Baird Capital, the direct investment arm of Robert W. Baird & Co., announced that it has acquired a majority interest in Collingwood Lighting (“Collingwood”). Collingwood is a leading designer and supplier of residential, commercial and exterior luminaires into the professional refurbishment and new-build markets in the UK and France. Baird Capital Partners James Benfield and Dennis Hall will join the Collingwood board of directors.

Collingwood is headquartered in Northamptonshire, England. The Company’s strong position in its markets is underpinned by its products’ energy efficiency, innovation and quality alongside the high levels of service the company provides its longstanding customer base.

“We are delighted to bring Collingwood into the Baird Portfolio. Its high quality products fit well with our energy efficient products strategy and our global portfolio resources are well positioned to help expand the business and optimise its global supply chain. Collingwood is committed to continue to invest in innovation and technology as lighting maintains its central position within intelligent and connected built infrastructure”, said James Benfield, Baird Capital Managing Director.

Steve Grao, Collingwood CEO commented: “We are excited to work alongside Baird Capital. Their culture is a strong fit with Collingwood and their expertise and global resources will be invaluable as we focus on driving future innovation and growth”.

Humatica provided organisational due diligence services for this transaction.

 

Interview with Patrick Mina, Managing Partner, Humatica

Can you tell us about Humatica’s involvement in the transaction?

We conducted an organisational due diligence which identified the key organisational bottlenecks for Collingwood to take on and execute a significantly more aggressive growth plan and adapt to a faster paced, numbers focused private equity environment.

What was your specific role?

Humatica has been conducting organisational assessments over the past 15 years and built up a proprietary database of behaviours and management processes that drive accelerated value growth. These are tested in structured interviews with management team members using a maturity model i.e. what good looks like for a company at that stage of evolution, in that type of industry, with that type of value creation plan. We also use targeted data analysis from the data room and other sources, psychometric assessments (where feasible) and deal team interactions to gain further insights.

Based on this approach, we identified to what extent the current “baseline” operating model, management and operational processes were scalable and, at a sufficient level, not to have to spend a disproportionate amount of time initially fixing the basics versus growing the business. We also identified the support the management team might need in identifying required organisational changes to their operating model, management and operational processes to deliver the value creation plan on or ahead of time. This involved highlighting any potential skill and behavioural gaps that the management team would need to address to operate as a high performing team on an ongoing basis in the context of an ambitious growth plan.

What were some of the key challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?

We weren’t faced with any challenges apart from some initial scepticism from the portfolio company as to the purpose of our organisational due diligence. This was however allayed once it became clear we were focused on identifying potential bottlenecks and ways to address these to enable them to successfully deliver the value creation plan on time.