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Livingstone Partners is an independent investment banking boutique founded in London in 1976. The firm specialises in advising entrepreneurs, private owners, corporations and investors on middle-market mergers and acquisitions and financings. It also provides debt and restructuring advice. The firm completed 42 transactions in 2011. In addition to London, Livingstone has offices in Chicago, Dusseldorf, Madrid and Valencia, and has a joint venture office in Beijing. +	testing how to use sandbox −		 −	History −		 −	The firm was originally established as Livingstone Corporate Associates by British entrepreneur Barrie Pearson in June 1976 after a career as corporate financier for a number of corporations, including The Plessey Company plc. Pearson's focus was on making acquisitions of private companies, an area in which he found it difficult to find expert advice at cost-effective prices from the UK's advisory community. In the mid-1980s, Pearson entered into a partnership with London-based financial advisers HW Fisher, and re-named the company Livingstone Fisher plc, to provide the firm with more back-office infrastructure and with the intention of accessing the Fisher organisation's client base as a source of additional projects. By 1994 it was clear that the relationship with HW Fisher was not generating the leads that had been hoped for and the company was further renamed Livingstone Guarantee plc. Livingstone grew throughout the 1990s, led by a group of directors including Tim Lyle (who joined in 1989), Marcus Moir (1992), Jeremy Furniss (1993), Henry Bartram (1994), Patrick Groarke (1994) and Simon Cope-Thompson (1995). In 2000, this team acquired majority ownership of company from founder Pearson and investor HW Fisher. −		 −	In October 2001, Livingstone was acquired by Tenon Group plc, a UK public company listed on London's Alternative Investment Market for a reported sum of £26 million. The transaction provided founder Pearson and investor HW Fisher with a complete exit from the company although Pearson remained non-executive Chairman until 2003. In 2002, Marcus Moir and Henry Bartram also left. Between 2001 and 2002, Tenon Group issued several poor trading announcements and the resulting share price fall led to a major re-organisation of the Tenon board and a re-assessment of its strategy. The opportunity arose for the remaining Livingstone directors to mount a successful management but-out of the company, and Livingstone Guarantee emerged as a 100% employee-owned company on 1 April 2003. −		 −	International Expansion −		 −	Livingstone was one of the earliest middle-market advisory houses to establish an international network of complementary mergers and acquisitions boutiques around the world, co-founding Euro-Merger with French and German firms in 1992. This network had grown from three to 14 firms by 1999, when a group of members including Livingstone from Euro-Merger left to join a group of firms from rival network M&A Partners to create Global M&A. Between 1994 and 2000, and as part of Global M&A, Livingstone's London team came into contact with nine out of the 10 international partners who now lead the firm's teams in Chicago, Dusseldorf and Madrid. In May 2007, Livingstone announced that it was leaving Global M&A to establish its own international business, initially through an operational merger with its Spanish Global M&A partner, led by Neil Collen, and by backing a new advisory business in Chicago led by David Sulaski and Stephen Miles. In August 2010, the firm announced a further tie-up with Alarius, a spin-off from Livingstone's former German Global M&A partner led by Christian Grandin, Ralph Hagelgans and Jochen Hense. Livingstone's most recent expansion was announced in Fenruary 2012 with the creation of a Beijing-based joint venture with Chinese merchant bank and securities house Baron Group. −		 −		 −		 −		 −	Livingstone Partners (company website)