Calibre interview: Gary Hancock, MD of DC Advisory

The global defence landscape has undergone a seismic shift since the return of large-scale land warfare to Europe. As NATO members increase their budgets, the supply chain is bracing for unprecedented growth—and investment banks like DC Advisory are taking note.

To understand the rapidly evolving Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) environment in the defence sector, Calibre Defence sat down with Gary Hancock, Managing Director at DC Advisory. Gary and his international colleagues play an important role in advising businesses as they navigate the complex world of financing and acquisitions. This is an important, and often under-represented element of the defence industry. Without it, businesses would struggle to secure financing, which is critical to keeping their cashflow healthy between MoD contracts. It is also how investors realise the returns from their funding and investments in a company. 

DC Advisory’s Core Business

DC Advisory is a mid-market focused investment bank that advises companies on M&A, debt raisings and restructurings, private capital, and secondary advisory. Gary’s team, which views the Defence and Aerospace sector as a key subsector, assists companies looking to undertake strategic transactions. “Investment banking is an advisory-based financial service,” Gary explained. “We sometimes say, we sell advice.” The work is highly international, often requiring close collaboration with US colleagues, as Gary notes, “a huge amount of the capital comes out of the US.”

• Neros closes Series B, secures a big contract as drones dominate – Calibre Defence 
• Applied Intuition reaches $15B valuation with new $600M funding – Calibre Defence
• Auterion raises $130 million Series B funding – Calibre Defence 

Indeed, many of the recent funding rounds covered by Calibre Defence have been led by US firms. Bessemer Venture Partners led on Auterion’s Series B, the Series F for Applied Intuition was led by Black Rock and Kleiner Perkins, and Sequoia Capital led the Series B for Neros, which has become a US Army favourite. There are other funds from Europe and elsewhere, of course, but a lot of the bigger rounds have been led by US firms. 

The Sale of Wescom: A Case Study

Gary recently led the advisory on the sale of Wescom, a UK-based manufacturer of pyrotechnics and safety equipment. The lead advisory role means working with the management and shareholders to prepare the business to embark on a transaction process,” he said. “We helped the previous owner to realise their investment and the company to find a new backer going forward.”

The sale attracted significant interest, particularly from the US, and was ultimately closed with Albion River, a specialist defence products and services investor. Selling a company is a highly structured process, particularly for businesses in the defence supply chain, as Gary went on to explain. But how do companies come to be sold? 

Well, “it depends on the sale process,” he continued, “if there is an off-market direct sale approach, there may be a buyer that approaches the company and offers to buy it. In the Wescom case, there was an organised sale. Confidentiality is a really important part of the process, and avoiding speculation around a transaction is fundamental,” Gary told me. The process starts with getting the company ready for what is usually an intense due diligence process.  

Preparation and due diligence

Getting a company ready for sale is critical. For buyers to acquire a business, they must conduct due diligence, rigorously investigating the company’s books and accounts.

“A company has to be very well prepared,” Gary asserts. “This may mean collating all of the information required by a buyer ahead of the due diligence process.” A business may also commission its own due diligence reports—covering areas like tax, IT, legal, and financial affairs—to present to potential buyers. The preparation phase is all about backing up the assertions being made about the business to the investor universe, he said. 

Mitigating Risk

A key part of DC Advisory’s role is anticipating and mitigating issues. “What you don’t want is a situation where the due diligence reveals a problem with the transaction. So, part of that is anticipating what those issues might be and putting in place mitigation strategies,” Gary explained. This could involve resolving a customer dispute, outstanding litigation, or a tax investigation before the sale process formally launches. While DC Advisory doesn’t have in-house specialists for every area, they coordinate the right external advisors and interpret their feedback to determine the best course of action.

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“When you are selling your business, you will be making a series of assertions to the investor universe, and the preparation phase is about having the evidence to back that up,” Gary then explained. This is an important step as a buyer may be put off if the portrayal of a company fails to match up to the reality of its accounts.

Strategy and Outreach

DC Advisory helps design the optimal strategy for engaging potential buyers or investors. This could be:

• A highly targeted approach to a small number of specific parties.
• A broader outreach to access a wider universe of buyers.

Gary stresses that familiarity with the buyer landscape is a major advantage. “If you have worked on multiple sales of similar businesses, and dealt with the same counterparties, you understand what is important to them and what their behaviour might be.”

He continued: “Financial investors are pricing risk, and based on their confidence in future forecasts, they price that risk accordingly. They are not more or less risk averse in general than strategic buyers. There are different types of opportunity in defence – investing in an earlier stage tech business that is pre-profit or revenue, is very different to a business like Wescom, which is a cash-generative market-leader.” 

Gary added that DC Advisory also works, at times, for buyers, where the team’s knowledge of working for both buyers and sellers comes into play. Familiarity with the buyer universe is a real part of our value-add. You might work on the buy-side for a company and then in a different transaction, work on the sell-side to that same entity,” he said, commenting on the relatively small defence landscape. 

Debt Financing

DC Advisory’s role in debt financing mirrors their M&A advisory work. They help clients, whether they are running a re-financing or seeking acquisition capital, to secure the best possible terms. “Our expertise here is again in terms of which investors might want to invest and how to get the best possible terms for our client. It’s a different investor base because you want debt investors not buyers. But the two go hand in glove: the Wescom process included engagement with potential lenders to educate the debt market so the buyer could use that financing to support their acquisition of the company,” Gary explained. This proactive approach is crucial, ultimately helping M&A become a catalyst for further revenue growth and organic investments in capacity expansion within the supply chain.

The Critical Timing of Government Contracts

For defence companies, timing is everything, especially when a business’s future value is linked to a major government contract.

“Government customers… have their own procurement cycles and decision-making processes that are different from how a commercial counterparty would work,” Gary explains. “It’s not a good idea to launch a sale process for a defence company when you are expecting to sign a new contract before the end of the process.” This can be a complicating factor, with some defence contracts delayed or cancelled at the last minute as a result of changes in government or approach to procurement. 

Transactions in the defence sector also face significant government oversight. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) legislation is paramount, governing who a company can be sold to. If a business is a Ministry of Defence (MoD) supplier, it will almost certainly be subject to government review. Gary cited the example of the comms business, Sepura, which was sold to a Chinese buyer, only for the government to force them to unpick the transaction, highlighting the heightened national security focus.

What DC Advisory is seeing

The most significant trend is driven by macro-geopolitics. “We’re in a world where the return of land-based warfare to Europe has changed the game,” Gary commented. With the US driving member states to honour their commitments and increase defence spending, companies in the supply chain are set to benefit. This can be seen in prominent recent procurements and contracts, especially those awarded to vehicle manufacturers like Rheinmetall, BAE Systems, and KNDS, which are all expanding their production lines. 

• FFG to build new factory in Flensburg – Calibre Defence
• Ammunition production in Denmark bolstered by new contract – Calibre Defence
• The UK defence industry, a driver for growth?  

This has led to a noticeable increase in new investors looking to enter the defence sector. “The appetite to find investment opportunities has definitely increased,” he says. In many cases, it is the new defence tech companies that have benefitted from this boost to investment, their dual-use products appear to provide a reduced risk profile as they can secure additional contracts outside of unpredictable departments of defence.  

As more buyers compete to acquire businesses, the focus on a value creation strategy for the next owner is intensifying. Here, DC Advisory also works with clients to help them. One approach is the “Buy and Build” strategy, where a company procures another entity that adds to its portfolio, as the EDGE Group has for instance. This strategy—acquiring a platform company and then making bolt-on acquisitions to expand capabilities—is seeing a lot of interest. DC Advisory plays a key role in helping management teams develop, present, and build evidence to support these plans. 

Calibre comment: The future for M&A and advisory firms

The role of mergers and acquisitions and firms like DC Advisory will become increasingly important for the defence industry in the next few decades. It has been relatively stable for many years with some consolidation by the prime manufacturers. However, the influx of new companies will likely lead to another round of consolidation and acquisitions. New companies like Helsing and Anduril are arguably too big to be acquired and are instead buying companies for themselves. However, many others could make suitable and valuable additions to existing companies, and yet more are likely to fold, which could provide further opportunities for mergers. So, as the industry grows and new players are introduced, many of them financed through venture capital, so too will the role of advisory firms. 

By Sam Cranny-Evans, published on January 20, 2026. The lead image shows Gary Hancock, MD of DC Advisory. Credit: DC Advisory.