New legal company makes its debut on AIM

In-Deed Online, set up by Harry Hill, is the first property-linked legal company to list on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

The company allows people buying or selling a home to track the legal process from instruction to completion.

Customers pay £650 for the service with the website taking a £200 cut and the rest going to solicitors who work under the In-Deed label.

The firm, which raised £2.9m in a pre-IPO placement, is raising £1.6m by selling up to 3.7m shares at 42p to institutional and other investors. The business joined AIM with a market value of £8.6m.

Barnsley-born Mr Hill, 63, said: “I decided to set up the business to fill a gap in the market.

“The conveyancing service that people receive in the UK isn’t good enough and I think there is an opportunity for someone with a reasonable amount of capital to market these services effectively on the internet and television and pass on work to a small number of lawyers.

“Hopefully people will realise you can get the work done cost effectively, fast, and to a high standard.”

Mr Hill launched the company with Peter Gordon, a former partner at private equity group 3i. Former Nationwide chief executive Philip Williamson and former Wall Street trader Boris Zhilin are non-executive directors.

Mr Hill and Mr Gordon will keep a stake of 10 per cent each. Other investors include Octopus Investments and fund manager Henderson, as well as Andrew Black, the co-founder of Betfair.

In-Deed Online is Mr Hill’s latest public venture since he was chief executive of estate agency chain Countrywide, which was taken private by Apollo for £1.15bn in 2008.

The conveyancing service is delivered by a panel of law firms whose performance standards will be monitored by In-Deed, which Mr Hill said would avoid some of the frustrations which can be encountered by house buyers and sellers.

Mr Hill said he decided to go public following a successful track record of leading Plcs.

He added: “We raised the first £1m from a few pals to build the technology and get to a starting post. We then had to decide whether to raise another £1m or £2m from those people to start advertising or become a public company.”

Lester Wilson and Andrew Walker, corporate partners at DWF’s Leeds office, advised In-Deed Online and Mr Hill on the flotation.

In-Deed has signed up law firms O’Neill Patient and Breeze and Wyles to do the conveyancing work, which will operate under the In-Deed Online brand. There are another four law firms which will link up to In-Deed’s technology in the coming weeks, including one from Yorkshire.

After the firm’s first year of operation, Mr Hill expects to expand its lawyer network even further. He said he has already been contacted by more than 30 law firms wanting to work with the company.

Most of the law firms, he added, will be from Yorkshire and other parts of the North. “Most of the major conveyancing practices in the UK are based in the North and that is because office rentals are more competitive there,” he said.

Mr Hill said In-Deed might take stakes in these legal firms, if needed, providing them with capital to support their expansion so they can handle more cases.

In-Deed’s ambitious goal is to become a market leader in the conveyancing market within three years.

At the moment no single firm controls more than three per cent of the market. “I want people to say there was a better way,” he said.

Making the right moves

Barnsley-born Harry Hill was the son of a colliery manager who fought in the Far East in the Second World War.

He attended Barnsley Grammar School and wanted to be an officer in the army but failed to get into training school for Sandhurst. Instead he became an articled pupil and later worked for firms in Whitby and Sheffield before leaving to become a property developer. He later moved to East Anglia to become a partner in an estate agency. The business was later bought by Mann & Co and then banking giant Hambros.

Mr Hill became joint managing director of Hambro Countrywide in 1989. He became sole managing director and chief executive when Countrywide split from Hambro in 1998 and retired in 2009. He founded Rightmove in 2000.