Southgate Global Limited Deal Report

IBB recently advised the shareholders of Arpo Global Limited, trading as Southgate Global Limited, on the equity investment by Rutland Partners. The IBB team consisted of Adam Dowdney, Partner, and Ami Bhatt, Senior Associate in the Corporate Commercial Team, Richard Devall, Partner and Jasmin Dhillon, Solicitor in the Employment Team and Jeff Elphee in Commercial Property Team.

Southgate is a market leading solutions provider within the packaging and e-commerce fulfilment sector. From its origins as a regional UK packaging supplier in the 1960s, the business has impressively evolved through strong organic growth and several strategic acquisitions to become Europe’s largest trade supplier of machinery, equipment and associated consumables to the industrial packaging marketplace.

Southgate represents an exciting opportunity for Rutland to partner with the existing management team led by Craig Turner (shareholder and CEO of Arpo Global Limited), and further develop the group’s global footprint and manufacturing capabilities.

Rutland was selected by the Turner family because of its extensive experience in helping organisations through strategic change and further growth.

The plan going forward will include expanding services to customers, pursuing domestic and international growth objectives and exploring targeted acquisitions where appropriate.

Adam Dowdney said of the transaction: it was a pleasure to work with the Arpo Management team on this private equity investment by Rutland Partners. There were some unique, challenging issues but our full-service offering, and innovative thinking enabled us to provide solutions that worked for our client and the transaction as a whole.  It was great to work with Duncan Lamb, James Buckingham and the BDO team and all involved in this deal.  We wish the management team at Rutland every success in the future and are sure their business will go from strength to strength.

Craig Turner said: We found working with IBB was the next level for us, they have certainly proved to be a top professional law firm with City expertise. What we found refreshing was the level of responsiveness to questions and requests for information. When working through a big deal with many complexities and also at the same time trying to continue with running a fast paced company, it’s difficult to find the time to immerse yourself in all of the information. What IBB did really well was used calls and Teams sessions to break down the large documents of text and ensure that we were very well briefed and understood the most salient points of our legal position and what was being negotiated with other parties throughout the process. I would describe IBB as professional, agile, focused and very communicative. We will certainly be using them in the future and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to anyone.