Calcorp Capital — Corporate Advisory, Adelaide

"As long as you understand your best may not be good enough. To represent the country, you have to be the best."

— my father, when I told him I wanted to play rugby for Rhodesia. I was ten.

I've spent forty-eight years advising on mergers and acquisitions. I still haven't found good enough — which is why, twice, I left a settled advisory career to operate businesses myself: to test the theory against the reality, and bring back what only the operating chair teaches.

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48years searching
for good enough
02 — Capabilities

What I actually do.

Advisory across the full life of a transaction — for owners weighing a sale, a raise or a succession. Origination through execution.

i.

Mergers & Acquisitions

Origination, sale, acquisition and succession. I'd rather bring an owner a real option than wait to be briefed on one.

ii.

Debt & Equity Capital

Capital structuring and raising — debt, equity and institutional placement — from the operator's knowledge of what a business can carry.

iii.

Project & Trade Finance

Modelling, facility arrangement, bank tenders and working-capital structuring — including pre- and post-shipment finance for exporters.

iv.

Strategy & Restructuring

Capital-structure review, turnaround and direction — for when the structure and the operating reality have stopped matching.

03 — Approach

What the search taught me.

Not abstractions. Positions I hold because I've watched the alternative fail — from both sides of the table.

i On value

Institutional knowledge is the asset

The people who know why the business works are usually worth more than the spreadsheet says. Deals that ignore this look fine on signing day and fail in year two.

ii On structure

Capital structure must match operating reality

I've raised institutional capital as an operator. I've also watched a structure stop matching the business it was built for. I price and structure deals to survive contact with reality.

iii On engagement

I originate, I don't wait for a mandate

Good outcomes are built, not sourced. I'd rather bring a business owner a real option than wait to be briefed on one — and tell the truth early.

04 — Sectors

Where the depth is.

Sector knowledge earned the hard way — by operating inside the industry, not only advising across it.

i — Wine & Beverage

From practice to operating

Founded KPMG's Global Wine Industry Group, then left to list a wine company on London's AIM and raise institutional capital for it.

Listed, AIM · £12.5m raised · Global Wine Industry Group
ii — Medical Technology

Built one from the ground up

Founded Numedico Technologies and scaled a safety medical device through international distribution and regulatory pathways.

Founded · ClickZip™ · US$5.5m distribution partnership
iii — Agribusiness & Food

Trade finance for exporters

Working-capital and trade finance — pre- and post-shipment structures built around real cash-flow, for agribusiness and food supply chains.

Project & trade finance · forfaiting · export
iv — Infrastructure & Projects

Modelled like an operator

Financial modelling and project-finance structuring for capital-intensive ventures — with the modelling discipline an operator relies on.

Project finance modelling · bank tenders
05 — Who this is for

A deliberate kind of fit.

This works if

  • You're weighing a sale, raise, or succession and want someone who has sat on the operating side of that decision.
  • You care what happens to your people and your customers after the deal closes, not just at signing.
  • You want a second opinion from someone who has been through a deal that didn't survive.
  • You'd rather be told the truth early than be managed toward a fee.

This isn't for

  • Transaction-volume shops looking for the fastest possible close.
  • Anyone who treats institutional knowledge as a "soft factor."
  • Deals where the brief is "maximise price, ask no other questions."

What's the worst that can happen? Perhaps I get to work with the people who deserve me — and I keep searching.

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