In 2000, AWR Lloyd started working for a small Southeast Asian conglomerate. The company had suffered during the ‘Asian economic crisis’ and was looking to reinvent itself going forward.

The company was involved in a number of different businesses with few synergies: a goods port, power projects, a chemicals investment, industrial minerals mines and some coal mines. Based on a review of the client’s core skills and competitive advantages – and an analysis of the regional energy and mining industry outlook – AWR Lloyd advised the company to focus on developing a regional coal-based energy business. AWR Lloyd advised the company to divest its ‘non-core’ businesses and to reinvest the proceeds in acquiring coalmines and coal-fired power throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

Since 2000, the client has pursued this strategy successfully with AWR Lloyd as its core in-house advisor. The client’s market capitalization has increased from around US$75 million to several billion dollars in recent years. The group has become the Asia-Pacific region’s most geographically diversified coalminer with output of over 45 million tonnes per annum. The group has a power portfolio including both coal-fired power and solar throughout Asia-Pacific – and is now investing in upstream oil and gas and smart energy.

AWR Lloyd’s work with this client over the past seventeen years has included the full spectrum of corporate finance strategy consulting services including share price and valuation analysis, growth and M&A strategy, business development SOPs, medium and long term financial planning, stock market and investor communication strategy, market signals analyses and takeover contingency planning. In the area of investor relations, AWR Lloyd has helped the client implement a best practice IR programme such that the company is now viewed by Finance Asia, Asia Money and other ranking agencies as having one of the leading IR programmes in Asia. The client was ranked as one of ‘Asia’s Fab 50’ by Forbes magazine in 2010.