Richard Jones

Richard is a partner in the Corporate team of Blake Morgan LLP, based primarily in the Cardiff office and is also a member of the Restructuring and Insolvency group.

Main areas of practice

Richard deals with a broad range of corporate matters and has extensive experience advising on acquisitions, disposals, management buy-outs and buy-ins, private equity transactions, corporate and contractual joint ventures, investments, shareholder agreements, corporate restructurings, reorganisations and refinancing exercises together with general corporate matters.

He also has experience advising insolvency practitioners, typically administrators, in connection with their appointment and the eventual sale of insolvent businesses.

Clients

Richard has acted for a wide variety of clients in relation to corporate matters including listed companies, venture-capital backed management teams, PLC’s, SME’s, start-ups, founder shareholders and owner-managed businesses.

Richard has acted for a variety of institutional clients including banks and private equity investors on a range of transactions from start-up investments, subsequent funding rounds, exits and the provision of senior acquisition finance and development capital.

Richard’s particular expertise includes advise in connection with:

• Private equity investments and funding
• Venture capital investment
• Shareholder Agreements and equity incentive arrangements
• M&A, Acquisitions and Disposals
• Corporate Governance
• Group restructuring
• Due Diligence

Significant experience

Richard has acted on the following significant transactions in the past 36 months:

Private Equity 

• Advised London-based luxury villa rental brand, The Thinking Traveller on its £7m investment by Piper and subsequent acquisition of Greek-based villa rental brand, White Key villas
• Advised leading digital agency, Unrvld, on its growth capital investment by BGF
• Advised fast-growing D2C consumer tech accessories brand, Mous, on numerous funding rounds including crowd-funding campaigns, growth capital investment round led by Piper, strategic commercial deal with Channel 4 Ventures and crowd-funding campaigns.
• Advised leisure and adventure group, Zip World Group in connection with the £45m management buyout backed by LDC and HSBC.
• Advised management team of traffic management group in connection with the £25m management buyout backed by LDC and HSBC Bank. Subsequently advised the same management team in connection with the secondary sale of the group by LDC to H2 Equity Partners for an undisclosed sum.
• Advised LDC in connection with the following transactions:
  • £30m acquisition of IT services group, Vista Retail Support;
  • £18m investment into pharma development business, TMC Pharma Services
• Advising the management team of consumer lending business, Fluro, on its investment by Intriva Capital 

Venture Capital and Early-Stage Investment 

• Advising green tech business, QLM Technology, and its investors on £3m seed funding round and subsequent £12m series A investment round
• Advising robotics and automation start-up on numerous seed and early-stage funding rounds
• Acting for Development Bank of Wales in connection with numerous equity and debt investments into South Wales based early-stage start-ups and SME’s.

M&A

• Advised leading digital agency group and Sitecore platinum partner, Unrvld, on its acquisition of digital marketing agencies, Delete and Made to Engage.
• Advised leading vehicle remarketing and recycling group, Copart UK, on its acquisition of salvage and recycling specialist, Hills Motors
• Advised global engineering and electronics manufacturing services group, Escatec on its strategic acquisition of electro-manufacturing engineering group JJS Manufacturing.
• Advised global semi-conductor manufacturer, Nexperia, on its £63m acquisition of Newport Wafer Fab
• Acting for Barchester Healthcare in connection with its acquisition of 24 care homes from Four Seasons Group.
• Acting for the management team in connection with the debt-funded management buyout of specialist engineering business based in South Wales.
• Advising global media group on various matters including advising on complex group restructuring exercises, significant refinancing and a partial return of value to shareholders, the refinancing of the group’s banking facilities and buyout of institutional investor.

Expertise

• Corporate & Commercial
• Insolvency
• Commercial Contracts
• Commercial Disputes

Career

Richard completed LLB in Law at Cardiff University before moving on to study his LPC in 2004.