OCS’s acquisition of Accuro Group Holdings Limited

The Strategic Corporate Finance team was engaged to carry out financial due diligence (FDD) on the acquisition of Accuro Group Holdings, a contract cleaning and hard facilities management business working for schools and healthcare sites throughout England.

In 2016, OCS completed the acquisition of Accuro Catering, the food services division of the Accuro Group. In 2019, OCS engaged the Price Bailey team to carry out due diligence into the proposed acquisition of the remainder of the group, then owned by Accuro Support Services Ltd. This involved carrying out a thorough review of historical trading and financial projections.

For commercial reasons, the transaction was not completed and the Accuro group instead undertook a management buy-out, with Chief Executive Nigel Prothero becoming the majority shareholder. The business saw strong growth following the restructuring, and OCS returned to the transaction in 2023, again engaging Price Bailey following the high quality of the initial work and their familiarity with the Target business.

The team were able to utilise their extensive background knowledge of the business to perform targeted analysis on Accuro, while noting the changes within the business that had occurred since our previous report to ensure detailed coverage was provided over every aspect of the business. Our reporting was focused on historical and current trading, balance sheet, and cash flow. We carried out a detailed review of their working capital position, in order to ascertain the true ‘normalised’ position, as well as considering the need for any additional adjustments to the quality of earnings.

Our report provided assurance to OCS on the recent performance of the business and highlighted possible cost savings as part of the transaction, ensuring value was added. Furthermore, following a recent internal review into our due diligence best practice, we produced a polished report that was interactive and easily navigable for the client.