"One of the best nights of the year" - the corporate finance community comes together for the North East Dealmakers Awards. Insider speakers to the event's judges, sponsors and winners.
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00:00I'm absolutely delighted this evening to be here at the
00:292024 Insider Dealmakers Awards. Without doubt this is the event of the year
00:35when it comes to North East dealmaking. Of course I'm really looking forward to
00:40catching up with lots of professional connections, contacts and friends and of
00:45course there'll be later on perhaps an award or two allocated to a number of
00:50individuals who contributed materially to transactions in the region but
00:54tonight for me it's about celebrating everybody's success and what makes
00:58dealmaking in the North East excellent.
01:28It was so close. In my former job I was a private practice solicitor and it's one of the best nights of the year to make sure you can see everybody from the North East business community in one room at one time and it is great to catch up with everybody.
01:41Looking forward to catching up with a lot of friends within the sector here. It's a close-knit community. It's very collaborative.
01:50We want to celebrate the success of our peers and all the advisors we work with.
01:55It's just a general feel-good atmosphere here. There's a lot going on in the North East. A lot of great advisory teams to celebrate.
02:03This is as buoyant as I've seen it for a long time. There was news today of Blackstone investing in an AI data centre and that's the tip of the iceberg for what's going on in the North East.
02:16Everyone's busy. The good news is there's plenty of funding available for businesses in the North East.
02:23It's somewhere where people want to start, want to grow and there's lots of advisors here to help them grow here tonight.
02:29Amazing. This is an incredibly personal award. We started this business from nothing so to get the recognition genuinely means a huge amount to us and a bunch of thoughts for the team and the clients we've worked with.
02:43Huge, huge award for us. It wasn't easy.
02:48It was two guys in a room with an idea and a vision and a belief that we could do something really good and the thing that allowed us to do it was the team.
02:58For this to be a team award is entirely appropriate.
03:02The thing I think we're both most proud that we've ever done in our career is assembling the people that we've got.
03:07I don't think they realise how talented they are and we're incredibly proud of them.
03:14The five years we've had as Worthingham's Alley have been a big success and we're looking forward to the next five years and more as FRP Corporate Finance.
03:23I'm incredibly excited. I suppose it's time to look to the next chapter.
03:27I think what we've done is something we're really proud of.
03:31The deal we've been able to do with FRP I think gives us the platform to take this to the next level.
03:37We're really excited for what we can do as a business, what the Oldsville organisation can do in the region, what we can help the business community and clients with.
03:47We're incredibly excited. It's been a crazy few months but it's amazing.
03:53It's the one time of the year that all the people who work in the industry that we work in gather together and recognise that we work hard and we do good things.
04:04I think we all look forward to it, we all enjoy it, we all celebrate it and long may that continue.
04:12It feels amazing to win, especially in a year when we're a team of the year as well.
04:18So it makes it extra special to win Warrior of the Year at the same time.
04:22I don't like to pick quite one because I don't like to have favourites but I'm working on lots of great deals.
04:28The sale of Sweet Dreams was shortlisted tonight as well so that one probably stands out.
04:33We're just excited to keep doing more deals. We've got a great community in Calabrist and everybody works really well together so we're just excited to do more.
04:43It's fantastic. It's a genuine honour and privilege and ultimately a great to see the recognition of the team's hard work throughout the year.
04:54I'm biased towards the North East because it's where I'm from, it's where I grew up and it's ultimately home.
05:01I think in all of our regional communities around the country you have great spirit, great camaraderie, healthy competition.
05:08Here I think we have that in spades and we also have real quality across all of the categories here.
05:15The funders, the lawyers, the investors, the advisors, real good quality that can stand toe to toe with anyone anywhere in the country.
05:23You can talk yourselves down and we can talk ourselves into negativity.
05:26I think we have to be optimistic. The last few months the tide has turned, the direction of travel looks positive and keep fingers crossed.