Livingstone Makes a Splash with Theme Park Deal
March 2008
ASPRO, Europe’s leading leisure park company, has strengthened its presence in the United Kingdom with the acquisition of Oakwood, an amusement park with a range of heavily invested white knuckle and family rides based in south west Wales. Livingstone Partners’ Consumer team advised the shareholder of Oakwood on the deal.The Spanish-based ASPRO Group owns the Deep Sea World Aquarium in Fife near Edinburgh and Blue Planet Aquarium in Ellesmere Port, Chester. The company currently operates 32 leisure parks in seven countries: 13 in Spain, one in Portugal, one in Switzerland, one in Belgium, nine in France, five in Finland and, with the acquisition of Oakwood, three parks in the UK.
Livingstone worked closely with its Spanish partners to facilitate the deal and close the transaction. This is Livingstone’s 6th cross-border deal in the Consumer sector in 12 months.
Former owner of Oakwood, Paddy McNamara comments: “I am delighted that ASPRO has acquired the park, which is Wales’s largest paid for visitor attraction, as they have an excellent track record of operating leisure parks across Europe.”
Simon Cope-Thompson, Partner at Livingstone said, “We are delighted that Oakwood has found such a good home within the ASPRO group.”
Christopher Jones, deal leader at Livingstone adds: “The theme park and visitor attraction market in the UK remains highly fragmented, with a number of key successful attractive independently owned assets. We have seen a lot of interest in the sector from the larger consolidators, as well as investors keen to gain a foothold in the sector. As such, we believe that the Oakwood deal is the first of many that will happen in the coming years.”
For further information contact:
Christopher Jones
T: 00 4420 7484 4724
E: cjones@livingstonepartners.co.uk
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