Charles Russell Speechlys has advised leading independent caterer and Royal Warrant holder, CH&Co Catering Limited, on its merger with the HCM Group (Host Catermasters Group) in a deal which gives the new combined business a turnover approaching £200m, and a team of 4,500 providing services to over 400 operations across the UK and Ireland.

The enlarged group will be called the CH&Co Group and it will be headed up by HCM’s CEO, Bill Toner, who will now be Group CEO, with CH&Co’s Co-Founders, Robyn and Tim Jones, continuing in their previous roles as Founder and Chairman respectively. Charles Russell Speechlys advised Robyn and Tim Jones on the deal.

The deal was backed by MML Capital, which provides capital to private businesses for expansion, acquisitions, recapitalisations and management buyouts.

Tim Jones explained, “We’re starting to see more consolidation in our industry, some of which is through new entrants to our market, and we want to be leading this because there are only so many opportunities to build on this scale. Between our two companies, we have an excellent track record of long standing client relationships and we’re now represented across a wider range of hospitality sub-sectors than either company was before, which also gives us the operational scale on a national basis to compete even more effectively.”

“Both organisations have excellent client retention records and we have a very experienced management team across our new company with in-depth experience of mergers and acquisitions, and post-deal integration. We’re very confident that this merger will go smoothly and both companies will become even stronger as one entity.”

Tim went on to say “the transaction required advice from a range of legal experts and it was excellent for Robyn and me to see these co-ordinated by the corporate team at Charles Russell Speechlys and we are very grateful to Andrew and Adam for their support and advice through the process”.

The Charles Russell Speechlys team was led by Corporate Partners Andrew Clarke and Adam Crossley with assistance from Corporate Associates Holly Sage and Emily Davies. Teams from Tax (Robert Bircall), Pensions (Lee Colgate) and Employment (Trevor Bettany, Anne-Marie Balfour and Kirsty Laird) also provided support.