24th July 2025
Toby Rolls and Phil Lyons shared their thoughts on the UK M&A market and Leonard Curtis’s expansion into M&A Advisory and Performance Advisory alongside its successful Restructuring and Insolvency, Funding, and Legal practices.
Why now for an expansion into M&A Advisory and Performance Advisory?
Clients are seeking deep market and technical knowledge in a more sophisticated but also a more uncertain world, coupled with agility and personalised service from their partners. Leonard Curtis has a proud history of working alongside clients to help them through their toughest challenges. We see the launch of our M&A Advisory and Performance Advisory offerings as an extension of this ethos, as we seek to maximise financial potential for clients both in the everyday running of their businesses, and in the event of a sale.
You mentioned uncertainty. What about the challenges facing the UK business environment?
We feel that UK businesses and business owners have shown great resilience in the face of serious challenges over recent years. These have of course included Brexit, Covid, subsequent rapid rises in inflation and interest rates, and changing attitudes to globalisation, immigration, global trade, and tariffs. With UK inflation and interest rates now abating, and the recent U.S. trade agreement, we believe that the UK business environment is now normalising albeit with significant pressures remaining. We expect this to reduce the valuation gap that we’ve seen in some cases between buyers and sellers.
What about recent tax and national insurance changes?
We would prefer Government policy to focus on maximising tax through incentivising economic growth, rather than raising rates, particularly when doing so could directly discourage job creation. However, we do agree with the spirit of the Government’s “Growth Agenda” and on restricting spending increases where such spending doesn’t drive economic performance. We did see an uptick in M&A before the recent tax changes and we wouldn’t expect a more benign tax environment any time soon, given the challenges the Government faces in balancing the books to keep the bond market happy.
What will drive M&A activity over the next few years?
We believe that the Private Equity industry will continue to be a force for positive investment and operational and efficiency improvements. At a business level, scale and cost efficiency will remain important, but an increasingly important driver will be implementing new technologies and methodologies, including of course AI. Buyers will be aiming to use technology to grow and broaden their businesses, and sellers need this at front-of-mind in order to optimise sale valuations and certainty. In a stabilising business environment, we don’t see external economic factors as necessarily the biggest drivers of transactions, but rather individual seller preparedness and motivation, and buyer growth strategies.
Where are opportunities for Performance Advisory likely to be?
Hospitality, manufacturing, and retail in particular have felt the impact of the recent stresses on margins. However, with economic growth having been anaemic at best for large parts of the mid-market for some time, business leaders are facing challenges across the board. Our Performance Advisory offering can help to maximise profitability through a targeted optimisation of the cost base, rather than an indiscriminate slashing of costs, ensuring that clients are fit for growth, and able to capitalise on opportunities within their markets.
How can Leonard Curtis help?
We’re building a new team that focuses on normal-course businesses, alongside our market-leading practice that helps stressed and distressed companies. If you are keen to improve your business processes or are considering a sale now or in the future, we’d love to hear from you. We believe that our decades of experience and deep professional expertise can really help business owners to maximise the performance and value of their businesses.