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We build long term partnerships with clients, enabling us to be trusted advisers to corporates throughout their life cycle.
We pride ourselves on our entrepreneurial culture. We always seek innovative ways to get deals done, even in tough markets. Since our inception in the midst of the global financial crisis, Liberum has thrived whilst many other banks have struggled.
Free from the constraints bigger banks face, our structure and collaborative culture ensures our investment bankers are closer to the key investors in the markets that shape sentiment.
Investment Banking in numbers
Corporate Broking
Our Corporate Broking team is entirely focussed on UK Small & Mid Cap, advising 120 listed companies on their capital market strategies.
As a Corporate Broker, our aim is to help our clients build high quality long-term relationships with institutional investors and develop their share ownership, with the ultimate goal of ensuring good liquidity at a fair valuation for the company’s shares. We strive to bring innovative and creative ideas to our clients, helping to develop their businesses at all levels, from daily investor relations to major strategic developments.
Our clients include widely respected companies across 13 sectors of specialism:
- Chemicals / New Energy
- Consumer and Retail
- Financial Services
- Healthcare
- Housebuilders & Building Materials
- Industrials
- Investment Funds
- Leisure
- Mining / Agriculture
- Real Estate
- Support Services
- Technology and Media
- Transport
Corporate Finance
Working in industry specialist teams, we advise public and private companies, and their owners, on all aspects of corporate development from mergers and acquisitions, disposals, restructurings, refinancings, and capital distributions.
We are approved to act as Sponsor to Main Market companies and Nominated Adviser to those admitted to trading on AIM.
We combine technical expertise, innovative solutions and access to our extensive network of institutional relationships to help our clients achieve their strategic goals.
Equity Capital Markets
We are a leading adviser to ECM deals in the Small & Mid Cap space, having raised £26bn since our inception for our clients.
We’ve acted on 59 IPOs since 2007 and were No.1 for AIM IPOs in 2018, raising £418m of capital as sole bookrunner.
Raising capital in all market conditions requires hard-earned relationships with investors, built over time and rooted in trust. It demands an intimate understanding of a company’s business and ambitions, and the ability to match and source the right pools of capital for each investment opportunity.
M&A
Our M&A team is involved in merger and acquisition transactions and is led by senior industry professionals with deep commercial and technical expertise in all types of M&A. We leverage Liberum’s capital markets insights and strong corporate and institutional relationships to provide market leading advice.
Our clients include listed and unlisted corporates, entrepreneurs, private equity, family offices and hedge funds.
Areas of expertise include:
- Takeover Code regulated buy side, sell side, defence, Rule 3, mergers, reverses and take privates (including management/Newco advisory)
- Private company buy side, sell side, corporate carve out, management buy in/out
- Distressed M&A buy side and sell side
- Transaction related financing and capital structure advisory
- Dual/triple track processes
- Acquisition search and shareholder value optimisation working across all industry sectors
- Shareholder activism strategy and execution
Our fundraising achievements
Investment Banking Senior Team
Bidhi Bhoma
Chief Executive Officer
Bidhi joined Liberum in December 2017 as a Managing Director in the Investment Banking team.
Dru Danford
Head of Investment Banking
Dru is Head of the Investment Banking team at Liberum, having joined in November 2022.
Richard Crawley
Chairman, Investment Banking
Richard joined Liberum in 2013. He has over 30 years of experience, gained at Charterhouse, Credit Suisse, Oriel Securities and most recently, at Espirito Santo.
Clayton Bush
Managing Director, Investment Banking: Consumer, Leisure
Clayton joined Liberum in 2008 from Canaccord, having previously worked for Credit Lyonnais, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and PWC.
Chris Clarke
Managing Director, Investment Banking: Alternative Funds, Alternative Financials.
Chris joined Liberum in 2015 and has over 14 years of corporate finance and equity capital markets experience.
Nicholas How
Managing Director, Investment Banking: Business Services, Transport, Industrials.
Nick joined Liberum in June 2021 as a Managing Director in Investment Banking focused on the Business Services, Transport and Industrials sectors.
Andrew Godber
Managing Director, Investment Banking: Consumer, Leisure.
Andrew is a member of the Investment Banking team having joined Liberum in September 2018.
Max Jones
Managing Director, Investment Banking: Technology, Fintech and Media.
Max joined Liberum in February 2023 as a Managing Director in Investment Banking focusing on the Technology and Media sectors.
Phil Walker
Head of Healthcare, Investment Banking.
Phil joined Liberum in January 2022 as Head of Healthcare Investment Banking, having been an Investment Banker to Healthcare/Life Science companies for over 20 years.
Scott Mathieson
Head of Resources & New Energy, Investment Banking.
Scott joined Liberum in June 2020 after 6 years in the Corporate Finance team at finnCap.
Tim Medak
Co-Head, M&A, Investment Banking.
Tim joined Liberum in July 2021 as Co-Head of M&A from his own boutique corporate finance firm.
Mark Harrison
Co-Head, M&A, Investment Banking
Mark joined Liberum in July 2021 as Co-Head of M&A from his own boutique corporate finance firm.
Benjamin Cryer
Investment Banking Director
Ben joined Liberum in May 2021 as a member of the Investment Banking team.
John Fishley
Investment Banking Director
John joined Liberum in 2015 from Market Tech Holdings, where he was responsible for the project management of its successful £750m IPO on AIM.
Lauren Kettle
Investment Banking Director
Lauren joined Liberum in July 2020, after over 5 years with the corporate finance team at N+1 Singer.
Richard Lindley
Investment Banking Director
Richard joined Liberum in October 2020 after over 8 years in the Corporate Finance team at N&1 Singer.
Edward Mansfield
Investment Banking Director
Edward joined Liberum in January 2022 after 13 years in the Investment Banking team at Shore Capital.
Jamie Richards
Investment Banking Director
Jamie Richards joined Liberum in 2013 and is a Director on the Investment Banking team.
Edward Thomas
Investment Banking Director
Ed joined Liberum in January 2019 and is a member of the Investment Banking team.
Darren Vickers
Investment Banking Director
Darren joined Liberum in April 2021 as an Investment Banking Director.
Thought of the week – How do practitioners use ESG data?
To me, it is always interesting to see what investment practitioners think about ESG and how they use it in practice. No wonder then that I like a new survey by Franck Bancel and his colleagues involving 303 mostly French portfolio managers, financial analysts, ESG specialists, and company valuation experts.
Thought of the Week - The first really awesome biodiversity resource
Last year, I asked my readers to let me know if they had any good data on the relevance of biodiversity risk for investments. While I received lots of input from my readers, the input was usually company-specific and didn’t allow for a systematic analysis of biodiversity risks across companies. Furthermore, nobody could point me in the direction of any studies that showed biodiversity risk priced into markets. I said back then we were currently at the beginning of the journey. Now, it seems, we have taken a major step forward.
Thought of the week – Second best is first to lose
Fund managers are constantly trying to gather assets for their funds. One good way to do that is to win prizes and be named “Fund of the Year” or “Fund Manager of the Year”. But, especially with retail investors, this can backfire.
Thought of the Week - Corporate tax increases in a globalised world
Assume you live in the UK and the government has decided to increase corporate tax rates to 25% as of April 2023. Surely, higher corporate taxes mean that businesses will think about investing less in the UK and directing more of their investments to other countries with lower tax rates. After all, that is what economic theory says and what most of us learned at university. By now, you probably know me well enough to know that if it was that simple, I wouldn’t be writing about this topic here…
Thought of the week – Greenwashing with green bonds
A couple of months ago, I read an analysis of around 1,000 green bonds issued by governments and corporations. It made me very angry. Unlike sustainability-linked loans and bonds, which are general purpose bonds, the Green Bond Principles require that the proceeds from issuing such bonds are ringfenced and used for eligible green projects. Yet, it seems that the lawyers have done a great job in negating the very essence of the Green Bond Principles and turned them into another exercise of greenwashing.
