2026: The Hacking Trust have £100M to invest this year and welcome your calls
2026: The Hacking Trust have £100M to invest this year and welcome your calls
The Hacking Trust is a leading property investor, specialising in companies with residential, industrial and commercial properties.
We work nationwide, and have built 27 years of experience in the sector, with a history of successful transactions over £750 million (reference).
Our in-house team of acquisition specialists, including solicitors, bankers, investors and surveyors, create a streamlined process, delivering the optimum outcome for your exit strategy.
The Hacking Trust has completed acquisitions and investments across a range of sectors, including residential and commercial, medical and veterinary practice, land, and quarries. Our dedicated, proactive team will act quickly to secure a solution that best meets your needs.
We act as principal for our own investments, and all acquisitions are made via SPV companies. We structure deals with expert legal and financial backing, through either a property purchase or through the acquisition of the company owning the property.
We buy companies and the property they sit on, using our own money.
The name arrived in 1999, and there is less romance to it than people expect. It came out of a business we had just bought — a spin of the words, really — and we simply liked the sound of it. It stuck, and it has been over the door ever since.
That has turned out to matter more than we anticipated. The name has not changed and the offer has not changed. When somebody digs out a letter from twenty years ago, the company on the envelope is still here.
Our own pocket, mostly. This is money the business has made over decades and put back to work.
Alongside that we run small bank borrowings, we have investors in the business, and we have further investors we can call on when something needs more. We are not raising money deal by deal and we are not waiting on somebody else’s commitment — which is precisely why we can say yes quickly and mean it.
If you want comfort on any of that, ask. We have used the same accountants since the early 1990s and we are happy to provide references. Anyone selling a company they have spent a lifetime building is entitled to check who is on the other side of the table.
It starts with a letter, then with you ringing or emailing us.
The first thing we will ask for is your valuation. That is the one piece we need from you, and it is worth being straight about why: we are buyers, not a free valuation service. If you don’t have a figure in mind, we urge that you get one, and then come and talk to us.
After that we meet. Sometimes at your house, sometimes at your office, sometimes at your solicitor’s office, sometimes at ours — but in person, always.
You cannot get the measure of somebody over a video call, and neither can we. We find meeting face to face allows both sides to be more comfortable and open.
Then the work starts. A number of people in our team go through the business properly — that is real due diligence, not a formality. Where a company is straightforward we can turn the whole thing round in a day. Where it is complicated, it takes longer, and we would rather take two weeks and get it right than rush you into something neither of us has understood.
Generally, no. We bid, and we work hard to complete at the number we bid. That is the whole basis on which we do business, and our reputation over twenty-five years rests on it.
The honest caveat is the market itself. Values have moved sharply in recent years, and where a genuine and significant shift happens between offer and completion, it can have an effect. We will tell you if it does, and we will tell you why.
The more common situation is the reverse of what people expect. A lot of the owners we deal with are older — often in their seventies and eighties — and they come to us holding a valuation from some years ago, already knowing it does not reflect what the asset is worth today. They would rather have that conversation openly than be flattered with a number that quietly falls apart later. So would we.
I would rather answer this plainly than tell you what you want to hear.
We buy 100% of the shares. That means we take the whole thing as it stands — the good parts and the awkward parts — and we do not cherry-pick the bits we fancy and leave you with the rest. That is a large part of why sellers come to us: there is nothing left behind for you to deal with.
Once it is ours, we reorganise it to suit how we operate. Some assets we keep and build on. Others we dispose of. It is a process of elimination, and it is not usually a case of running the business exactly as it was run before.
If continuity matters enormously to you — the name over the door, the way things are done — say so early and openly, and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right buyer. Some sellers want that above all else. Many simply want a clean, certain exit, and that is what we are built for.
I don’t take the first calls myself; I have a team who have been doing it for years and are good at it.
What they will tell you is that people are often wary at the start, and that is completely reasonable. You have made a decision to ring a company you have only ever seen on a letter, about the most valuable thing you own. Anyone sensible would be on their guard.
It usually settles quickly, because the conversation is simpler than people are braced for. Most callers know exactly what they want — a sale, with the minimum of pain — and that is the thing we are actually good at.
The part that puts people at ease fastest is the meeting. We come to you. And we do not ask for the warranties and guarantees a trade buyer would demand, which is genuinely unusual in this business. The risk sits with us, not with you. That is easier to believe sitting across a table from someone than it is down a phone line.
It is £750 million of assets, across just about every industry you can name. Manufacturing businesses trading since the 1800s. Property held since the early 1900s. Quarries, farms, medical and veterinary premises, industrial sites.
What it really represents is a lot of conversations. We have met people repeatedly over decades — someone who wasn’t ready in 2004, wasn’t ready in 2012, and rang us last year because the time had finally come. Nothing about that is high pressure. If a company has been writing to you patiently for thirty years without ever chasing you, you can probably draw your own conclusion about how serious they are.
We will look at almost any business. The conversation costs nothing, the number is a freephone, and we will come to you — what’s there to lose?
Yes — and the one I am proudest of is a deal we never did.
We were called in by a family who had inherited a business together and had stopped speaking to one another. The company had become the thing they argued about rather than the thing they owned, and selling it looked like the only way out.
Over the course of getting to a position where we could buy it, they started talking again — properly, some of them for the first time in years. By the end of it they had worked out what they each wanted, decided they could run it themselves, and told us they no longer needed a buyer.
We did not get the business, however, to me, bringing that family back together was worth more than the deal was. And who knows, maybe someday when they want to retire, they’ll remember us and come see us again.
A quarry with a dinosaur fossil in it, millions of years old it was!
It’s still in there and it’s not going anywhere.
Plenty.
They usually fail for one of two reasons. Either we cannot agree a price — the seller is holding a figure with no relationship to what the market will pay, and no amount of evidence shifts it. Or somebody does not fully understand what they are about to do, in which case we slow down and try to help them see it clearly, and occasionally we still have to walk away.
We would rather walk away than push somebody into a decision they are not ready for. The ones who were not ready often come back years later, and by then the conversation is easier.
Because you never know when you will need it.
Almost nobody who sells to us does so the first time they hear from us. They keep the letter in a drawer, and one day something changes — retirement, illness, a family decision, a business that has simply stopped being fun — and it comes back out.
That letter has cost you nothing, and the number on it is a freephone — there’s nothing to lose.
Our view is that it’s worth knowing we are here.
