VETERAN financier Tom Faichnie will tell US investors to put Aberdeen on their radar in a speech to the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston next week.
Mr Faichnie, managing director of Hall Morrice Corporate Finance, declared the city is “starting to claw its way out of the downturn’s depression”. His comments come amid mounting evidence the economy in Aberdeen is in the foothills of recovery following the dramatic plunge in the price of crude oil since late 2014, which has claimed thousands of jobs and led to many firms which rely on the sector going bust.
Mr Faichnie said companies involved in the North Sea have now done most of the cutting which can be achieved, and predicts that there will be a “significant uplift in deals activity over the next three to six months.”
The financier has built a reputation for connecting private equity houses with investments in oilfield services companies in Aberdeen in the past 20 years.
He said he will be taking a “simple message” to next week’s conference: “If you want to invest, it’s time to put Aberdeen on your radar”. Mr Faichnie said: “The very notion may have those corporate entities and private equity houses without a foothold in the industry recoiling in horror but, contrary to what many of the doom-merchants are touting, the city is starting to claw its way out of the downturn’s depression. It’s a phrase that has been bandied around more than once over the past three years: oil and gas is cyclical in its nature.
“A cliché perhaps, but one that ultimately rings true and the evidence is now emerging to back it up.”
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