Newcastle’s Northern Recruitment Group (NRG) was sold for £4.5m, according its new owner’s financial accounts.
NRG was founded 43 years ago by Lorna and Wayham Moran but the couple sold the city centre firm in December 2019 to fellow recruitment business Galago Group.
At the time of the takeover, the amount NRG was sold for was not revealed, but accounts for Galago Limited show a total consideration of £4.5m for the acquisition.
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The total consideration was determined by calculating the fair value of NRG’s net assets, which came to £3.4m, as well as the goodwill arising from the acquisition, which was valued at £1.1m. The goodwill included the value of NRG’s workforce and its industry knowledge.
Speaking to The Journal NRG’s CEO Therese Liddle said the takeover had not led to any major changes in how the business operated.
She said: “The truth is we did the acquisition in December 2019 then went into a major crisis in March so there been no major changes. We had a physical change moving from the city to Quorum.
“What I will say about the new owners is they have been incredibly supportive. We have had very little time to come together for obvious reasons, but they have been very supportive of the management.”
NRG changed its reporting period to more closely align with those of its new owners. As a result NRG’s latest financial accounts cover a period of 15 months, from January 1, 2019 to March 31, 2020.
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Turnover at the company stood at £22.9m for the 15 month period, compared to £19.7m for the 2018 calendar year. Operating profit fell from £357,299 in 2018, to £212,083 during the 15-month period.
Since the period covered by the results, the 海角视频 economy has been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Over recent months trading at the firm dropped due to the pandemic and NRG was forced to furlough some staff while also making a number of redundancies. The company said the redundancies affected a “very small proportion” of the workforce.
Since then NRG has hired five new members of staff, which includes some workers who have rejoined the team since being made redundant.
Ms Liddle described trading during the pandemic as “challenging”.
She said: “I think just like everybody else at the start of this whole period we struggled. It was challenging, really challenging indeed.
“We are reflective of the market so we started 2020 really challenged but now, in November, we have gone through and have been pretty resilient through the summer and we are starting with much more positivity and we have increased demand for temps.
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“From our own staffing perspective we have now taken on staff. This means we are starting to see demand again on the professional and senior roles but also in areas of finance and HR.
“We are feeling more confident we are a pretty resilient business anyway. We have a good balance sheet, a good staffing structure, and we moved offices this year.”