John Lucas

John Lucas is a Partner at Hazlewoods LLP, a top UK independent accountancy and business advisory firm headquartered near Cheltenham. He joined the firm in 2002, qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2005, and was promoted to Partner in 2012. He now heads up the firm's Corporate Finance Lead Advisory team, one of the most active M&A advisory practices in the UK.

Important correction to the stub data: the available evidence does not support describing Lucas as an "angel investor" writing seed-stage checks. He is a corporate finance/M&A adviser. His work covers all stages of a transaction — planning and preparation for a sale or acquisition, negotiation, deal structuring and completion — acting on behalf of business owners, operators and investors rather than deploying his own capital. Where the stub labels his "Firm Type" and "Investment Stage" as Angel/Seed, that appears to be a mislabelling of an advisory professional.

Lucas's standout specialism is the health and social care sector, where Hazlewoods is one of the UK's most established advisers. His team supports independent care operators and healthcare investors through acquisitions, disposals and succession planning. Under his lead-advisory leadership, Hazlewoods completed 141 transactions worth a combined £1.3bn+ in 2025 (its best year to date), including 61 health and social care M&A deals in 2024 across 150+ independent providers, and ranked as the fifth most active financial adviser in the UK by deal volume (Experian MarketIQ, first nine months of 2025).

• Acts as a sell-side and buy-side M&A adviser, not a fund principal — engagements span outright sales, acquisitions, bringing in investment, management buyouts, refinancing and succession planning.
• Deepest expertise in health and social care (care homes, domiciliary/independent providers), a sector Hazlewoods has advised in for 30+ years.
• Also advises across financial services, professional and legal services, dental, veterinary, technology and manufacturing.
• In his own words on current deal drivers: *"We are seeing more business owners exploring their options, whether that is selling outright, bringing in investment, growing through acquisition, or planning for succession."*
• Deal sizes are mid-market: the team's 2025 H1 averaged roughly £9m per transaction (£531m across 60 deals), a scale well above seed/angel tickets.