News / Media

23rd-3-2007

Irish investors buy UK event services group for £30m

Former Allegro Group boss Dermot Divilly and fellow investor Greg Lawless, together with the management, have bought the Arena Group, the UK's largest events services supplier, from Evenser in a deal worth £30 million (€44 million). 

 

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11th-3-2007

Event marquee suppliers consider flotation

Businessmen Dermot Divilly and Greg Lawless are considering a flotation of their €125 million group of companies, which supplies seating and marquees for events including Wimbledon, Ascot and Cheltenham.

The pair own a group of six companies in Ireland and Britain, with annual sales of about €125 million and profits of close to €15 million.

Lawless said that they would buy other companies and were likely to merge them into one group later this year and ‘‘look seriously at a flotation’’.

In the past six months, Lawless and Divilly have bought four companies in England, most recently paying about stg£30 million (€44.2 million) for the Arena Group, which has sales of about stg£30 million (€44.2 million). Their biggest company is Irish Merchants, which should have sales of almost €50 million this year.

Divilly and Lawless are equal shareholders in all the businesses and local management typically have a 20 per cent stake.

Divilly previously ran the Allegro Group and teamed up with Lawless for a management buyout of Allegro. They have since completed more than 20 acquisitions and disposals of companies.

Lawless said that they funded the deals personally and with debt finance from AIB and Ulster Bank.

‘‘We started in Ireland and moved to Britain,” he said. ‘‘Now we are absolutely looking further afield. I think we will look at mainland Europe first and then the US.

“You can do these deals anywhere in the world, whether it is New York, LA or Sydney.”

 

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1st-5-2005

Plans to increase King turnover to €50 million

Two businessmen who last week paid €20 million for catering supplier King Ireland plan to increase its turnover to €50million within 18 months.

Greg Lawless, who bought King Ireland with Dermot Divilly, said they would expand the company in Ireland and add “bolt-on acquisitions'‘ in Ireland and overseas. He ruled out an early sale or flotation of the business, saying the focus would be on growing the firm.

“We have no short-term plans to realise equity from this,” Lawless said. “We will increase sales on a number of fronts, by adding to the product range and looking at additional suppliers. We should get to €50 million within 12 to 18 months.”

King Ireland made a pre-tax profit of about €2.5million last year on turnover of almost €40 million. It employs 140 people in Ireland, but staff numbers are expected to increase as turnover grows, according to Lawless.

Lawless and Divilly, who led a management buyout of the Allegro Group in 1993, set up a company called DG Distributors and Vendors to buy King Ireland. They funded the deal with personal investment and a mixture of equity and debt from AIB.

Brendan Cooney, who has been managing director of King Ireland for 15 years, will remain on as managing director of the company. Lawless said that he and Divilly would also give the firm “as much time as its needs'' over the next six to 12 months.

Lawless said that he and Divilly had been interested in buying King Ireland, which was formerly known as Irish Merchants, since the early 1990s. They sealed the deal after approaching Charterhouse, a private equity firm that bought the Autobar Group worldwide last year.

The pair operate as “industrial venture capitalists'‘ to buy companies with good management teams and growth potential, said Lawless. Last year, they paid about €5 million for Hire All, a Dublin firm that rents catering and party equipment.

Hire All has annual turnover of about €3 million. Lawless said the firm would also grow by expanding its range of products. Last year it agreed a deal worth about €1 million to become the Irish agent for De Boer, a Dutch marquee company.