Numis at a glance
Message from the Co-CEOs
Alex Ham and Ross Mitchinson share their views on the strengths, achievements and future of the firm.
Staying focused on our journey
Given the underlying political uncertainties, macroeconomic factors and markets that have been subdued yet volatile – without doubt, it has been a tough year for everyone in the industry.
But it has also been a year of opportunity for us to continue on our journey to grow the size and quality of our business. Our ambition is to become the investment bank of a generation – a dynamic, client-focused investment bank. An investment bank for our exciting fast-changing times.
Focusing on the critical factors that are in our hands, we place enduring emphasis on achieving great growth and fostering outstanding talent. We have continued to add to our capabilities and services and to selectively hire brilliant people, taking full advantage of the opportunities that are presented during tough markets.
Ongoing growth
We are obsessive about making sure the business keeps growing – from gaining new clients to targeting increases in market share and building out our proposition. We are very proud of the number and quality of our corporate and institutional clients, and of how many have been with us for a long time. Being a long-term trusted adviser is at the heart of our purpose and ambition, so to see our client list grow and clients stay with us is hugely satisfying and galvanising.
We have the best corporate client list we’ve ever had. We have the best people we’ve ever had. We’ve got more strings to our bow than we’ve ever had and we continue to be energetically focused on what we do.
We have also made great progress this year in the unquoted market following the restructuring of our private markets business. This is an exciting area for us. We now have greater rigour and focus around later stage investment opportunities and this is paying dividends both in terms of transactions, fees and profile. Our fee income has gone from zero in 2018 to over £8m in 2019.
We were particularly pleased to be the sole strategic adviser on the $460m Klarna transaction. Klarna is now the biggest private fintech company in Europe. This was a pivotal deal for us. It demonstrated that we can advise international businesses and introduce global investors to companies that are leading disruption in their own sector.
We have continued to invest in advancing our core services. We have for example built out our M&A capability both in terms of talent and deal flow. We are aiming to become a market leader in advising on UK mid-market public takeovers. Our market share has increased, and we have a huge opportunity to make further gains. A key advantage for us here is the quality of our capital markets insights and institutional relationships. This enables us to give a deeper and broader level of advice to the boards of our clients.
We have also added new services to broaden our offer to both corporate and institutional clients. Our debt advisory service was introduced at the beginning of the year. It ties in very neatly with our M&A service, enabling us to advise our corporate clients not just on equity but also debt. Our event driven service builds on our strengths in equity research and execution, opening up our Equities service to specialist funds focused on merger arbitrage.
Towards the end of this year we also commenced the build of an electronic trading offering to capitalise on the long-term structural trend in equities while complementing our core high touch trading offer. We are building out a high quality product suite which will facilitate best execution and efficient trading, particularly in larger, more liquid shares.
In addition, we added to our research capability, with the introduction of a team focused on the banking sector.
We’re very proud to say that for the seventh year running we won the UK Small & Mid Caps Extel survey, as voted by institutions. It’s a great quality stamp courtesy of our clients.
Outstanding talent
Our amazing people are the heart and soul of Numis. We are immensely proud of their non-stop commitment and contribution.
We are obsessive about the quality and cultural fit of the people we hire, whether that is the junior talent we take on through our rigorous internship and graduate recruitment programmes or our selective senior hires.
We are constantly reinforcing the quality of the people in the business – from being very selective about who we hire through to our ongoing investment in the training, development and wellbeing of everyone in the firm. We invest a great deal in supporting our people, to help them grow in the business, improve and really push themselves.
We are also very conscious of the need to invest in and support personal resilience and wellbeing, diversity and inclusion and a good work-life balance. This is a core part of being a modern forward-thinking investment bank.
The culture here is one where people feel empowered, they take responsibility for their actions, they care deeply about the firm and the progress we make. And we absolutely work as one firm. There are no silos or internal bureaucracies. It’s highly joined up and collaborative.
Our high performance culture
We spend a lot of time and energy on our high performance culture – enhancing it and making the most of it for our clients, our people, our firm.
Over and above the excellent skills and capabilities of our people – their raw talent – it is their shared attitude, energy and drive that makes all the difference. We are advisers in partnership with our clients. Therefore, we have to exhibit humility, we have to be constantly looking to improve. So, if you find brilliant talented people who are humble and incredibly hard working, who are constantly looking for new ways of doing things, who have high energy, are really ambitious – then you can establish valuable relationships with clients.
Defining our core values
This year we involved the whole firm in defining our four core values: partnership, excellence, dynamism and creativity. These values distil our culture down to the four core beliefs that guide and inspire all of us in the firm to do our very best in achieving our ambition to be the investment bank of a generation. What is more, they resonate and create a stronger bond with the type of clients we love to work with, and the people we love to hire. In short, they guide and inspire us internally and attract externally.Focusing on partnership
Of course, we work extremely closely with our clients when there is a particular transaction, project or task to be done. But for us partnership goes way beyond this activity to encompass the non-stop focus we put on thinking about our clients’ best interests and actively looking for ways to serve them, for example by helping them leverage our global network. We spend a lot of time with our clients understanding what makes them tick, what they are worried about and how we can mitigate it, what their ambitions are and how we can help realise them. It is about building genuinely strong relationships rooted in mutual trust, amicability and benefit – relationships that naturally deepen the more we get to know and help our clients.Focusing on excellence
We look to deliver excellence in everything we do. Crucially, it is about excellence for and in the eyes of our clients. We do absolutely everything we can to ensure we deliver the highest quality service and experience for each and every one of our clients. It is a highly tailored approach and commitment where we are looking at all the angles, opportunities and risks for clients – thinking ahead and acting fast in their best interests.Focusing on dynamism
For us, dynamism comes down to intensity. It is about being able to manoeuvre and deploy a team quickly for maximum effect. Coming up with ideas and acting on them. Getting on with stuff and getting it done. This high energy attitude strikes a chord with our similarly dynamic entrepreneurial clients.Focusing on creativity
We are not content with standardised, generalised approaches. We look for new and better ways of doing things. Bespoke ideas and solutions that fit a particular client at a particular point in time. This more creative way of doing things is a big attractor both for our clients, who appreciate getting a service that really delivers for them, and for our people, who enjoy having more freedom and encouragement to come up with ways to really have a positive impact.There’s a huge amount of ambition, energy and focus in the firm. People are excited about what we’re trying to do – there’s a real sense of purpose and drive throughout the business.
Looking ahead
This has been a tough year but we remain very excited about the opportunity ahead of us.
We continue to focus on building our client base, our talent, our offer – on having an ever greater impact as an outstanding investment bank for our exciting times.We aim to advise more ambitious companies which themselves are disrupting their sectors for the better, to execute more deals that are particularly interesting, to back more fantastic management teams. In so doing we will attract and develop brilliant high energy talent, and create greater value for our clients, our colleagues, our shareholders
– for everyone involved in our great firm