Douglas-Westwood has enjoyed an active autumn providing market and commercial insight to both trade and private equity firms in the process of buying and selling oilfield services, engineering and equipment companies.
“With focused and timely provision of our core service offering in market sizing, client consultations, competitive analysis and business plan reviews, our clients have completed a number of transactions in the last quarter. With one of the largest focused teams of commercial and strategy consultants, all our core global offices have been busy on some flagship deals in the sector that have completed, while they have also been working on a high number that our clients decided to withdraw from” commented Andrew Reid, group CEO.
“We are seeing that increased interest in the energy sector from private equity coupled with global growth and consolidation within the energy sector itself is bringing a broader international element to our work, often working with clients and targets that span the globe. Our business has grown and internationalised to the extent that we now have both industry-leading insight and the ability to effectively deliver it to our clients with 24hr time zone coverage from our offices in the Americas, Europe and Asia.”
The DW London and Canterbury offices supported Graphite in the sale of NES to AEA, providing commercial diligence to the vendor. Director Steve Robertson noted that: “Our team worked closely with NES and the lead advisor in the sales process, meeting with potential buyers and discussing the findings of our work and the underlying models and methodology. The ability to build a ‘bottom-up’ model of future activity, driven by identified future prospects was a key deliverable in the workscope and helped underpin the continued strong growth outlook for the business.”
DW staff in the UK and Singapore have also provided market due diligence services to Castle Harlan, Champ Ventures and Lime Rock Partners in the $1.05 billion acquisition of 38 jackup drilling rigs from Transocean to form Shelf Drilling International. The workscope included review of drilling demand-side and supply-side activity in several key geographies in addition to a consideration of the specification of the fleet and suitability in each of the target markets. In addition to the industry leading insight and research, DW’s international presence spanning some 14 time zones enabled effective communication with the client teams in both New York and Sydney.
In the US, the sale of Houston-based Texas Honing Inc was announced in October, with DW supporting the seller with a comprehensive market review. Director Mike Haney commented “we are seeing a buoyant market here in our Houston office and look forward to continuing to support our private equity and oilfield industry clients.”
In Asia, DW Singapore office has assisted many clients within both the Singapore community and the wider Asian region. Recent announced deals include the Champ Ventures acquisition of Sea Swift and Dunedin acquisition of Premier Hytemp.