‘Dragons’ Den of recruitment’ setting out on the acquisition trail

northern recruitment group Re-Think is on the acquisition trail as the economic slump raises the prospect of more market consolidation.

The Aim-listed firm, which has been tipped for growth by City analysts, wants to snap up smaller rivals which have lacked the cash to expand.

It is also looking at opening an office in Qatar or another nation in the Middle East, group co-founder Andy Lord told the Yorkshire Post.

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Re-Think has three divisions, ReThink Recruitment, concentrating on business and technology staff, Aiimi, a business transformation company and Berkley Group, a science-led global search and resourcing company. It turned over £56m this year. Mr Lord, who is also managing director of ReThink Recruitment, said the size of the group meant it could act like an angel investor to small recruitment firms.

“We are continually on the acquisition trail. It could be a two or three-person operation that wants to be part of something bigger or it can be a major corporate.

“If you have been building a business and it has got three or four people it is hard to find the next stage. I like to think of us as the Dragons’ Den of recruitment.”

Re-Think was set up in 2005 and is run by chief executive Jonathan Butterfield.

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It went public three years ago despite the stock market going through one of the worst years in its history.

It has since won admiring glances from analysts and last month Merchant Securities repeated its ‘buy’ rating and increased its target price.

“ReThink is rapidly moving from a micro-cap business into a more substantial operation.

“Properly valued, we believe the group would be capitalised at £15m.”

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In June Re-Think bought Irish firm Berkley and has since expanded its international operations.

Berkley, which had 30 staff and clients in Dublin, Cork and Singapore, works in areas including outsourced managed projects to executive search in pharmaceutical and life sciences, IT and technology, engineering and executive search.

Mr Lord said the group had reduced capital expenditure in the slump rather than cutting jobs.

“We have managed to grow our sales through the recession which our competitors did not do.

“We did it by prioritising our customers rather than being driven by bombarding people.”

Mr Lord said he also wanted to change the business community’s perception of recruitment firms.