremony at The Copthorne Hotel, Effingham Park, Gatwick.

Nik, pictured above (right) with EMC Director Michael Pay, said: “What a night! To win just one of these prestigious awards in a single year is an achievement, but to be given two of the top prizes in the same year is quite remarkable and is a great reward for all the hard work that each member of our highly experienced team put into getting deals over the line.

“The Ivy Press sale to Quarto was just one of several great transactions that we completed in 2015. I think it helps that we often have a long working relationship with many owner/managers helping them to build their businesses before the time comes for them to sell.

“Ivy Press was a great example of this. We had been involved with the company since it started in 1996, initially assisting with the raising of working capital before going on to lead the finance department. Subsequently we advised the team on a number of operational and strategic issues all of which gave us an intimate knowledge of the business which undoubtedly helped us to achieve a very successful exit deal for the owners.”