1991 – 2000: Finelist Group plc – Founder and Group Chairman

At the time of joining Finelist, the company comprised of twenty-five sites, one hundred and fifty employees and had a sales income of £10 million, with profits in excess of just £100 000. The company operated in the highly fragmented automotive aftermarket worth £3bn per year where the largest player had less than 10% market share.

Chris Swan recognized the huge potential and business opportunities that lay in line for Finelist in what was an extremely dynamic marketplace, and subsequently led an MBO to purchase the company for £1.9 million with investments coming from 3i and NatWest Ventures. The vision was to consolidate by organic growth and acquisition the UK market and to be its dominant player.

In the few years following the purchase of Finelist, Chris Swan saw a clear strategic vision for the company and started implementing his very own tried and tested business logic. Through his focus on encouraging workforce development via skills training and the execution of carefully selected acquisitions, he was able to achieve impressive organic annual growth in what, at the time, was essentially a flat market.

In total, Chris Swan (as part of his strategy to expand Finelist) piloted the acquisition of sixty-one businesses over a period of five years. All of these businesses were successfully integrated into the Group and proceeded to contribute to the phenomenal overall growth of the holding company.

After just three years at the helm, Chris Swan was able to grow Finelist to a point where the company obtained a successful London Stock Market listing in 1994.

During his nine years at the company, numerous impressive milestones were achieved for both the man and the company, including the following:

• Pre-tax profits grew from £100 000 in 1991 to £32m in 1999
• Disposed of Maccess for £62 million, showing a £39 million profit
• Invested £3 million annually for training and developing workforce
• Active supporter of community projects, i.e. Duke of Edinburgh Award
• Finelist was recognized by the European Community as Europe’s most successful job creator.
• Sites grew from 15 to 800 with strong brands in this period such as Motorworld.

By the time Chris Swan sold Finelist in 2000, he had created a company that was achieving a combined turnover of £1 Billion and employing over 12 000 people. Shareholder value during the time that Chris Swan was involved at Finelist had grown substantially. For every £1 invested in the business in 1991, shareholders would receive £288 in 2000.

Note:

Following announcement of the Finelist sale, the acquirers, Autodistribution, suffered from adverse exchange rate changes prior to purchase completion. With acquisition gearing of 96% and faced with a severe market downturn, Finelist was placed into Receivership just under a year after acquisition. In accordance with normal practice in insolvency cases, the DTI embarked upon what became a protracted investigation and made a number of allegations against the Directors, relating to the handling of inter-company payments. These allegations were defended vigorously as a point of personal integrity in a legal process that took over four years.

The matter went to court in 2003, and the judge found that there was scant evidence to support the charges made. He also concluded Secretary of State (DTI) had not acted with proper duty of care in conducting the investigation. However the DTI elected to continue with the allegations and in 2005 the matter was again brought to court before a different judge, who concluded that no lack of probity on the part of Chris Swan had been established, that all outstanding indebtedness had been repaid as part of the original transaction and that Chris Swan ‘was a businessman with obvious flair and drive" References relating to this investigation and full details of the legal proceedings may be obtained on request.