Date: 4 July

Nicola Merritt of Cortus Advisory made history last night as the first woman to lift the (Businessdesk.com) Rainmaker of the Year award. Just three years after founding Cortus, she was crowned the winner after selection by her peers in the region’s corporate finance community.

Her firm also won the team award in the Due Diligence category.

She said: “We launched to market just over three years ago, and it was a blank sheet of paper. We could do what we wanted, how we wanted, and we just wanted to do everything in a genuine, authentic way. We just want to be normal people. I won a piece of work yesterday, and the guy said to me, you were the only person that just talked to me normally. And I thought, you know, that’s all we are. We’re just trying to do deal making an authentic way, being ourselves. And I think our clients really value that.”

Reflecting on her status as the first woman to win Rainmaker of the Year, she added: “There have been challenges along the way, but it doesn’t have to be like that. I think there’s a lot of diversity in the room with lots of people doing things differently than how we did things 20 years ago. There’s still a long way to go, but if you want to make the change, be the change.”

More than 40 judges from across the region’s corporate finance sector initially met in Manchester to review the deals from the last 12 months, and to decide which teams and individuals have had the biggest impact.

From those shortlisted the winners were picked after a one-firm-one-vote process.

At separate events, Cortus Advisory Group also won Due Diligence Team of the Year at the West Midlands Rainmakers Awards (12 June 2024) and was shortlisted for the Yorkshire Rainmaker Awards (May 2024).