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Some of Yorkshire's most pre-eminent professionals were sitting around a table at an office inside the Yorkshire Post's imposing headquarters in Leeds. The distinguished group included top lawyers, bankers and accountants as well as senior journalists from Yorkshire's national newspaper.

They were debating the shortlist for the Yorkshire Post Excellence in Business Awards 2008 and in particular, the Young Business of the Year category. There were three candidates on the shortlist, but it was clear there could be only one winner. It was Endless. The judges agreed unanimously that it had to win. "It's what Leeds is all about," said one.

In many ways, Endless does represent the best of Leeds, projecting a strong, successful and entrepreneurial image of the city to the rest of the world. It hasn't been easy, though.

"Running and owning your own business is totally absorbing," said Darren Forshaw, a founding partner. "I don't think anyone who hasn't done it can appreciate the level of stress it causes, particularly in the early years. It's impossible to switch off and your life revolves around thinking about how to develop, improve and defend your business against all of the pressures that come."

The nature of turnaround work brings difficulties of its own. Garry Wilson, the managing partner, said: "Doing turnaround is very tough. You're trying to pull a business back from the brink. Doing that in a recession or very uncertain climate as we are in at the minute can be even more difficult than normal.

"Sometimes there is a naive view that a recession is good time to be in turnaround. There's no doubt that our deal flow has rocketed since the onset of the economic crisis but the number of attractive investment opportunities has fallen because they are so broken or perhaps because the banks want a price that makes it unviable for us to invest."

The overriding principle of turnaround work is that it cannot be done on a shoestring budget, according to Mr Forshaw. He said: "You have to have the confidence to invest in a business and provide cash headroom at the start.

"In the early days we tried to limit the amount of capital we invested – that's natural for any private equity house because you are always judged on your return. You run the risk of ending up with a failed investment if you don't have enough confidence to put the proper amount of headroom in at the start."

Once the investment decision has been made, the next step is to bring stability to the business by making sure the company has the right cash management systems in place and getting the right management team in place. The next phase is value creation, which usually takes place after six to 12 months. Using retail as an example, this could involve the roll out of new stores, buying better, merchandising stores better, investing in infrastructure, potentially relocating the head office, looking at surplus assets and how to better utilise or dispose of those.

It does not involve asset stripping, said Mr Forshaw. He said: "It would be very difficult for Endless to go into an investment case based on assets being sold for a profit to the detriment of the business itself. At the end of the day, we are very proud of the record we have got on saving jobs. We have saved more than 10,000 jobs."

The team will be busy for the foreseeable future. Mr Wilson said: "Part of me thinks the UK has not experienced the recession yet. We have been protected by quantitative easing and low interest rates and other Government help.

"The other part of me is pleasantly surprised by the way that UK business has reacted to this climate. The overriding thing that concerns me is the difficulty in the Eurozone. There is still a lingering fear of system failure and the impact that can have on business confidence is huge.

"I have a fundamental belief that if business people want to do business and they want to make profits they will find different ways around this problem as we have done in the last two years. Necessity is the mother of invention."

He paid tribute to his team at Endless, across the firm's offices in Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and London. He said: "Having a strong team of around 25 people and being able to mobilise that team any time we want to do a deal fundamentally has been why Endless has been successful and has been able to continue to grow. We are a very small but tightly knit team and we spend time together on a daily basis. They find Endless an exciting place to work. They all love what they do. They have got fire in their belly."

Click here to download page 4 and page 5 of the Yorkshire Post on the 14 December which featured Endless' 5th Anniversary.