Rutland invests in Aston Barclay

Former Sytner Group CEO Laurence Vaughan also invested and will take a seat on the company's board in the capacity of non-executive chairperson. Aston Barclay's founders, the Scarborough family, will retain a significant stake in the business and maintain their seats on the board following the deal.

Under its new ownership structure, the company will open a new auction site at Donington Park, East Midlands, and invest in its IT infrastructure. The deal comes shortly after the company appointed former HPI managing director and Manheim dealer sales director Neil Hodson as CEO.

Financial details of the transaction remain undisclosed, though Rutland typically makes investments of £10-50m in companies valued at £20-150m. The deal is the fifth investment made with capital drawn from Rutland Fund III, which held a final close on £263m in January 2015.

Company
Founded in 1984 and headquartered in Chelmsford, Aston Barclay is a car auction group focusing on fleet and dealership vendors. The company operates across four auction centres in Essex, Yorkshire, Shropshire and Wiltshire, with its Donington Park site due to open in 2017 and expand in 2018.

Aston Barclay generated a turnover of £19.4m in the year ending November 2016, according to publicly available documents, with operating profit of £3.8m.

People
Rutland Partners – Oliver Jones (partner); Tristan Craddock, Jason Birt (investment managers).
Aston Barclay – Neil Hodson (CEO); Glenn Scarborough (director).

Advisers
Equity – Dentons, Stephen Levy, Joseph Altendorff (legal); CIL, Jon Whiteman, James de La Salle (commercial due diligence); PwC, James Tubby, Jamie Grigg, Ben Smith, Darren Jukes (financial due diligence, tax, corporate finance); Livingstone Partners, Bill Troup, Neil Smith (debt advisory).
Company – Livingstone Partners, Alex John, Barry Sheehan (corporate finance); Howard Kennedy, Ashley Reeback, Gillian White (legal); DSA Prospect, Nick Byfield, Doug MacLeod (tax).

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