Jonathan Boyers, head of corporate finance for the North of England at accountancy firm KPMG, was named Dealmaker of the Year at last night’s North West Deals of the Year Awards.
Boyers also received the award for Corporate Financier of the Year, and advised the shareholders of TravelJigsaw on that company’s sale to Priceline – which triumphed in the Best Deal over £50 million category.
Organised by EN Magazine, the Deals of the Year Awards honoured the deals and dealmakers that were judged to have done the most to add value for the region’s entrepreneurs and their businesses during the calendar year 2010. The awards were presented at a black tie ceremony held at the Point, Lancashire County Cricket Club on 31 March 2001, hosted by politician-turned-entertainer and writer Lembit Opik.
Before the presentation ceremony, guests were entertained with an after-dinner address from entrepreneur Gerald Ratner.
The awards were judged by a panel made up of:
• Darryl Cooke, founding partner of gunnercooke, former head of corporate finance at Hill Dickinson, Manchester, former head of private equity at DLA Piper.
• James Dow, founding partner of Dow Schofield Watts Corporate Finance, former North West head of corporate finance at KPMG.
• Julie Meyer, founder Ariadne Capital and Entrepreneur Country. Founder and former proprietor of First Tuesday. Investor on BBC Online Dragons’ Den.
• Jeremy Roberts, co-founder, Living Ventures.
• Stuart Anderson, editor, EN the Magazine for Entrepreneurs.
For the first time this year’s awards included a new category, Outstanding Contribution to Dealmaking. This was awarded to Roger Lane-Smith, who set up his own solicitors practice in Manchester and London in 1977 an, following a series of mergers and amalgamations, became senior partner of DLA Piper, presiding over its growth to more than 1,000 partners and over 4,000 lawyers around the world. He was chairman of the firm until his retirement in 2005 and is now a partner in specialist private client firm Lane-Smith & Schindler.