Best advice to the large and small in business; Dealmakers in association with Deloitte.

Byline: Peter McCusker

CORPORATE lawyers at one Newcastle practice have been active working on a series of deals involving small and medium-sized businesses.

While Ward Hadaway's corporate team has worked on some of the largest deals in the region in recent years, it has also looked after SMEs.

Recent activity has seen the firm provide legal advice to a video production company, a petrol stock monitoring business and a storage company.

Martin Hulls, partner and head of corporate finance at Ward Hadaway, said: "We have a team that truly spans the diversity of the local economy from small owner-managed businesses to publicly listed companies.

"It is the owner-managed sector which forms the real bedrock of the region's economy and helps to keep it moving forward and helping them achieve expansion or a realisation of many years' hard work is really rewarding.

"Good quality advice is important in every deal, but it is perhaps even more so when it comes to transactions which involve businessmen who may never have been involved in a corporate transaction before.

"We aim to work closely with the businesses we advise and deliver a high quality service while remaining cost effective."

Ward Hadaway advised the sellers of Newcastle-based video production company Twenty First Century Media on its acquisition by AIM-listed Ten Alps in a deal worth up to pounds 750,000.

The price included an initial pounds 200,000 paid on completion with further payments to follow over the next two years measured against the delivery of various profit targets.

Twenty First Century Media has a client list which includes Nike, Nestle UK, the NHS and the Prince's Trust and has won no less than four prestigious Royal Television Society (RTS) Awards for its work.

Katherine Hay-Heddle, corporate finance partner at Ward Hadaway, led the firm's team on the deal.

Ward Hadaway also advised the shareholders of Sunderland-based petrol stock monitoring company Edensure on their sale to the Stockton-based provider of beer monitoring systems and data management services for bars Brulines.

Established in 2002, Edensure provides monitoring equipment to 130 forecourts in the UK and was sold to Brulines for pounds 220,000.

Most recently, Ward Hadaway advised County Durham-based Parsons Containers on its acquisition of a self-storage business in Grantham, Lincolnshire.

The deal, which was carried out for an undisclosed sum, was partly financed with a pounds 150,000 investment from NEL Capital, the specialist venture capital division of NEL Fund Managers.

"We aim to work closely with the businesses we advise and deliver a high quality service