The Corporate team at Squire Patton Boggs in Manchester won AIM Deal of the Year last night at the 2016 North West Business Insider Dealmakers Awards.
The winning deal was identity management specialist GB Group’s acquisition of ID scan Biometrics Limited, a creator of ID scanning verification document and passport authentication software, and its placing of 9,090,910 new ordinary shares on the AIM market. The judges commended it as a “well-timed and technically executed deal” which was struck a week before the EU referendum and completed a week after.
The team advising longstanding client GB Group on the deal was led by Corporate partner Giles Chesher and included associates Jonathan Paines, Laura Green and Luke Humphries (Corporate), Victoria Carpenter (Tax Strategy & Benefits), senior associate James Pike (Labour & Employment) and partner Adam Hastings (Corporate, Leeds).
The firm was also a finalist in five other awards. These included Law Firm of the Year; Deal of the Year (£50m plus), for advising on the sale of MPM Products; and International Deal of the Year, for advising on the sale of AppSense to LANDesk.
Giles Chesher commented: “It is great to see so many of our deals judged to be amongst the cream of transactions completed in the North West this year; testament to the hard work of the corporate team and our colleagues in other practices.”