York Guides

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David Parkin
Business Editor
(Yorkshire Post)

ONE of Yorkshire's best- known women entrepreneurs, Suzanne Hart, has sold York Place Company Services, the firm she founded 18 years ago.
Ms Hart has sold her Leeds-based firm to rival Stanley Davis Group for an undisclosed sum which she described as a "super offer" which was too good to turn down.
York Place is a national company registration and search agency with 71 staff and offices in Leeds, Manchester, London and Nottingham.
It made profits of around £300,000 on turnover of £3.2m last year.
Stanley Davis Group is based in London and provides services such as company searches and formations, land registry searches and trademark searches for clients including leading accountancy and legal firms in the UK and abroad.
Well known in the industry, 65-year-old Stanley Davis sold his first firm to the late publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell for £3.75m in 1991 and then bought two company registration firms and created IRG, an Essex-based company registration business that was sold to the quoted Capita Group in April 2000 for £100m.
Mr Davis was estimated to have made £50m from that deal and was ranked 689th in the Sunday Times Rich List in 2003.
He made an approach to buy the York Place business three years ago but Ms Hart was happy to continue running it.
However when he returned with an offer some weeks ago, she said he decided it was the right time to sell.
"It was too good an offer to turn down, it was super," said Ms Hart, who will stay at the firm for a short time.
Currently in France on holiday, she said she has not made any future plans.
Mr Davis said: "We are very excited to have York Place as part of the group. They have a profile for quality and good service and have built a name in particular for their property search work."
Ms Hart added: "The link with Stanley Davis gives York Place a partnership which should scare our competitors and I'm delighted to continue to work with the new team.
"This sale provides longevity for the company. Stanley Davis Group want strength in the North and strength in property, which is what we have."
A growing area of York Place's work is property searches as solicitors involved in conveyancing look to bypass the bureaucracy and delays of dealing with local authority planning departments.
The firm employs a number of ex-police officers to carry out its property searches, providing details to clients within three days, whereas local authorities can take three months.
Ms Hart said that this area will grow with the launch of the Home Information Pack from 2007 which requires homeowners to provide buyers with specific information about their property.
The deal enables York Place to strengthen its international offering to clients as Stanley Davis advises on many offshore company combinations.
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Director and campaigner
A WELL-known figure in Yorkshire business, Suzanne Hart is a director of Leeds Chamber of Commerce, a former deputy chair of the region's Institute of Directors, and was a key member of the successful "No" campaign against a regional assembly.
She launched York Place Company Services in Leeds at the age of 35.
She was born in Scotland and after a convent school education had to turn down a place to study maths at Glasgow University when she became pregnant.
She lived in an Edinburgh tenement with her husband and began her working life as a pensions clerk with the Scottish Life Assurance Company.
She later took a part-time job in a pub before the couple moved to Manchester where her husband set up a pensions office.
They moved to Leeds because of his work and Ms Hart then took a job with a wall-covering business as a part-time saleswoman.
Later Ms Hart got a job with company registration agent Jordans and rather than return to Manchester to head its sales force, she took the advice she was offered by one of her clients and launched her own firm on York Place in Leeds, where it still has its head office.