After buying out his partner Neil continued to
grow the business with the acquisition of Dexter Precision Engineers
and then Microlimit Limited. Neil then successfully on sold the
operational facilities of Dexter’s for what he’d paid for it minus
the clients and a significant amount of plant and equipment.
The recession of the late 1980s devastated the sectors that the
company operated within. Neil made the difficult and unusual
decision to both reduce indebtedness and enforce strict credit
terms. These decisions reduced the companies’ financial exposure to
its failing clients, resulting in minimal bad debt for the period.
With the recession behind him Neil made further acquisitions of
another couple of small enterprises, Weylec, a specialist in
rechargeable batteries and then Electronic Accessories Limited, a
long term direct competitor to Microlimit.
After 20 years in manufacturing Neil decided it was time for a
change – a complete change and headed off to New Zealand (it’s a
long story). Here he started his business consulting career working
with a variety of owners of small businesses with a diverse range of
issues. His greatest success being getting a revaluation of a
business increased from NZ$106K to NZ$485K from the same prospect.
Unfortunately the vagaries of immigration policy and politics
resulted in his failure to gain permanent residency.
On his return to the UK he decided to build a team to bring
meaningful results to a broad range of small and micro business
owners. Having seen so many good businesses fail to sell over the
years Neil is particularly keen to help the owners of small and
micro businesses engage in exit planning.
Neil has also acted as a non executive director of Bio-Clair
International Ltd.
He remains active within the Federation of Small Businesses where he
was Branch Chair of Hillingdon and representative to the London
Regional Committee.
Throughout his 10 years in New Zealand he was active within the
Wellington Chambers of Commerce and gifted his time to Business
Mentors New Zealand