Succession advises The Vitec Group on Divestments

Livingstone affiliate sets stage for cross-border deals

Livingstone’s affiliate firm Succession Corporate Finance has demonstrated its international reach in a divestment programme for The Vitec Group plc.

Succession advised Vitec on the recently announced exit from its Staging division, which supplies standard aluminium trusses and custom stage sets to the theatre and concert markets.

After initially contacting Livingstone, Vitec was recommended by the firm to Succession Corporate Finance, which was co-founded by Livingstone and former partner Gordon Blair in 2007 and which focuses on smaller deals than Livingstone.

Vitec is an international provider of products and services for broadcast, photographic and military, aerospace and government markets. The board determined the Staging business, which had 2011 revenues of £17.7m, to be non-core earlier in 2012.

The sale of the Staging business was completed as two separate transactions. MILOS S.R.O., based in the Czech Republic, acquired the majority of the Staging business that consists of companies based in the US, Mexico, Italy, and Slovakia. Prolyte Products of The Netherlands purchased the remaining Staging business, Brilliant Stages, which is based in the UK.

Commenting on the disposals, Stephen Bird, Group CEO of Vitec said: “We are pleased to have secured the sale of our Staging business to two leading staging and truss manufacturers. The disposals will enable us to focus on our core markets and our strategic objective of providing products and services that support the capture of exceptional images.”

Martin Green, Head of Business Development at Vitec added: “Succession were recommended to us and we appointed them to advise on the sale of five non-core subsidiaries in five countries. We asked them to run a full competitive international auction process and achieve legally completed deals within four months. We sold the UK business to a Dutch buyer within three months, and the other four to a buyer from the Czech Republic.

“Succession provided us with experienced deal-doers who continually drove forward the complex international process and achieved exactly what they said they would, and what we asked of them. We had a great working relationship. It was a real advantage to our group to have the support of partner-led advisers who concentrate on the lower mid market rather than using advisers who prefer doing larger deals, where you are left working with a less experienced associate.”