SearchHURST team to the fore as Growth Company acquires Winning Moves
A team at HURST has advised the Manchester-headquartered Growth Company on its latest acquisition.
The Growth Company’s consulting arm GC Insight has bought Birmingham-based business support, research and evaluation firm Winning Moves for an undisclosed sum.
Ben Bradley and Isabelle Luscombe of HURST’s corporate finance team and Adrian Young and Sarah Haley in HURST’s tax team advised Growth Company on the deal.
Growth Company is an award-winning social enterprise with a mission to enable growth, create jobs and improve lives. The buyout bolsters GC’s growing consulting offer and will help to strengthen its infrastructure and growth across the UK.
GC established a consulting offer in 2021 with the acquisition of research and consulting company ekosgen.
Winning Moves and ekosgen will continue to trade independently and, together with the Growth Company, under a new brand ‘GC Insight’, offering clients their combined breadth of services from its pool of 40-plus consultants for research and advisory work.
The combined team will help organisations and partnerships to plan for the future, secure investment, improve their impact and demonstrate the benefits they generate.
GC Insight delivers creative thinking on new solutions, service design for efficient delivery, technical help to secure funding and planning approvals, advice on operational performance, and economic and social impact evaluations.
Founded in 1995, Winning Moves offers two core services. It delivers support to more than 100,000 businesses in the UK and overseas to drive growth and performance.
Its client base includes local and national government departments, publicly-funded organisations and international organisations including the United Nations and Enterprise Ireland.
Following the deal, Winning Moves’ chief executive Adrian Davies has departed the company to pursue other business interests. Chief operating officer Debs Secker has been promoted to managing director.
Ben Bradley said: ““It was a pleasure working with the Growth Company on this acquisition. I look forward to seeing the combined businesses thrive as part of the enlarged group, and wish the departing shareholders all the very best for the future.”
Simon Hooton, managing director of GC Insight, said: “This is the culmination of many months of work and builds on GC’s commitment to create a compelling commercial consulting offer with purpose.
“Winning Moves has a really strong reputation in its core markets and a very capable team of researchers and advisors, which we want to grow. GC is committed to supporting the Winning Moves team to realise its potential in our social enterprise model alongside the rest of our GC Insight team.
“Together GC, ekosgen and Winning Moves aim to be a market-leading team that helps economic development organisations and businesses improve their impact and more effectively demonstrate the benefits they generate.
“This investment allows us to deliver creative thinking on new solutions, service design for efficient delivery, technical help to secure approvals, advice on operational performance, and impact evaluation to measure value for money.”
Debs Secker said: “We’re excited for the next chapter at Winning Moves. With a strong history of working collaboratively with GC, we’re confident that together we will be greater than the sum of our parts.
“Our existing customers can be assured that we are similarly aligned with GC regarding values and ethos, and I’m sure they will be delighted with the enriched service offering this acquisition will bring about.”