email@pencarrowpe.co.nz

Level 14, Axon House
1-3 Willeston Street
PO Box 10 964, Wellington
Telephone: 04 499 9190
Facsimile: 04 472 7687

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Background

Rishworth’s primary business is the provision of leased aviation crew to airlines throughout the world. Rishworth is the world’s second largest crew leasing and human resources company specialising in aviation. It was established by Auckland-based Peter Rishworth in 1985, initially providing mainstream human resource (recruitment) services to the aviation industry.  In 1993 the company entered what was then an emerging niche of pilot leasing and grew its business rapidly initially focusing on the Asia-Pacific region and then in 2001 on the European market where it opened an office based in Stockholm.

Rishworth’s sole shareholder and Managing Director, Peter Rishworth, had been gradually reducing his day-to-day involvement in the business for some time when he was introduced to Pencarrow. Peter wanted to realise a substantial portion of his business’s value in order to pursue other interests as he approached retirement. Essential to Peter was finding an investor who could undertake a purchase in a timely and confidential manner and assist in identifying and recruiting a new managing director into the business.

 

The Transaction

Given Peter’s intention to retire from the business, Pencarrow introduced a prospective CEO, Mark East, with whom Pencarrow has worked closely in respect of a past transaction and who was, at the time, Managing Director of the New Zealand subsidiary of international logistics and freight forwarding company, Hellmann Logistics.

Mark was identified by Pencarrow and approached early on in the transaction. The enabled Mark to be part of the team that undertook due diligence on the business. He was also able to liaise with Peter and the other senior managers in the Rishworth team to ensure the fit would work well with Mark as the proposed CEO.

Mark’s buy-in to the investment introduced fresh energy into the business in the form of a highly capable and proven business-to-business relationship manager with whom Pencarrow has worked closely and successfully in the past. The transaction also provided a chance to offer shareholdings to other key managers in the business. The continued directorship involvement of Peter helped mitigate any succession risk. Mark East was received well by the Rishworth team, offering strong leadership and sales and marketing capability to augment the existing management.

 

Outlook

Today, Rishworth is well positioned to benefit from the surge in air travel from emerging markets like India and China and regional airlines across the Asia-Pacific and European-African regions. The crew leasing business is growing rapidly and the management team has identified increasing opportunities for Rishworth to expand its service presence in engineering, maintenance and crew training sectors.