Lancashire Telegraph Business Awards 2010: Deal of the Year nominees (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Lancashire Telegraph Business Awards 2010: Deal of the Year nominees

4:48pm Thursday 11th November 2010 in Business By Chris Hopper, Reporter

THE nominees for Deal of the Year in the Lancashire Telegraph Business Awards are Bglobal Metering, Mitchell's Scaffolding and Promethean.

BGLOBAL METERING

BGLOBAL’S multi-million pound takeover of near-neighbour Utiligroup was so large it almost doubled staff at the Darwen firm and created a ‘smart energy’ behemoth.

The deal is not without its risks – stock market-listed Bglobal is still yet to make a profit – but bosses believe it will mark out the East Lancashire group as a global leader in the ‘green’ field.

Bglobal was founded just six years ago and was floated on the Alternative Investment Market in 2007 in search of ready capital to expand.

Since then, the company has found investors keen on its strategy of designing and manufacturing ‘smart meters’ which measure energy usage for businesses, schools and other organisations.

Among Bglobal’s blue-chip clients are Vodafone, NPower and Manchester Council. Given that, bosses believed the big-money swoop in July made sense.

It will give Bglobal control over Utiligroup subsidiary Utilisoft, which is a leading data management firm, Utilisoft Australia, which supplies software in Asia, and IT provider Utiliserve.

Chief executive Peter Barnes said: “Even before the widespread domestic roll out of smart meters in the UK, smart metering is driving the creation of innovative new business models and Bglobal is positioning itself to lead in these opportunities.

“The enlarged group’s strategy is to create a full service, end-to-end smart energy value chain of products, services and new software applications which will help to build Britain’s low carbon, smart energy future.”

The deal for Utiligroup, of Phoenix Park, Blackburn, was worth up to £12.8million in cash and shares, but Bglobal insists it will give the enlarged company a stranglehold over the lucrative smart meter market. Investors are keen too. Shares in Bglobal leapt in July on news of the takeover and despite six years of losses, the firm remains buoyant on the stock market.

Meanwhile, experts predict the company will head into the black in 2011. It all suggests Bglobal will be an East Lancashire giant for years to come.

MITCHELL’S SCAFFOLDING

FOR some companies, one big contract can change everything.

At Mitchell’s Scaffolding, a six figure deal with Bolton Council, covering social housing, guaranteed two years of steady work in an industry that was ravaged by the recession.

The collapse of the property market in 2008 led Clayton-le-Moors-based Mitchell’s to make several staff redundant. But the deal with Bolton Council, which was described as a ‘great relief’, has enabled bosses to re-employ several laid-off workers.

Managing director Stuart Mitchell said the company was invited to tender for the job along with almost 20 others. The contract will provide a steady stream of work for a firm that was hit badly by 2008’s property crash.

Even this year, the firm predicts it will lose 15 per cent of sales from companies that have fallen into administration.

Mr Mitchell said: “A lot of people we were working for went under in the crisis, and that left us out of pocket.

“However, this sort of contract is great for us.

“It is steady income and for a reference in future it is great to show you have worked for a council.”

Meanwhile, Mr Mitchell hopes the Bolton deal will allow the company, which will soon employ 15, to achieve a more secure business model.

He said: “I am hoping this is the turning point and we will never look back from here.”

PROMETHEAN

IT is the deal that can genuinely be described as ‘once in a lifetime’.

When Blackburn-based interactive whiteboard firm Promethean completed a £400million floatation on to the London Stock Exchange earlier this year, it was the result of 11 years of building the company up and months of frantic preparation ahead of a public listing.

The firm, founded by Ribble Valley entrepreneur Tony Cann in 1999, is now one of East Lancashire’s most visible businesses, trading in dozens of countries across the globe.

And even though Promethean’s share price has taken a hit since the March float, the deal remains one of just a handful of big initial public offerings on the UK market this year.

Among those heavily involved in preparing the deal were chief executive Jean-Yves Charlier, chief financial officer Neil Johnson and head of investor relations Simon Bielecki. Mr Bielecki said: “Going from private to public is a massive step for us and it is not the sort of decision you take lightly.

“Neil Johnson put a lot of these things in place before we floated, to the extent that we were basically a private company operating like a public one.

“The effect since we floated has been fantastic.

“It raises the profile of the company to an unbelievable extent.”

Although the benefits of listing on the stock market – such as more publicity and a ready stream of capital – are attractive, it also means stringent rules on financial reporting, more scrutiny and a need to appoint non-executive directors to the board.

Bosses at Promethean – whose whiteboards are in schools across the world – now also deliver regular briefings on their products to ultra-demanding investors.