Advisor of the Week Stuart Jeffrey, Director, SME Corporate Finance SME Corporate Finance is a strategic advisory company in London with partners located in Asia Pacific and North America. Company: "SME Corporate Finance is an all-round corporate strategy and advisory firm working with entrepreneurial business people to help them achieve their goals through the provision of consultancy; business acumen; professional expertise and a diagnostic, whole-business approach.The team at SMECF have a broad range of experience that incorporates turnaround, refinancing, financing, aggregation, capital reduction, management advisory and holistic business strategy. Between us, we have over sixty years combined experience and some have experienced the emotion and frustration in founding and financing their own companies." Tell Tornado Insider about your latest deal: "One of our latest deals was advising Cambista Technologies, a successful e-finance software and services provider in the EMEA markets who requested help for its management team to complete a buyout of the 'international business' from its parent company, Brokat. The acquisition also included the majority of Brokat's interests outside Germany and Central Europe including business infrastructures and intellectual property rights.When the Management Team approached us, we instantly recognized Cambista's entrepreneurial leadership, the quality of the technology and market opportunity and were confident that it would attract funding from a number of different sources. As the sole advisor to Cambista, we provided them with continual support, strategic direction and coaching, the result of which was the funding of 5.1 million euros.Cambista will initially concentrate on building market share for its Financial Framework product and on-line banking applications in the United Kingdom/Ireland, Middle East and Nordic regions. It will also undertake an expansion plan into other geographic markets including Germany and the Benelux region in the future. The SMECF team wish all at Cambista every success." What's the current outlook for MBO's? "Due to the present economic climate we are noticing more opportunities being driven by Parent Companies wanting or needing to divest themselves of peripheral business activities. This, coupled with more realistic values being placed on these businesses by the vendors, has created an increase in the number of opportunities for MBO teams as well as VC backers. In addition, SMECF is finding Europe a very exciting market right now due to the considerable increase in activity." And the outlook for technology investments? "There are good products out there that have had investments, however they are not all going to be good businesses. Realisation is now occurring that more than good technology and people are needed to make a success on investments. Aggregation will be a greater feature in future to provide true business success." Copyright © 2002 Tornado Insider. All rights reserved. 22nd May.