Gordon Blair

Partner

Prior to co-founding Succession Corporate Finance with Livingstone Partners, he spent 13 years at Livingstone Partners having previously been at corporate lawyers Dickson Minto WS. Gordon has led over 65 transactions in many sectors, advising owner managers, corporates, banks, private equity houses and management teams. In particular, he has completed a number of software, support services and speciality manufacturers transactions – both in the UK and cross border. He is also a regular speaker on the seminar platform and has had many articles published on buying and selling unquoted companies.

He has acted as a principal having been part of the team which bought out the original founder of Livingstone in 1999, sold it to an AIM listed group in 2001 and bought it back in 2003.

Education:
LLB (Hons), Dip LP, Solicitor (non- practicing)

Min Luk

Partner

Min graduated from the University of Manchester in 1992 with a degree in Law. He joined Berwin Leighton in 1993, where he qualified as a solicitor before moving to Baring Brothers’ corporate finance department in 1995. In 1998 Min joined Cavendish Corporate Finance where, as partner, he led the business services team and completed over 30 transactions. In 2009 Min co-founded Park Capital to focus on MBOs/MBIs, before joining Succession in 2011. Min has worked on a wide range of UK and cross-border transactions for public and private companies, including disposals, acquisitions, flotations, rights issues, management buy-outs, reverse take-overs and several UK public offers.

Education:
LLB (Hons), CF, Solicitor (non- practicing)

Marcus Moir

Advisory Partner

Marcus Moir is an architecture graduate, who began his business career in manufacturing with Pilkington. After graduating from Manchester Business School's full time MBA programme, he spent 12 years working in mid-market corporate finance. For most of this period he was a partner of Livingstone Guarantee, responsible for the firm's membership of the Global M&A network, and a leading member of the team responsible for selling the company in 2001. He left the business in 2003 to develop his ambition to grow a portfolio of private company investments, which remains his primary focus. He is currently chief executive of recycling business Ecco Development, Chairman of Meltech Engineering and non-executive director of software publisher, Claricom.

Education:
MA (Hons) Architecture, MBA

Miikka Metsanvirta

Analyst

After graduating from the University of Westminster with BA(Hons) degree in International Business, Miikka worked as a researcher for Client Knowledge a market research consultancy, followed by a role as a financial services analyst at Datamonitor. After that, he was an Information Analyst with ABN AMRO Bank, working closely with their corporate finance and ECM teams. In 2006, he joined Livingstone Partners in their London office as a research analyst before moving to a full time role at Succession Corporate Finance in March 2008.

Education:
BA (Hons) International Business

David Swarbrick

Business Analyst

David trained and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Touche Ross & Co in 1994. He has held senior finance roles in a number of VC backed companies – Dunlop Slazenger (backed by Cinven) and Anadigm (backed by 3i, Quester and Atlas Ventures). David has significantly increased profitability by identifying and implementing improvements to company strategy in a variety of businesses – at Swift Rent A Car Ltd this culminated in the company being sold to Helphire Plc for £25.2m in 2005. At Succession Corporate Finance his primary role is to assist clients with their financial forecasting and business planning.

Education:
BA(Econ) Hons University of Manchester, ACA

Patrick Groarke

Non-Executive Director

Patrick qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte in Dublin. He then joined multinational fruit distributor The Fyffes Group in London as Special Projects Accountant where he gained extensive operational and corporate finance experience working in the USA and Spain.

Patrick has led a significant number of management buy-outs/buy-ins, acquisition and disposal assignments since joining in 1994. He has extensive experience in the food, manufacturing, marketing services and home and building products sectors. He is responsible for the MBI register, resulting in the establishment of a number of successful private equity backed 'buy and build' acquisition vehicles, and heads up Livingstone's Consumer sector team.

Education:
B Comm (Hons), ACA