Paul Bevan, managing director of award-winning dealmaker Breeze Corporate Finance, has told Insider 2025 is set to be “by far” its best ever year.
Breeze was founded in 2018 by three leading dealmakers, including Bevan.
The multi-award winning business, which specialises in transactions valued between £10m and £50m, expects to complete deals totalling more than £350m in the first three quarters of 2025.
Bevan said the Nottingham-based group was aiming to do more work in the West Midlands and other regions. He also spoke about AI, the US and the long-term ambition of the business.
The highly-respected dealmaker was named Dealmaker of the Year at Insider’s East Midlands Dealmakers Awards 2024, while at the same event Breeze was named Corporate Finance Advisory Team of the Year and won Deal of the Year (up to £10m). Breeze also won Mid-Market Corporate Finance Advisory Team of the Year at Insider’s Midlands Dealmakers Awards 2024.
Breeze was founded in 2018 by three leading dealmakers, including Bevan.
The multi-award winning business, which specialises in transactions valued between £10m and £50m, expects to complete deals totalling more than £350m in the first three quarters of 2025.
Bevan said the Nottingham-based group was aiming to do more work in the West Midlands and other regions. He also spoke about AI, the US and the long-term ambition of the business.
The highly-respected dealmaker was named Dealmaker of the Year at Insider’s East Midlands Dealmakers Awards 2024, while at the same event Breeze was named Corporate Finance Advisory Team of the Year and won Deal of the Year (up to £10m). Breeze also won Mid-Market Corporate Finance Advisory Team of the Year at Insider’s Midlands Dealmakers Awards 2024.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hello, I'm Ian Griffin, Deputy Editor of Midlands Business Insider, and I'm here with Paul Bevan,
00:17Managing Director of Breeze.
00:18Hi, Ian.
00:19Hello, Paul.
00:20Thank you very much for doing this interview with us today.
00:25Breeze has had a phenomenal couple of years.
00:29You've won five awards with us.
00:31Obviously, you've done a lot of deals in that time, and there's a lot more coming, having
00:37spoken to you just briefly before this interview.
00:43Just talk us through, before we go into all the deals and all your kind of future plans
00:47for the business, just talk us through how the business evolved, how it started.
00:55Ian, thank you.
00:57Genuinely, when you go back to Crikey, a business plan that you're writing on your kitchen table
01:03in 2018, wondering whether you can make a living to be where we are now.
01:09We planned lots of stuff, three people, that room.
01:13We were just quipping about the 4,000-meter zone that we needed to be out of to operate,
01:21and we're now one meter away from where we came from.
01:24This is your previous business, yes.
01:26That's humorous, isn't it?
01:28I think in that short period of time, to rise from having three of us in a room to being
01:3216 in a building, that's just a bit different.
01:36It is, really.
01:38Where are we now, then, really, in terms of size?
01:43You talked about you've taken some new people on.
01:46You've got some ambitions who obviously grow further.
01:50Just talk us through that.
01:52Well, you've always got to be really careful in our world, of course, and keeping that
01:57quality of delivery for the client at the highest level is just absolutely the middle
02:01of everything.
02:03The guys know that.
02:04The guys know how to think and behave and operate like owners.
02:08That's my guys, our team.
02:12This year, bringing in new talent has been at our fingertips, dare I say, because there's
02:21some super people around.
02:23We've probably been, dare I say, a little bit more ambitious about how we see the M&A
02:29market, so it's allowed us to go out there and make the recruits.
02:33We've had three new joiners.
02:35We'll talk more about those.
02:37Fantastic.
02:38Can I just talk about where you specialize?
02:42It's between 10 and 50 million deals, isn't it, really, in terms of the size?
02:47I suppose you're sector agnostic, I guess.
02:50Any business that is looking to exit, looking to obviously sell, that is basically what
02:57you're after.
02:58Yeah.
02:59Look, if you go back to where we started in the managed office in 18, three of us in that
03:05room, and you think of that as we've just been talking about, making a living to where
03:10we are now, we would have done anything by then.
03:12To be fair, that's the way it is.
03:14Actually, what we found is over the time, genuinely, the deal sizes have just risen.
03:21Right now, you're in that 10 to 50 million space.
03:27Our typical deal size is around 20.
03:30To be fair, this is going out, isn't it?
03:33We were really careful about that message, because fundamentally, if somebody comes along
03:37and it's a more modest transaction, and we can help, and we can make a difference, then
03:42we will.
03:43I think that's what sets us apart.
03:45We're probably, in all fairness, a 5 to 50 million business, but gravitating upwards,
03:51but we'll always help our friends.
03:54Yeah.
03:55You had a great year in 2024.
03:57Again, as I say, I mentioned before, you've won the five awards with Insider across, obviously,
04:03various territories, including two in the Midlands.
04:07How is it going to go in 2025?
04:11Much better in terms of deals?
04:13Well, yeah.
04:14I think the bit that took us by surprise was actually delivering the transactions through
04:2024.
04:21There's two or three that we can talk about.
04:24No, we don't really talk about transactions, but those three were all in the tech space.
04:30One was proper tech around data centers, which was a super opportunity to find a new home
04:38for a business.
04:39Then we did something around agri-tech, but first jaunt into that world, and that took
04:47us to speaking to one of the spin-out equity funds from Harvard in the States.
04:52That was a bit of a chunky one, but in answer to your question, the final one was a fintech
04:58one.
04:59As we were doing those deals, which we can mention, and all of those others, what did
05:05surprise us was the amount of new mandates that were coming through in.
05:09Fundamentally, 10, 11 new assignments as we go into 2025.
05:16Great year financially.
05:17Better than 23, to be fair.
05:20But looking into the new year with a bedrock of, dare I say, 20-odd engagements, that's
05:29a lot of work.
05:31Are these more in the tech space?
05:32Because obviously you seem to have something you've not done before, and it's something
05:36that you seem to have done quite well.
05:39To be fair, they're back in the everyday space.
05:42Okay, fine.
05:43We've got all manners, but you're quite right when you talk about us as being agnostic.
05:47We can't wheel in the industry experts.
05:50We know how to do deals, we know how to transact, so we just need to, at times, make sure that
05:57we can understand.
05:58Of course, tech does move fast, doesn't it, really?
06:00Yes, particularly when we're talking about AI these days.
06:04I know you mentioned it's been around for many, many years.
06:07There's different kind of developments going on across the Midlands as well as across the
06:12country.
06:13Talking about deal-making in general, what do you think the biggest challenges are going
06:19forward in deal-making?
06:21We had, obviously, a budget last year.
06:23I know you were on a round table in the hours after that, and obviously we're quite, like
06:28a lot of other people, quite worried about the challenges that brought.
06:33I think we just have to pause a moment, I think, in all fairness.
06:37We just have to dwell on the quality of the clients that we work with.
06:41When you look at deal-making into next year, our clients are so much more resilient than
06:47us, dare I say.
06:49They're used to getting on with it.
06:51The reality when you're operating at world-class standards, the world is a world, not just
06:57the UK.
06:59For me, that means when we're having those conversations and we're thinking about the
07:04very best home for that business, which is our worn-out cliche, it's fundamentally, they're
07:10just going to get on with it.
07:11They're just going to get on with it.
07:13We've seen that in the growth of the mandates and the folk that we're talking to right now
07:19all over the globe.
07:20Yeah, yeah.
07:23What are your ambitions short to medium term?
07:27Are you looking to open new offices?
07:29You've got this office here in Nottingham where we are now.
07:32Are you looking at West Midlands?
07:34Yeah.
07:39We're always reflecting, and when you start, you go, well crikey, we have a bit of a plan.
07:44I heard a good saying just the other day, once you get through good planning, you can
07:47start dreaming.
07:48Yes.
07:50That's a message.
07:51Yes.
07:52Actually, you would be so contained here if you were just planning, and we're not.
07:57Yes.
07:58Our dream is literally to start expanding.
08:01We've seen that through Mark Day from Mazar joining us, working as a partner.
08:09We're like this.
08:11We can do some really good stuff.
08:13There will be more Marks, and there'll be more Marks that want support, and there'll
08:17be more ambition.
08:18Yes.
08:19More dreaming.
08:20Yes.
08:21Not just planning.
08:22Yes.
08:23More dreaming.
08:24Fantastic.
08:25There is a possibility.
08:27You're looking at new office openings.
08:29Yeah.
08:30It's a much often asked question is where do we want to go territorially, so to speak.
08:36Crikey, doesn't that sound aggressive?
08:38We're not those sorts of people at all, but with Mark joining us in the West Midlands,
08:44we're going to really support him in what he wants to do with the business that he's
08:48kicking off with.
08:50We are handing the lot together in thinking about how we best represent ourselves in the
08:56West Midlands, for sure.
08:58In fairness, as we think about future, then candidly, we'll find ourselves, I'm sure,
09:04in other conversations with other advisors that may just want to work with us and really
09:10use the machine that we've built around deal delivery.
09:13Because that's always, to be fair, that was always the answer I had.
09:17Describe this machine of deal delivery.
09:19Sorry, it's quite an interesting way you put it.
09:22Oh, goodness.
09:24Having had a few roles in practice, we were never able to invest at the level that we
09:30have here with your people, with your tech staff, with just your reach capabilities into
09:37the marketplace.
09:39We have a significantly expensive American operating system that we use for all of our
09:45transactions.
09:46Folk just don't have that, that way with all.
09:49So it's pretty robust.
09:52Back office, which you do support many of our advisors that want to do great deals.
09:57Brilliant.
09:58I mean, tech is obviously playing a bigger, huge role in deal making.
10:02It has done for many years, of course, and it's going to do even more so.
10:07AI in your business, how do you see that?
10:11Probably something that everyone is saying AI is going to affect all manner of types
10:15of businesses.
10:16I'm guessing it's going to affect your business.
10:19Well, it's just a can't not do, isn't it, really?
10:22It's something that puzzles us every day.
10:25Hopefully the AI is clever enough to answer why we're confused about it.
10:29I know what you mean.
10:30I'm the same in my profession, yes.
10:33You do sense that some of the tools that we use now have AI features in just making the
10:40process that little bit smoother.
10:42It's basically partnering up with the AI and making it work.
10:45We're going to make it your friend.
10:47I think at the end of the day, if you've got a closed mind to what those technical advances
10:52are, then you'll wake up one day and you won't be behind, whereas we're trying to stay ahead
10:56of it.
10:57Yeah.
10:59You're talking about trends.
11:00Obviously, trends there in tech, but trends in your market, the types of deals that are
11:05being done or the appetite for the types of deals that are being done.
11:08Obviously, MBOs have always been a feature of the deal-making market.
11:15Trade sales, they're the main kind of deals.
11:19There's various different variations of that.
11:22Where are we going with the trends?
11:26Are there any that's sticking up as the next big type of deal, or is it still the same?
11:38Stuff goes around, doesn't it, really?
11:40To be fair, for us, we're starting to see more buy-out conversations.
11:47Management teams wanting to own the business and owners wanting them to own the business
11:51as well.
11:53Funders being more aligned and investors being more aligned to make that happen.
11:58I think that boils down and distills out of what really is the level of confidence in
12:04your local economy.
12:07For me, that's always a buy-out trigger.
12:11Classically, though, no matter what the economic conditions are here, if you're thinking that
12:18actually the best home for your business is abroad, to be fair, that's come rain or
12:23shine according to economic conditions.
12:27If you've got a brilliant, and we do feel privileged genuinely to work with those sorts
12:31of businesses, that you're a brilliant engineering business, the US is going to want to buy you
12:36or Northern Europe is going to want to buy you, and you're going to have the right conversation.
12:41You can't say come rain or shine, but it's not far off.
12:44It's interesting you mentioned the US.
12:45Obviously, I'm on everyone's radar at the moment, given what's the charge of president
12:50there, and he's certainly very to the point, and some would say a slightly aggressive stance
12:59on business and on the economy.
13:06Do you see more interest from the US in the Midlands or whatever territories you're dealing
13:12in?
13:15For me, I think we've had more newsreel on the US in the last few weeks than we've had
13:19in the last four years with the different government.
13:24Actually, reading between it all, dare I say in the US, is an affection for the entrepreneur.
13:32They want to create a wealthy environment where they lead the world.
13:38Well, of course, that means that people in the US can be probably more ambitious around
13:44the other parts of the globe, and naturally, they find their way across to the UK.
13:51They always have, and they always will.
13:55I think it can only be candidly a good thing.
13:58The number of US conversations we've had of late, and they don't shout about it.
14:04There was a lot of Trump support there.
14:05Yes, yes.
14:06A lot.
14:07Yes, it was.
14:08It's interesting.
14:10Can I just ask one final question, Paul?
14:12I mean, I always ask this to entrepreneurs, business people, business owners.
14:17What is your ultimate aim as a business?
14:22Ah, yes.
14:24When you enter it, you wake up thinking about this more often than you would think.
14:28Yes.
14:30Candidly, you sort of think you want to build something and sell it, because that's what
14:36we do for a living.
14:37Yes.
14:38Not at all.
14:39It doesn't...
14:40It might have featured in our minds at the start, but no, not at all.
14:43Okay.
14:44It is all about...
14:45We have a little bit of a cliche internally.
14:47We want to build an infinite business that just stays around for everybody to do some
14:52good stuff.
14:54The part that we probably talk more about externally, which is being able to genuinely
15:01help others.
15:02Yes.
15:03And the more wealthy that you can make your business, the more you can contribute to those
15:07around you.
15:08And that sort of steers towards the charitable sort of stuff that we do.
15:13That was a great few minutes with you there.
15:16Great interview.
15:17Thank you very much for doing that.
15:19And obviously, I'm sure we'll talk again very soon.
15:23Yeah, thank you.