News

In April, we assisted with the dramatic turnaround in the prospects of specialist food importer Visual Foods. Visual (formerly Vision Seafoods), one of the UK’s largest importers of warm water prawns with a turnover of £22m, together with sister company Dragon Delight unexpectedly found itself in administration due to financial problems at its holding company. During a frantic few weeks of activity, Jasper helped to raise a £4.75m working capital facility, which together with funds from a private investor enabled the management team to acquire the business from the administrators. In a comparatively short time, Jasper helped ensure that Visual and Dragon could continue to trade, protecting both business and employees.

In June, Jasper successfully completed a deal with the AIM listed Electronics Manufacturing Services provider, Stadium Group PLC. The deal involved the disposal of Stadium’s Branded Plastics Division, allowing the group to focus solely on its high growth electronics business. The plastics business, which makes a range of consumer products including baby bath sets for Mothercare and “Flexi tubs” for home and commercial use, had been a successful subsidiary of Stadium for some time but had become non-core as the group moves towards becoming a specialist electronics business. The buyer was Flambeau Europlast Ltd, a subsidiary of Nordic Group, a privately owned company based in Wisconsin USA.

In July Jasper acted as lead financial advisors to the management team on their £30m MBO from American parent company Borders Group International. London based Paperchase is a leading designer and retailer of stationery and greetings cards. The company operates across the UK and Europe with 65 stand alone retail outlets and 35 concessions in major stores such as House of Fraser, Harrods and Selfridges.  Funding for the deal was provided by Primary Capital who intend to provide further support to management on a store roll out programme. Commenting on the deal Primary Capital director Graham Heddle said: "We're excited by the opportunity to build on the success of Paperchase, which is a well-known, design-led stationery brand.”