Get to know the Lexington team
To kick off our new Staff Spotlight series, we spoke to associate director, Pablo Shorney. Pablo, 29, is from Cardiff and has been a part of the Lexington team for four years. He holds a first-class honours degree in Economics from the University of Birmingham and completed his ACA qualification to become a chartered accountant at PwC.
What is your specialism?
I predominantly focus on sell-side engagements, which means helping business owners to complete a successful sale of their company. This includes lots of succession planning – whether that’s selling to a management team, an investor such as private equity, or most commonly to a trade acquirer which may be a larger competitor. I also work on Lexington’s private equity deals, which focus more on businesses looking to grow. I really enjoy working with entrepreneurial management teams to find the best investors to help take the business further forward. It’s really rewarding seeing businesses go from strength-to-strength following receipt of that investment.
What is your proudest moment with the firm so far?
There’s a couple! The first one is when I worked on a deal for Improve International. We started work in September 2019 and what usually takes six to nine months was, of course, skewed by the uncertainty of the Covid pandemic. In a nutshell, our client was a subsidiary within a large listed group and the opportunity arose for the management team to take the company independent by completing a management buy out. Due to the Covid pandemic, it was difficult to predict what was going to happen, and potential investors were naturally more risk-averse as a result. Despite this, we were able to find an investor that backed the team and, following the MBO, the business has grown from strength-to-strength.
The other stand-out moment would be a recent deal focussing on succession planning when two owners, aged 67, wanted an exit plan and to find the right home for their business and the staff. We ran a streamlined approach, where we successfully sold the business to a company we knew and that worked with us on a plan to grow that business specifically. It felt like we ticked all the objectives for the two founders – the staff and business were taken care of, and there was a smooth transition for the customers.
What do you want to achieve over the next five years of your career?
Since being with Lexington, I have seen the business grow from four to 13 people and it’s really exciting to be a part of the company’s ongoing journey. The next five years will include cementing Lexington’s place in the market and hopefully I’ll keep pushing up through the business.
What do you think is different about Lexington to other corporate finance firms?
We put ourselves in the client’s shoes. Gary, our founder, is an entrepreneur and took a risk to set up Lexington. Many of our client’s share his DNA and have taken similar risks as Gary, so we feel we have real empathy with and can understand the good times and the hard times of founding and running a business. We, as a team, are hungry for work and we’re energetic. We work collaboratively as a team with a very flat structure – there is no single way of doing things at Lexington – we all get stuck in and help each other out.
What do you do in your spare time?
As I’m sure the team will say, I’m obsessed with my cocker spaniel! I spend hours in the great outdoors, in any weather conditions, whether that’s exploring the mountains or heading down to the beach. I feel very lucky to live in Wales where we’re within a short distance of both!
