Building a trusted network for entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs come with varying degrees of experience and contacts. Most are time poor, and realistic that they are not always the person best placed to provide the day-to-day management required. This makes them quick to seek out partners like Hawksford to organise the various aspects of their enterprise and plug the gaps in their own skills, experience and expertise in order to translate their business idea into a viable and successful product or service.

Entrepreneurialism and collaboration

Working with entrepreneurial clients can be extremely rewarding and a great challenge. We work closely with entrepreneurs, providing strategic and tactical support throughout the entire lifecycle of their many ventures.

Right from inception, a client may present us with a raw business idea that we will then hone to help to determine the best approaches and viability of the idea.

We work together with entrepreneurial clients to manage various aspects of turning a great idea into a marketable, and potentially, sellable business. We can be involved with negotiations on behalf of our clients and constantly work with other professionals to provide a clear and smooth route to success.

By conducting in depth research and leveraging our extensive network of contacts in the intermediary and business worlds, clients rely on us to provide important and trusted information so they will be in a position to make well-informed decisions about their fledgling or growing business.

Our corporate team’s robust structuring experience means that we can create bespoke special purpose vehicles (SPVs) that work seamlessly across borders to support clients’ growth and expansion ambitions.

Regulation has played a significant role in the quality of advice that entrepreneurs can access, creating a safe and transparent environment. When they engage a provider in a jurisdiction of substance and robust regulation, clients know that their service provider has a duty to provide the skills and expertise that will help them to realise their business aspirations, while meeting the global standards important for their business and reputation.

From light bulb moments to IPO and trade sale

Hawksford has built a strong relationship working with a client who was a well-established business leader, now entrepreneur, in his chosen sector.

Spotting a niche in the market, the client came up with a game changing business idea and with our assistance was able to secure funding to launch the product. As a trusted partner, Hawksford has played an instrumental role in helping the client to commercialise the product, taking it right through to a successful and lucrative private trade sale.

As part of our remit, we facilitated a multitude of vital elements for the client. Using our networks and resources we secured and provided governance around intellectual property rights, and managed the technology and associated infrastructure. Our team also sourced various forms of financing, including traditional and peer-to-peer lending facilities, in order to go quickly to market.

Using the client’s profits from the sale of their original business venture, we also created a successful real estate portfolio that has helped to pay for the research and development of new product ideas.

In another case, we were approached by an intermediary to collaborate with their client who had built up a series of successful business ventures.

Our private client team supported the client on their wealth structuring requirements, while the corporate team worked with the intermediaries and other advisers to help the client decide when was the best time to consider exit via either trade, private sale or an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

Having been closely involved in conversations surrounding the lifecycle of the client’s structures, the client appointed us as an extension of their team and we guided them from the initial structuring, right through to the eventual successful public offering on one of the world’s major stock exchanges.

Hawksford’s technical skills ensured that the most granular mechanics, which are of paramount importance when considering an IPO, were watertight. Our corporate team was able to create the structure and ultimately offer our listing services to achieve a hugely profitable exit to this venture.

Partner for growth

As a company, we are accustomed to working with a team of professionals that facilitate the various elements that will contribute to the client’s ultimate business success.

An independent company led by a dynamic group of directors, Hawksford has an entrepreneurial spirit running through the business. We encourage staff to think of the bigger and longer term picture when it comes to offering structuring solutions and working with clients.

Our skill set is broad; the team is an eclectic mix of hugely talented individuals with sector specialisms including trust professionals and directors, fund administrators, lawyers, accountants, chartered secretaries and surveyors.

We speak the same language as entrepreneurs in other ways too. We have significant expertise and existing clients in the industries of digital, media, oil and gas, transportation, retail and finance – industries ripe with new ideas and growth.

We can be a major influence in clients’ entrepreneurial successes, helping them to think commercially and internationally about their business opportunity. Drawing on our extensive global network and commercial know-how, we are motivated by adding significant value to our clients’ bottom line and helping to facilitate an idea into a successful business activity, whilst providing flexible and pragmatic structuring to achieve their aspirations.