ABOUT US –
50 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE… WORKING FOR YOU

Decade by decade, deal by deal, Johnsons has demonstrated that we deliver exceptional results to our clients.

The results we deliver today come from years of hard earned experience gained from completing literally hundreds of transactions. When you engage Johnsons Corporate you gain 50 years of experience working for you.

OUR APPROACH

We Stand Accountable To You

We are not a volume based business. Johnsons Corporate brings an unparalleled level of commitment and focus to every engagement. Our Directors only work with a handful of clients at any one time. This single-mindedness ensures you receive the undivided attention of our senior personnel.

When you engage Johnsons Corporate we undertake to invest the necessary time, attention and resources to get the job done. Our promise is we will stand accountable to you. Just ask any of our past clients.

OUR DIRECTORS

A Legacy Carried Forward

Originally founded by Lynn Johnson in 1960, today Johnsons Corporate is under the leadership of two driven and professional directors – Adrian Ness and Benn Oppy. They acquired the Business in 2012 from Lynn’s son Noel and his business partner Gerry De Kievit. In Adrian and Benn they had discovered two like-minded businessmen with the expertise and drive to carry Johnsons Corporate’s legacy into the future.

Adrian and Benn fully embraced the Johnsons’ underlying principles of always striving to identify multiple strategic buyers and acquisition targets for every client and to proactively drive each campaign via a hands-on, director-led approach. They also shared Lynn’s conviction that the sale and acquisition of mid-market businesses warranted a specially adapted and systematic approach – one that cast the net over a broader pool of prospects in more commercial and geographic markets in the interest of identifying strategic buyers, optimising competitive tension, and maximising enterprise value.

“Here finally was a business that truly understood the mid-market space. The approach Johnsons took was not only targeted and proactive in identifying prospects, it went further to incorporate less obvious buyers, ones from complimentary and adjacent industry segments as well as international markets. Their methodical analysis and proven processes had clearly been refined over many decades of experience.”

Benn Oppy, Director – Johnsons Corporate

Director Back-Stories

From their previous careers, Adrian and Benn each brought a complementary skill-set to Johnsons Corporate, together with a common zeal for doing deals. Their prior experience spans MBO facilitation, corporate advisory, and business banking services along with the buying, restructuring and financing of mid-size, private businesses.

At the time of acquiring Johnsons Corporate, Adrian was a Director at Succession Capital – a private investment company established to acquire businesses with EBIT of between $1 million to $5 million – and Benn was a Director at B Capital, a company set up to facilitate Management Buyouts (MBOs) of private businesses.

For both, their work regularly involved dealing with various Business Brokers and Corporate Advisors. It was this experience that led each of them to identify that neither business brokers nor corporate advisors were an ideal fit for mid-sized private businesses.

Unparalleled Commitment and Focus

Many years on from their first meeting with Noel & Gerry, Adrian and Benn remain convinced of the effectiveness of the Johnsons Corporate approach. The large number of deals they have since successfully completed makes it clear that Johnsons’ narrow focus on mid-market divestments & acquisitions services consistently produces superior outcomes for its clients.

Under their stewardship, the firm has continued to refine its methods and capabilities in the areas of custom research, direct marketing, proactive sales, and leveraged negotiations. Today Adrian & Benn still gain great satisfaction from working with business owners across a variety of industries, assisting them either with finding strategic buyers or in making bolt-on acquisitions to further grow their businesses