OakNorth partners with Westbrooke to provide AURELIUS with £24.5m to support its acquisition of TM Group

By Bridging Loan Directory 8th August 2023

OakNorth, the neobank for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs, has partnered with Westbrooke Alternative Asset Management (“Westbrooke”) to provide AURELIUS, the pan-European alternative investment firm, with a £24.5m loan to support its acquisition of TM Group.

The Group is a renowned specialist for complex investments with operational improvement potential such as corporate carve-outs, platform build-ups or succession solutions as well as specialised financing solutions.

Founded in 2005, with more than 200 transactions completed to date, AURELIUS has built a strong track record for delivering superior returns to its investors through its flexible approach, uncompromising focus on operational excellence, ability to carry out multi-dimensional transactions, prudent risk management and long-term investment philosophy.

The £24.5m co-loan from OakNorth and Westbrooke has supported AURELIUS’ acquisition of TM Group, a leading provider of property search aggregation services, supplying law firms with property searches, a key element of due diligence for all property purchases in the UK.

The searches TM Group offers include: Title, Local Authority, Water & Drainage and Environmental.

Many of these are mandatory in any conveyancing process and all searches in the UK are charged by solicitors as a disbursement cost within the property buying process.

Stuart Blair, Debt Finance Director at OakNorth, says:

“AURELIUS’ deep operational expertise and experience enable it to accelerate value creation within its portfolio companies – something TM Group will now be able to benefit from.

By partnering with Westbrooke, we’ve been able to support two excellent businesses – AURELIUS and TM Group – in realising their growth ambitions.

We’re grateful to the team at Westbrooke for introducing the transaction to us – the team was highly collaborative and commercial in their approach which made the partnership that much more enjoyable and fruitful for all parties involved.”

Grayden Reece-Smith, Investment Principal at AURELIUS, commented:

“TM Group has an established presence within the UK property market, providing search aggregation services which are a key component of the UK conveyancing process.

Since its founding in 1999, it has achieved a leading market position and revenues of £62m in 2022.

The OakNorth and Westbrooke teams worked seamlessly together to ensure everything ran smoothly and that we were kept up to date at every stage of the process.

Thanks to the speed at which they operated, we were able to get the deal closed shortly after receiving approval from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority.”