Houlihan acquires Leonardo's German, Dutch and Spanish operations

Aside from the German, Dutch and Spanish purchase, both firms have agreed for the Italian operations to be coordinated via a joint venture where Houlihan will be a minority shareholder.

Houlihan's newly acquired European corporate finance business will be led by Steve Winningham, who heads the firm's dedicated arm on the continent, as well as Leonardo CEO Matteo Manfredi. In addition, the latter was appointed CEO for the Italian joint venture.

Houlihan, which recently advised on Palamon's takeover of The Rug Company and Caledonia's £241m carve-out of Gala Bingo, will strengthen its foothold within European corporate finance services.

The firm looks set to benefit from Leonardo's 54-strong workforce across offices in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Madrid, Milan and Rome. Over the past year, the team has worked on transactions such as Change Capital Partners' trade sale of German fashion brand Hallhuber and Apax Partners' €730m take-private of Dutch business software developer Exact.

The purchase of most of Leonardo's remaining European operations comes nine months after Natixis carved out the bank's French subsidiary, featuring 25 employees and a track record of 30 deals a year.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Advisory
• DACH
• Benelux
• Southern Europe
• Germany
• Netherlands
• Spain
• Houlihan Lokey