Opus celebrating 15 years

Category: Company Update

We are extremely proud of the franchise Opus has established since its inception at the beginning of 2007 and of the outstanding team of professionals we have built over that time. It has been a period of enormous change and opportunity.

While the firm remains generalist and undertakes a wide range of corporate finance assignments, we have developed deep knowledge and domain expertise in certain key sectors:

• Energy Transition & Climate Change – sustainability has been at the core of what Opus has done since its foundation when we worked closely with Carbon Trust. We have steadily built a market-leading team. We have completed over 30 deals in this space including 7 during the course of 2021 such as the sale of the Electric Highway for Ecotricity, or the sale of Baringa’s Climate Change Scenario Model to BlackRock.

• Chemicals & Ingredients – while a relatively new area for Opus, Chris Carlisle and his team have already had a significant impact. They have completed a number of notable deals such as Bain and Cinven’s acquisition of Lonza Specialty Ingredients and AEA’s acquisition of Verdesian. A particular focus for the team is agrochemicals and the transition to sustainable chemistry, which fits well with our overarching theme of sustainability.

• Built Environment – this is a key sector for Opus where we have completed many deals over the years including the recent sales of Rendall & Rittner, and of Busworks. Our business includes a focus on PropTech and emerging construction and management business models such as modular construction and the private rental sector.

• Financial Services – our particular focus is on asset and wealth management where a notable recent transaction was the sale of Pensions Infrastructure Platform to Foresight Group. ESG products are dominant in asset management as is the rapidly growing alternatives space, in which infrastructure and real estate are key sub-sectors. These themes link our activities to our other sectors of Built Environment and Energy Transition & Climate Change.

• Industrial Technologies & Services – this sector covers a wide range of businesses with a particular focus on technologies and business models driving productivity and efficiency gains. The sale of DEXMA Sensors, an AI driven energy efficiency software business, exemplifies this and shows the links between key sector themes.

Complementing these sector activities are our specialist skills in public markets and private special situations.  We are unusual among firms of our size in having extensive public markets experience and we advise on IPOs, public market equity issuance and takeovers under the City Code.  Our private special situations practice works on often complex, multi stakeholder engagements where considerable structuring is required and governance processes may need to be evolved.

Opus remains keen to recruit partners with an outstanding track record in sectors complementary to our franchise and for whom Opus could provide a unique economic springboard.

Our membership of Mergers Alliance continues to broaden the opportunities available to our internationally experienced partner group. We look forward to continuing success with Mergers Alliance friends.

Our next fifteen years is an exciting prospect and we look forward to working with clients old and new to further and achieve their ambitions.