ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Munich/ Hamburg — OMMAX advi­sed EMBRACE of Bertels­mann Invest­ments on the acqui­si­tion of milch & zucker, a leading HR tech and service provi­der in Germany, which offers an appli­cant track­ing system (the BeeSite Recrui­ting Edition), agency services (employer bran­ding & recruit­ment marke­ting) and its own job board (Jobstairs.de).

OMMAX carried out a commer­cial, product-rela­ted, tech­ni­cal and AI due dili­gence. This compre­hen­sive analy­sis included an exami­na­tion of milch & zucker’s unique busi­ness model, market dyna­mics and compe­ti­tive land­scape, as well as an assess­ment of the company’s tech­ni­cal and product-rela­ted capa­bi­li­ties. In addi­tion, the impact of AI on the market and the company’s readi­ness for AI were assessed.

The company opera­tes in a market that is driven by funda­men­tal trends, such as the chal­lenges of attrac­ting top talent, the growing importance of skills-based recrui­ting and the incre­asing auto­ma­tion of HR proces­ses. In this context, the company is charac­te­ri­zed by a first-class Appli­cant Track­ing System (APS). The ability to support large mid-sized compa­nies and corpo­ra­ti­ons in the criti­cal phase of recruit­ment has earned the company a strong fan base of highly satis­fied clients and their outstan­ding loyalty.

The AI readi­ness assess­ment has shown that a dedi­ca­ted team has deve­lo­ped and inte­gra­ted mature AI use cases into the soft­ware product suite, such as the auto­ma­tic gene­ra­tion of conver­sion-opti­mi­zed job descrip­ti­ons that further increase produc­ti­vity in clients’ HR func­tions. Targe­ted invest­ments have led to the deve­lo­p­ment of new func­tions that are on the road­map and are to be inte­gra­ted into the BeeSite soft­ware suite in the future.

Ana Fernan­dez-Mühl, Vice Presi­dent Syner­gies & Colla­bo­ra­tion at EMBRACE, empha­si­zes: “milch & zucker perfectly comple­ments EMBRACE’s exis­ting port­fo­lio, both in terms of tech­no­logy and consul­ting as well as in terms of custo­mers. Toge­ther, we deve­lop inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons for the recrui­ting chal­lenges of the future, which are incre­asingly driven by tech­no­logy and require a high level of consul­ting exper­tise. We would like to thank the OMMAX team for their profes­sio­nal work during the acqui­si­tion process. We felt that we were in good hands thanks to the well-foun­ded analy­ses and the criti­cal but cons­truc­tive view of the OMMAX team. We look forward to conti­nuing the good coope­ra­tion in the imple­men­ta­tion phase.”

Max Kneissl, Part­ner at OMMAX, empha­si­zes: “milch & zucker has impres­sed us with its immense custo­mer loyalty, parti­cu­larly in rela­tion to the Beesite recrui­ting plat­form. With the AI func­tion­a­li­ties deve­lo­ped and a dedi­ca­ted team, the company shows a high level of readi­ness to exploit the immense oppor­tu­ni­ties that AI offers in terms of effi­ci­ency gains for the incre­asingly important HR func­tion. We congra­tu­late Bertels­mann Invest­ments and the manage­ment team of milch & zucker on their new partnership.”

News

Düssel­dorf — ARQIS has advi­sed Fit Reisen on the sale of KMW Reisen GmbH to Home­ToGo. KMW Reisen GmbH (KMW) opera­tes under kurz-mal-weg. de is a leading online travel portal for short trips in the DACH region. Foun­ded in 2001, the online pioneer Kurz Mal Weg has been part of the Fit Reisen Group (fitreisen.de) based in Frank­furt am Main since 2016.

Home­ToGo was foun­ded in 2014 and makes vaca­tion rentals easily acces­si­ble to ever­yone. Since then, the listed Berlin-based company has grown steadily and deve­lo­ped into the SaaS-enab­led market­place with the world’s largest selec­tion of vaca­tion rentals (over 15 million listings). Home­ToGo SE is listed on the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange under the ticker symbol “HTG”.

At the same time as acqui­ring KMW Reisen GmbH from Fit Reisen, Home­ToGo acqui­res a majo­rity stake in Super Urlaub GmbH. As a result of this tran­sac­tion, Home­ToGo will hold a 51% majo­rity stake in the combi­ned company. These include the two brands Kurz Mal Weg and Kurz­ur­laub, two leading specia­lists for themed tours and hotel offers for short breaks in the DACH region and neigh­bor­ing countries.

OMMAX advi­sed Fit Reisen Group on the sale of KMW Reisen GmbH (“Kurz Mal Weg”) to a subsi­diary of Home­ToGo SE. Home­ToGo thus holds a 51% majo­rity stake in the combi­ned company.

OMMAX conduc­ted a compre­hen­sive commer­cial vendor due dili­gence, criti­cally evalua­ting Kurz Mal Weg’s current busi­ness model, compe­ti­tive posi­tion, market envi­ron­ment and busi­ness plan. This thorough assess­ment under­li­ned Kurz Mal Weg’s excep­tio­nal strengths and confirmed its status as the leading specia­list provi­der in the DACH market for the sale of themed tours in conjunc­tion with hotel offers for short breaks.

The sale of the two compa­nies took place as part of a bidding process led by Carls­quare as M&A advi­sor. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

The ARQIS part­ner in charge of this mandate, Dr. Lars Laeger, alre­ady advi­sed Fit Reisen on the acqui­si­tion of the busi­ness of KMW Reisen GmbH from the insol­vency of the former Unis­ter Group.

Consul­tant Fit Reisen: ARQIS (Düssel­dorf)
Dr. Lars Laeger (lead; M&A), Thomas Chwa­lek (M&A), Johan­nes Landry (M&A), Lisa-Marie Niklas (employ­ment law), Marcus Noth­hel­fer (IP); Coun­sel: Jens Knip­ping, Dennis Reisich (both: tax); Mana­ging Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Denis Schütz (M&A); Asso­cia­tes: Katrin Ludwig (M&A), Rolf Tichy (IP)

News

Munich/ Arzberg — The Munich office of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, toge­ther with the Swiss law firm MLL Meyer­lus­ten­ber­ger Lache­nal Froriep Ltd., has advi­sed MW Storage Fund as anchor inves­tor in a joint venture for the deve­lo­p­ment, cons­truc­tion and opera­tion of Germany’s largest battery storage power plant in Arzberg.

Cons­truc­tion of the battery storage power plant is about to begin and commis­sio­ning is plan­ned for early 2025. With a connec­tion capa­city of 100 MW and a storage capa­city of 200 MWh, the plant will be one of the largest in Europe.

Other joint venture part­ners are Reich­muth Infra­struc­ture, a leading Swiss asset manage­ment company for infra­struc­ture invest­ments in the mid-cap segment, ZENOB, a regio­nal consor­tium for the cons­truc­tion of wind farms and photo­vol­taic systems, and the energy company Bayern­werk AG, a subsi­diary of E.ON.

The MW Storage Fund is an invest­ment vehicle set up speci­fi­cally for the battery storage power plant project by the Swiss multi-family office Swiss KMU Part­ners AG.

The Weil tran­sac­tion team was led by Munich corpo­rate part­ner Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt and included coun­sel Andreas Fogel (photo © Weil) as well as asso­cia­tes Amelie Zabel, Seve­rin Scholz, Laurin Schmidt and Chris­to­pher Schlet­ter (all corpo­rate, Munich).

The MLL Legal team was led by M&A Part­ner Andrea Sieber and supported by Senior Asso­ciate Phil­ipp Falk (M&A), Asso­ciate Michèle Sidler (M&A) and Part­ner Daniel Schoch (Banking & Finance).

About Weil

Weil, Gotshal & Manges is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,100 lawy­ers. Weil has offices in New York, Boston, Brussels, Dallas, Frank­furt, Hong Kong, Hous­ton, London, Miami, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Prince­ton, Shang­hai, Washing­ton, D.C. and Sili­con Valley. In Germany, the firm has two offices and around 60 lawyers/tax advi­sors in Frank­furt and Munich. The focus here is on provi­ding specia­li­zed advice to natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal clients on cross-border private equity and M&A tran­sac­tions, high-profile liti­ga­tion manda­tes, complex restruc­tu­rings and finan­cings as well as tax structuring.

News

Zurich/Dresden — The share­hol­ders of bitvoo­doo AG (“bitvoo­doo”), active in the field of colla­bo­ra­tive work­place solu­ti­ons, have ente­red into a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Commu­nardo Soft­ware GmbH (“Commu­nardo”), a leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons and consul­ting services for the digi­tal work­place. POELLATH advi­sed the share­hol­ders of bitvoo­doo AG on a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Commu­nardo Soft­ware GmbH.

The newly formed stra­te­gic alli­ance will be contin­ued under the umbrella of the Commu­nardo Group. This allows both Atlas­sian Plati­num Solu­tion Part­ners to conti­nue to operate inde­pendently while pooling resources.

Toge­ther, the aim is to further expand the company’s posi­tion as a leading provi­der of solu­ti­ons for modern working in the digi­tal work­place in the DACH market. Custo­mers will also bene­fit from an even more effi­ci­ent and robust service offe­ring as a result of the merger. POELLATH advi­sed the share­hol­ders of bitvoo­doo AG on the legal and tax aspects of the transaction.

Foun­ded in 2008 and based in Zurich (Switz­er­land), bitvoo­doo supports compa­nies in the plan­ning, design, deve­lo­p­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of indi­vi­dua­li­zed company and project plat­forms. These include social intra­nets, know­ledge plat­forms, manage­ment cock­pits and ticke­ting and issue track­ing systems.

Commu­nardo was foun­ded in 2001 and is a leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons and consul­ting services for the digi­tal work­place. The Dres­den-based company supports its custo­mers from all sectors in selec­ting the right soft­ware, imple­men­ting intel­li­gent solu­ti­ons and deve­lo­ping custo­mi­zed apps.

Consul­tant bitvoo­doo AG: POELLATH 

Otto Haber­stock, M.C.J. (NYU) (Part­ner, Lead, M&A/Private Equity)
Gerald Herr­mann (Part­ner, Taxes)
Daniel Zhu (Senior Asso­ciate, M&A/Private Equity)
Jannis Lührs (Asso­ciate, Tax)

News

Munich — AURELIUS Wachs­tums­ka­pi­tal has sold the IT services group connexta to the finan­cial inves­tor Frem­man Capi­tal, marking a further mile­stone in the port­fo­lio of the busi­ness services consul­tancy. Aure­lius was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by OMMAX.

In a favorable market envi­ron­ment supported by incre­asing IT comple­xity, growing cyber­se­cu­rity thre­ats and a trend towards outsour­cing, connexta has built a signi­fi­cant posi­tion in the German market by effec­tively combi­ning local presence and deep specia­liza­tion in areas such as cloud, cyber­se­cu­rity and busi­ness appli­ca­ti­ons. In this way, connexta has become a “one-stop store” for its thou­sands of customers.

On its path of inor­ga­nic growth, the buy-and-build plat­form has successfully comple­ted nine acqui­si­ti­ons in recent years and offers its port­fo­lio compa­nies an ever-growing range of Group bene­fits that streng­then their sales, deli­very and person­nel quality. Supported by a sophisti­ca­ted M&A process and a dedi­ca­ted team, the plat­form is well posi­tio­ned to conti­nue and acce­le­rate this path in the future.

Jens Stief, CEO of connexta, on the VDD support provi­ded by OMMAX: “We greatly appre­cia­ted the thorough report­ing and in-depth analy­sis that OMMAX brought to the process. The team’s support enab­led us to effec­tively deve­lop connexta’s equity story, which we will drive forward in the future. OMMAX’s exper­tise, from tran­sac­tion consul­ting to digi­tal imple­men­ta­tion, has proven to be very valuable in this partnership.”

Max Kneissl, Part­ner at OMMAX, commen­ted: “We would like to thank AURELIUS , connexta and TCG for their effec­tive colla­bo­ra­tion in this commer­cial VDD process, which repres­ents a remar­kable deal in the Euro­pean IT services land­scape. With their clear posi­tio­ning, relent­less pursuit of opera­tio­nal excel­lence and expe­ri­en­ced leader­ship, we see a strong deve­lo­p­ment path for the connexta group. “MAX KNEISSL

The OMMAX team conduc­ted a compre­hen­sive due dili­gence review of the vendor, focu­sing on key areas such as market and compe­ti­tive dyna­mics, custo­mer perfor­mance, group inte­gra­tion and busi­ness plan assess­ment. This holi­stic approach high­ligh­ted the innate robust quali­ties that the Group, with a turno­ver of over € 100 million, has built up for support­ing medium-sized compa­nies on the German market.

About the AURELIUS Group

AURELIUS is a globally active alter­na­tive invest­ment group that is widely reco­gni­zed for its opera­tio­nal approach. AURELIUS focu­ses on private equity, private debt and real estate. The most important invest­ment plat­forms are the AURELIUS Euro­pean Oppor­tu­ni­ties Fund IV and the listed AURELIUS Equity Oppor­tu­ni­ties SE & Co. KGaA. — The AURELIUS Group has grown stron­gly in recent years and today gene­ra­tes reve­nues of EUR 11 billion and employs more than 300 people at 10 loca­ti­ons in Europe and North America. AURELIUS is a reco­gni­zed specia­list for complex invest­ments with opera­tio­nal impro­ve­ment poten­tial, such as corpo­rate carve-outs, plat­form build-ups or succes­sion solu­ti­ons, as well as for specia­li­zed finan­cing solutions.

With more than 260 tran­sac­tions comple­ted to date, AURELIUS has a strong track record of deli­ve­ring supe­rior returns to its inves­tors through its flexi­ble approach, uncom­pro­mi­sing focus on opera­tio­nal excel­lence, ability to execute multi-dimen­sio­nal tran­sac­tions, prudent risk manage­ment and long-term invest­ment philosophy.

About OMMAX
We believe that anyone can become a digi­tal market leader.

We are a fast-growing digi­tal stra­tegy consul­tancy specia­li­zing in tran­sac­tion advi­sory, stra­tegy and end-to-end execu­tion of digi­tal initia­ti­ves. Our vision is to build digi­tal leaders globally to drive inno­va­tion and acce­le­rate digi­tal growth and profi­ta­bi­lity. Over the last 12 years, we have execu­ted more than 300 M&A tran­sac­tions with a tran­sac­tion value of more than EUR 18 billion and more than 2,000 inter­na­tio­nal value crea­tion projects across various indus­tries for leading private equity firms in the areas of busi­ness stra­tegy, digi­tal opera­tio­nal excel­lence, advan­ced data stra­tegy, analy­tics, tech­no­logy and auto­ma­tion. As a pioneer in holi­stic data-driven stra­tegy consul­ting and end-to-end imple­men­ta­tion, we are the leading consul­ting firm in the global private equity space, deve­lo­ping and imple­men­ting best-in-class digi­tal stra­te­gies and value creation.

News

Hamburg — Sport Alli­ance, a leading soft­ware company in the fitness indus­try based in Hamburg, Germany, announ­ces a further invest­ment of USD 100 million from leading equity growth firm PSG Equity (“PSG”). PSG alre­ady supported the Hamburg-based soft­ware company with USD 65 million in 2021. No further finan­cial details were disclosed.

Sport Alli­ance has set itself the goal of taking the sports and fitness indus­try to a new level with cloud-based and digi­tal soft­ware solu­ti­ons. The company counts more than 8,000 sports and health faci­li­ties among its custo­mers and offers inno­va­tive all-in-one soft­ware and services for fitness chains, fran­chise systems and indi­vi­dual studios.

With its product port­fo­lio, which is curr­ently available throug­hout Europe, Sport Alli­ance enables the effi­ci­ent manage­ment of gyms Sport Alli­ance and easy, digi­tal access to sport and exer­cise for members in sports faci­li­ties. Over 5.2 million gym members use the app solu­ti­ons provi­ded by Sport Alli­ance to gain easy and digi­tal access to sports facilities.

Sport Alliance’s core product is the “Magicline” manage­ment soft­ware. It is not only the market leader among ERP soft­ware systems in the fitness indus­try in German-spea­king count­ries — with its inte­gra­ted core brands for finan­cial services and member apps, Magicline has become the stan­dard for many sports provi­ders over the years. Its most renow­ned custo­mers include the RSG Group (McFit, John Reed, Gold’s Gym), clever fit and Bodystreet.

“I am extre­mely proud of the great perfor­mance of the Sport Alli­ance team and very plea­sed about the trust that PSG has placed in us. It proves once again that our products and services offer precis­ely the solu­ti­ons that the market needs and that we are making an important contri­bu­tion to the digi­ta­liza­tion of the fitness indus­try,” says Daniel Hanelt, CEO of Sport Alli­ance. “PSG’s invest­ment once again encou­ra­ges us to conti­nue our success story inter­na­tio­nally beyond the German-spea­king region. I am looking forward to the exci­ting future that lies ahead of us.”

“Since we ente­red into the part­ner­ship with Sport Alli­ance just over two years ago, we have expe­ri­en­ced an incre­di­ble curve of success. The company has since further expan­ded its offe­ring and driven forward the digi­ta­liza­tion of sports venues in Europe,” says Edward Hughes, Mana­ging Direc­tor at PSG. “We are deligh­ted to deepen our commit­ment to Sport Alli­ance and look forward to seeing what the strong team will achieve next.”

About Sport Alliance

Sport Alli­ance GmbH, based in Hamburg, specia­li­zes in soft­ware solu­ti­ons for effi­ci­ent studio manage­ment and finan­cial services in the fitness indus­try. The group of compa­nies has over 8,000 custo­mers, inclu­ding FitX, RSG Group (McFIT, Gold’s Gym, John Reed), clever fit and Body­s­treet. With “Magicline”, Sport Alli­ance offers Europe’s leading manage­ment ERP solu­tion for the fitness indus­try, helping gym opera­tors to opti­mize and digi­ta­lize their faci­li­ties. In addi­tion to Magicline, the company’s port­fo­lio also includes Finion — with Finion Capi­tal and Finion Fair­Pay — a provi­der of finan­cial services that supports studio opera­tors with the manage­ment of member­ship fees through to debt coll­ec­tion. www.sportalliance.com

About PSG Equity

PSG Equity (“PSG”) is a growth equity firm that part­ners with soft­ware and tech­no­logy-enab­led services compa­nies to help them trans­form and grow, capi­ta­lize on stra­te­gic oppor­tu­ni­ties and build strong teams. PSG has supported more than 130 plat­form compa­nies and faci­li­ta­ted over 470 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons to date. The company brings exten­sive invest­ment expe­ri­ence, deep exper­tise in soft­ware and tech­no­logy and a strong commit­ment to working with manage­ment teams to the part­ner­ships. Foun­ded in 2014, PSG has offices in Boston, Kansas City, London, Madrid, Paris and Tel Aviv. www.psgequity.com

 

News

Munich/Durham/Innsbruck — Holo­light, a leading specia­list in AR and VR solu­ti­ons for the enter­prise market, has successfully closed a Series B finan­cing round of EUR 11.4 million. Led by Euro­pean growth inves­tor Flatz Hoff­mann and exis­ting inves­tors Bayern Kapi­tal (via the Bayern 2 growth fund), EnBW New Ventures and Future Energy Ventures, this brings the company’s total invest­ment to around EUR 25 million. The company intends to use the newly acqui­red capi­tal to further deve­lop its XR strea­ming plat­form “Holo­light Hub”.

Holo­light was foun­ded in 2015 and has been doing pionee­ring work in the field of AR/VR ever since. As a proven indus­try-tested enter­prise strea­ming plat­form in the immersive and XR (virtual and augmen­ted reality) market with over 150 renow­ned custo­mers such as BMW, Nokia and Amazon Web Services, Holo­light has set the bench­mark for XR strea­ming. In the age of digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion, the tech­no­logy has great poten­tial in various sectors.

Holo­light Hub enables global avai­la­bi­lity and easy deploy­ment of XR appli­ca­ti­ons. Compa­nies use this to improve their indus­trial proces­ses in product deve­lo­p­ment, manu­fac­tu­ring, trai­ning or service. This supports compa­nies in setting up future-proof XR infra­struc­tures and promo­tes new forms of colla­bo­ra­tion and digi­tal work­flows in 3D. With the new invest­ment, Holo­light aims to further deve­lop the XR strea­ming plat­form and gain addi­tio­nal custo­mers in its key indus­tries such as auto­mo­tive, aero­space, engi­nee­ring and many more.

Impres­sive growth and forward-looking vision

Hololight’s plat­form addres­ses the great need for strea­ming in times of spatial compu­ting and indus­trial XR and effec­tively addres­ses the core chal­lenges that arise in indus­trial scena­rios, espe­ci­ally with regard to data manage­ment, proces­sing and secu­rity aspects. Over the years, Holo­light has worked hard to deve­lop and refine its own strea­ming tech­no­logy, which is now at the heart of its enter­prise strea­ming plat­form. Holo­light Hub brings a signi­fi­cant trans­for­ma­tion to the Exten­ded Reality (XR) expe­ri­ence by helping to increase the quality, acces­si­bi­lity and secu­rity of immersive content, as well as simpli­fy­ing manage­ment and delivery.

Florian Haspin­ger, CEO of Holo­light, explains: “As a pioneer in the field of XR strea­ming for compa­nies, we aim to stream every XR app via our Holo­light Hub. In doing so, we want to help compa­nies over­come the hurd­les of using immersive tech­no­lo­gies. Our approach not only offers impro­ved data secu­rity and infra­struc­ture flexi­bi­lity, but also enables true-to-life XR expe­ri­en­ces and global avai­la­bi­lity — all in a highly cost-effec­tive way.”

The recent expan­sion into the US, with the opening of an office in the Triangle Tech­no­logy Center in Durham in 2022, signals Hololight’s ambi­ti­ons to further expand its global presence.

“Holo­light impres­si­vely demons­tra­tes the inno­va­tive strength of Euro­pean compa­nies in the XR sector. Its ability to assert itself on the global market reflects the strength and poten­tial of Euro­pean tech­no­logy leaders,” says Monika Steger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapital. ”

Hubert Aiwan­ger, Bava­rian Minis­ter of Econo­mic Affairs, adds: “Compa­nies like Holo­light bene­fit from a dyna­mic inno­va­tion land­scape, as is the case here in Bava­ria. Hololight’s pionee­ring deve­lo­p­ments in the field of augmen­ted reality (XR) are setting stan­dards for product designs and cons­truc­tions of the future. With the Growth Fund Bava­ria 2, we support such compa­nies in successfully navi­ga­ting through decisive growth phases. In this way, we are further expan­ding Bavaria’s posi­tion as a leading loca­tion for high-tech innovations.”

About Bayern Kapital

Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, is the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria. It accom­pa­nies inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies in the Free State through various growth phases, from seed to later stage, with equity capi­tal in the amount of 0.25 to 25 million euros. Bayern Kapi­tal often fills gaps in the VC sector in proven consor­tium constel­la­ti­ons with private inves­tors (busi­ness angels, family offices and corpo­rate ventures).
Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with a volume of around 700 million euros. Since it was foun­ded in 1995 on the initia­tive of the state govern­ment, the wholly-owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern has inves­ted around 475 million euros of its own equity capi­tal in around 300 start-ups and scale-ups from sectors such as life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. This has crea­ted over 10,000 perma­nent jobs in sustainable compa­nies in Bava­ria. The active port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses almost 100 companies.
Examp­les of nume­rous ground­brea­king success stories that Bayern Kapi­tal has been invol­ved in at an early stage include EOS (today the world’s leading tech­no­logy provi­der in indus­trial 3D prin­ting of metals and plas­tics), Proglove, Fazua, SimS­cale, Scom­pler, egym, Parcel­lab, Cobrai­ner, Quan­tum Systems, Casavi, Riskme­thods, Tubu­lis, Cata­lym, Immu­nic, Sirion, tado and many more.
www.bayernkapital.de

 

News
Munich/ Düssel­dorf — The global invest­ment company Carlyle is acqui­ring a majo­rity stake in GBTEC Soft­ware AG and its affi­lia­ted compa­nies from Main Capi­tal. The equity for the invest­ment is provi­ded by Carlyle Europe Tech­no­logy Part­ners V, a three billion euro fund that invests in tech­no­logy compa­nies in Europe.

Global invest­ment firm Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG) today announ­ced a majo­rity invest­ment in GBTEC Soft­ware AG and its affi­lia­tes (“GBTEC”). GBTEC is a leading provi­der of soft­ware for busi­ness process manage­ment (BPM) and gover­nance, risk and compli­ance (GRC). Company foun­der and CEO Gregor Greinke remains the largest single private share­hol­der and CEO of GBTEC. As part of the tran­sac­tion, co-foun­der Marc-Oliver Strom­berg and the exten­ded GBTEC manage­ment team are reinves­t­ing and inves­t­ing signi­fi­cant shares in the company. Main Capi­tal Part­ners, which has supported GBTEC as a specia­li­zed soft­ware inves­tor since 2019, is selling its stake in GBTEC as part of the tran­sac­tion. Further details of the tran­sac­tion were not disclosed.

GBTEC is a leading provi­der of SaaS soft­ware in the market segments of intel­li­gent Busi­ness Process Manage­ment (iBPM), Digi­tal Process Auto­ma­tion (DPA) and Process Gover­nance, Risk and Compli­ance (GRC). GBTEC’s products stand out in parti­cu­lar due to their high level of user-friend­li­ness based on no- and low-code tech­no­lo­gies and a state-of-the-art product plat­form. GBTEC is highly regarded by leading tech­no­logy analysts. The company has over 1,200 custo­mers, inclu­ding many well-known Euro­pean and inter­na­tio­nal blue chip compa­nies and public insti­tu­ti­ons, and employs around 300 people. In addi­tion to the DACH home market, GBTEC has alre­ady estab­lished bran­ches in Spain and Austra­lia and has conti­nuously inves­ted in the inter­na­tio­nal aware­ness of the brand in recent years.

Toge­ther with GBTEC’s manage­ment team, Carlyle plans to further acce­le­rate the company’s inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion and further deve­lop its product port­fo­lio, parti­cu­larly in the area of Digi­tal Process Auto­ma­tion (DPA). Signi­fi­cant invest­ments are to be made in sales and marke­ting in parti­cu­lar, as well as in arti­fi­cial intelligence.

The equity for the invest­ment is provi­ded by Carlyle Europe Tech­no­logy Part­ners (“CETP”) V, a EUR 3 billion fund that invests in tech­no­logy compa­nies in Europe. In its colla­bo­ra­tion with GBTEC, Carlyle will draw on its many years of expe­ri­ence in the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of Euro­pean soft­ware compa­nies, inclu­ding SER Group, Shop­ware, CSS, 1E, Phrase and Hack The Box.

Gregor Greinke, foun­der and CEO of GBTEC, said: “With our modern and user-friendly products, we have deve­lo­ped into a leading BPM and GRC SaaS provi­der in Europe in recent years. Carlyle’s invest­ment marks the begin­ning of the next phase of GBTEC’s growth story. As one of the leading tech­no­logy inves­tors, we have found in Carlyle the ideal part­ner to realize our further growth plans. We would like to thank Main Capi­tal Part­ners for their excel­lent coope­ra­tion and part­ner­ship over the past four years.”

Michael Wand, Mana­ging Direc­tor and co-head of the CETP advi­sory team, said: “GBTEC is active in one of the most important tech­no­logy trends of our time: digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion and, above all, the auto­ma­tion of busi­ness proces­ses. We are deligh­ted that Gregor Greinke and his team have deci­ded to part­ner with us. We are convin­ced that with our track record of over 20 years in infra­struc­ture soft­ware invest­ments and in the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of Euro­pean soft­ware compa­nies, we can signi­fi­cantly support GBTEC in its further deve­lo­p­ment into a global market leader.”

Sven van Berge Henegou­wen, Mana­ging Part­ner at Main Capi­tal Part­ners, said: “The deve­lo­p­ment of GBTEC over the past years has been impres­sive, and the time spent with the manage­ment on stra­te­gic initia­ti­ves such as inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and product expan­sion has been extre­mely exci­ting. We are convin­ced that Carlyle is inves­t­ing in an outstan­din­gly posi­tio­ned company with excel­lent future prospects.”

Advi­sor to Main Capi­tal Part­ners: McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed Main Capi­tal Part­ners and the other share­hol­ders on the sale of their respec­tive share­hol­dings in the GBTEC Group inclu­ding GBTEC Soft­ware AG to the invest­ment company Carlyle.

 

News

Helsinki, London, Paris — One Click LCA, a leading global plat­form for redu­cing green­house gas emis­si­ons in the cons­truc­tion and manu­fac­tu­ring indus­tries, recei­ves €40 million from finan­cial inves­tors PSG Equity (“PSG”) and Infra­Via Capi­tal Part­ners (“Infra­Via”) to acce­le­rate growth. PSG is a leading growth equity inves­tor that works with soft­ware and tech­no­logy compa­nies to drive their inter­na­tio­nal growth. Infra­Via is a leading inde­pen­dent Euro­pean private equity firm in the infra­struc­ture, tech­no­logy, criti­cal metals and real estate sectors.

One Click LCA’s vision is to pave the way to a CO2-neutral future with a powerful global Life-Cycle Assess­ment (LCA), Envi­ron­men­tal Product Decla­ra­tion (EPD) and other sustaina­bi­lity solu­ti­ons. The company analy­zes the entire cons­truc­tion value chain — from real estate port­fo­lios to cons­truc­tion compa­nies — and uses scien­ti­fic methods to measure, report and reduce climate-dama­ging CO2 emis­si­ons and to calcu­late other sustaina­bi­lity crite­ria for the entire cons­truc­tion and real estate sector.

The One Click LCA plat­form supports thou­sands of custo­mers in over 150 count­ries, inclu­ding well-known compa­nies such as Siemens, Schind­ler, Skanska, AECOM, WSP, Foster+Partners, Lafar­ge­Hol­cim, Saint Gobain and CSD Inge­nieure, in achie­ving their envi­ron­men­tal goals. The plat­form includes LCA tools that are compli­ant with over 70 stan­dards and certi­fi­ca­ti­ons inclu­ding LEED, BREEAM, GRESB and many natio­nal regu­la­ti­ons and toge­ther form a unique global LCA database.

The plat­form enables CO2 analy­sis across the entire value chain, inclu­ding LCA and sustaina­bi­lity assess­ment for buil­dings, infra­struc­ture and the produc­tion of buil­ding mate­ri­als, inclu­ding early-stage analy­sis, test­ing of diffe­rent product designs, bench­mar­king and sugges­ti­ons for redu­cing CO2 emis­si­ons. In addi­tion, manu­fac­tu­r­ers can use the plat­form to create and publish digi­tal envi­ron­men­tal product decla­ra­ti­ons for their products and buil­ding mate­ri­als. The services inte­grate seam­lessly with over 15 of the most widely used Buil­ding Infor­ma­tion Mode­ling (BIM) soft­ware tools, inclu­ding Auto­desk Revit®, Tekla Struc­tures® and Bent­ley iTwin®.

With the help of the two inves­tors and the funds provi­ded, One Click LCA will invest even more in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment and drive orga­nic and inor­ga­nic growth with the aim of beco­ming the leading global sustaina­bi­lity plat­form for all stake­hol­ders in the areas of green­house gas reduc­tion, biodi­ver­sity, circu­lar economy and beyond.

“With the global buil­ding stock expec­ted to double in the next forty years, gene­ra­ting 230 giga­tons of CO2 emis­si­ons, we need to scale up measu­res to reduce green­house gas emis­si­ons in cons­truc­tion and manu­fac­tu­ring,” says Panu Pasa­nen, foun­der and CEO of One Click LCA. “We are convin­ced that our part­ner­ship with PSG and Infra­Via will usher in a new phase of growth and that toge­ther we are getting ever closer to our goal of support­ing one million users with life cycle analy­sis, envi­ron­men­tal product decla­ra­ti­ons and other sustaina­bi­lity software.”

“We look forward to working with Panu Pasa­nen and the One Click LCA team to support the company’s inter­na­tio­nal growth and deve­lop inno­va­tive products for the indus­try,” says Dany Rammal, Mana­ging Direc­tor, Head of Europe at PSG (photo © PSG). “Our opera­tio­nal exper­tise and track record of growing leading inter­na­tio­nal soft­ware provi­ders will enable us to streng­then and conso­li­date One Click LCA’s posi­tion as a leading force in the decar­bo­niza­tion of the global cons­truc­tion industry.”

Alban Wyniecki, Part­ner at Infra­Via, adds: “The world is commit­ted to carbon neutra­lity and this offers huge oppor­tu­ni­ties for One Click LCA. Thanks to its stra­tegy of flag­ship invest­ments in the infra­struc­ture sector, Infra­Via has been a major player in the infra­struc­ture and cons­truc­tion indus­try for 15 years. We are very much looking forward to support­ing Panu Pasa­nen and One Click LCA in brin­ging sustaina­bi­lity to our ecosys­tem and the cons­truc­tion manu­fac­tu­ring indus­try more broadly.”

About One Click LCA

One Click LCA is a tech­no­logy company based in Helsinki (Finland) that helps the cons­truc­tion and manu­fac­tu­ring sector to calcu­late and reduce the envi­ron­men­tal impact of buil­dings, infra­struc­ture and reno­va­tion projects — as well as cons­truc­tion products and other manu­fac­tu­red products — with a world-leading, user-friendly and auto­ma­ted Life-Cycle Assess­ment (LCA). Manu­fac­tu­r­ers will also be able to create and publish Envi­ron­men­tal Product Decla­ra­ti­ons (EPDs), have them checked by third parties and evaluate them in terms of the circu­lar economy, life cycle costs and soon also biodi­ver­sity. One Click LCA is used in over 150 count­ries. Its decar­bo­niza­tion plat­form includes a unique global data­base of over 200,000 LCA data­sets and supports over 70 stan­dards and certi­fi­ca­ti­ons, inclu­ding LEED, BREEAM, GRESB and other natio­nal regu­la­ti­ons. One Click LCA was foun­ded in Finland in 2001 and has a team of over 170 employees on five conti­nents. www.oneclicklca.com

About PSG

PSG is a growth equity inves­tor that works with soft­ware and tech­no­logy-enab­led services compa­nies to help them trans­form and grow, capi­ta­lize on stra­te­gic oppor­tu­ni­ties and build strong teams. PSG has supported more than 130 plat­form compa­nies and faci­li­ta­ted over 470 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons to date. PSG brings exten­sive invest­ment expe­ri­ence, deep exper­tise in the soft­ware and tech­no­logy indus­try and a strong commit­ment to working with manage­ment teams to the part­ner­ships. Foun­ded in 2014, PSG has offices in Boston, Kansas City, London, Madrid, Paris and Tel Aviv. — One Click LCA is PSG’s fourth plat­form invest­ment in Finland and its 23rd in Europe.
www.psgequity.com

About Infra­Via

Infra­Via is a leading inde­pen­dent private equity firm specia­li­zing in invest­ments in real assets and tech­no­logy. Infra­Via supports foun­ders, manage­ment teams and compa­nies in their growth and helps them to expand their busi­nesses and deve­lop them into first-class plat­forms. Since 2008, Infra­Via has inves­ted 12 billion euros in over 50 compa­nies throug­hout Europe.
www.infraviacapital.com

News

Düssel­dorf — Allen & Overy has advi­sed RAG-Stif­tung on the successful place­ment of a new EUR 500 million exch­an­geable bond conver­ti­ble into shares of Evonik Indus­tries AG and the repurchase of outstan­ding exch­an­geable bonds. The RAG-Stif­tung intends to use the net proceeds from the offe­ring of the new bonds to finance the repurchase of outstan­ding bonds and to expand its shareholdings.

The new bonds will bear inte­rest at a rate of 2.25% per annum, paya­ble semi-annu­ally in arre­ars on May 28 and Novem­ber 28 of each year, and will be issued at par. The refe­rence share price of the New Shares is EUR 17.6148. This results in an initial exch­ange price for the New Shares of EUR 21.14. It is inten­ded to apply for admis­sion of the new bonds to trading on the open market of the Frank­furt Stock Exchange.

The RAG-Stif­tung intends to use the net proceeds from the offe­ring of the new bonds to finance the repurchase of outstan­ding bonds and to expand its share­hol­dings. In this context, the RAG-Stif­tung issued a repurchase invi­ta­tion to the holders of the outstan­ding exch­an­geable bonds matu­ring in 2024 (the 2024 bonds) and the holders of the outstan­ding exch­an­geable bonds matu­ring in 2026 (the 2026 bonds).) Offers to sell in the total nomi­nal amount of EUR 396.9 million (approx. 79.4 % of the outstan­ding nomi­nal amount of the 2024 bonds) at a price of EUR 97,000 per EUR 100,000 nomi­nal amount and in the total nomi­nal amount of EUR 50 million (approx. 10 % of the outstan­ding nomi­nal amount of the 2026 bonds) at a price of EUR 94,000 per EUR 100,000 nomi­nal amount were accepted.

The sett­le­ment of the new bonds is expec­ted to take place on or around Novem­ber 28, 2023 and the sett­le­ment of the bond buyback is expec­ted to take place on or around Novem­ber 29, 2023 will take place.

The Allen & Overy team was led by part­ner Dr. Hans Diek­mann (Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf) and also compri­sed part­ner Dr. Knut Sauer, coun­sel Nadine Kämper (both Capi­tal Markets, both Frank­furt) and Doro­thée Kupiek (Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), senior asso­ciate Dr. Jan-Bene­dikt Fischer (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg) and asso­ciate Patrick Reuter (Capi­tal Markets, Frank­furt). Part­ner Marc Plepe­lits and Senior Asso­ciate Martin Schmidt (both US Corpo­rate Finance, both Frank­furt) advi­sed on U.S. law issues.

About Allen & Overy

Allen & Overy is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with around 5,800 employees, inclu­ding around 590 part­ners, in more than 40 offices world­wide. An up-to-date over­view of Allen & Overy’s offices can be found here: allenovery.com/locations.

Allen & Overy is repre­sen­ted in Germany at its offices in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt am Main, Hamburg and Munich with around 220 lawy­ers, inclu­ding 51 part­ners. The lawy­ers advise leading natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies prima­rily in the areas of banking, finance and capi­tal markets law, corpo­rate law and M&A, tax law as well as other areas of busi­ness law. www.allenovery.de

News

Düssel­dorf — AddSe­cure Group acqui­res the Digi­Comm Group. Heuking provi­ded legal advice to the share­hol­ders of Digi­Comm Group on the take­over by the Swedish AddSe­cure Group.

For the Digi­Comm Group, this acqui­si­tion repres­ents a signi­fi­cant mile­stone on its growth path. As part of AddSe­cure, it gains access to the finan­cial stabi­lity and resour­ces of a larger, expan­sive player. This will enable the Digi­Comm Group to embark on its next phase of growth and further expand its market posi­tion. The acqui­si­tion expands the AddSe­cure Group’s presence in the DACH region and gives it access to a broad range of exper­tise and offe­rings in the criti­cal infra­struc­ture sector. The Swedish company is also opening up the new appli­ca­tion area of intel­li­gent waste management.

For deca­des, the Digi­Comm Group has been one of the leading compa­nies when it comes to moni­to­ring and secu­rely control­ling decen­tra­li­zed systems or criti­cal infra­struc­tures. The company has parti­cu­lar exper­tise in tele­con­trol commu­ni­ca­tion tech­no­logy for utili­ties, water boards and distri­bu­tion network opera­tors. Today, these solu­ti­ons are among the most important plat­forms for future tasks such as the digi­ta­liza­tion of the energy tran­si­tion or the imple­men­ta­tion of Indus­try 4.0 and the Indus­trial Inter­net of Things (IIoT). Through member­ships in the areas of “Cyber Secu­rity” and “450Alliance”, the company secu­res an up-to-date and signi­fi­cant infor­ma­tion advan­tage for itself and its customers.

The take­over of the Digi­Comm Group by AddSe­cure is expec­ted to be comple­ted in the coming weeks.

Advi­sor Digi­Comm Group: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Michael Sörgel, LL.M., Foto (lead), Chris­tina Huck­schlag (both corpo­rate), Julian Rosen­feld (IT/ data protec­tion law), all Düsseldorf

News

Leuven, Belgium — Vault­Speed, the auto­ma­ted data trans­for­ma­tion company, announ­ced that it has recei­ved a Series A finan­cing of USD 15.9 million (approx. USD 15.9 million (approx. EUR 15.1 million). This finan­cing round is led by Octo­pus Ventures, one of the largest and most active venture capi­tal inves­tors in the UK and conti­nen­tal Europe. The current inves­tor Fort­ino Capi­tal, PMV and BNP Pari­bas Fortis Private Equity are also invol­ved. After two conse­cu­tive years of triple-digit reve­nue growth, Vault­Speed intends to use the proceeds to expand its strong inter­na­tio­nal presence, with a parti­cu­lar focus on the UK and US markets, and to further deve­lop the platform’s auto­ma­tion capabilities.

To enable faster analy­ses and data-driven decis­i­ons, more and more large compa­nies are moving their data to the cloud. This poses a problem for data teams: without auto­ma­tion, it is prac­ti­cally impos­si­ble to trans­form and inte­grate data from multi­ple sources in a timely manner without compro­mi­sing on quality or quan­tity. — Accor­ding to a market study by Gart­ner, global spen­ding on public clouds will increase by 17.5% to 725 billion dollars (approx. EUR 680 billion) by next year. Spen­ding on cloud infra­struc­tures is the fastest growing market segment.

Vault­Speed was laun­ched four years ago with an initial invest­ment of Cronos Group and Fort­ino Capi­tal in Belgium and has comple­tely trans­for­med data trans­for­ma­tion: Vault­Speed not only hand­les the comple­xity of data through trans­for­ma­tion, but also conso­li­da­tes data into a compre­hen­sive target data model that data engi­neers can custo­mize to their needs in days and weeks, unlike tradi­tio­nal methods.

Vault­Speed alre­ady offers its auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons to global compa­nies, espe­ci­ally in the finan­cial, health­care and utili­ties sectors. The company has ente­red into stra­te­gic part­ner­ships with Snow­flake, Micro­soft and Datab­ricks and has built a network of over 30 service part­ners to serve custo­mers globally.

“All data teams want to increase produc­ti­vity and agility. We auto­mate every step of their cloud data warehouse or lake­house: from setup to main­ten­ance and beyond,” explains Piet De Windt, CEO and co-foun­der of Vault­Speed. “We are deligh­ted to be working with Octo­pus Ventures, where they have supported our goal of revo­lu­tio­ni­zing the cloud data market from the very begin­ning. With this funding, we aim to triple our reve­nue by 2025.”

Paul David­son, Part­ner at Octo­pus Ventures (Photo © Octo­pus Ventures): “Data warehouse auto­ma­tion is incre­asingly repla­cing conven­tio­nal approa­ches to crea­ting data warehou­ses that are beco­ming inef­fec­tive and outda­ted. Vault­Speed has deve­lo­ped a code-free auto­ma­tion plat­form. We believe it is a first class answer to the chal­lenges of modern data science, where busi­ness intel­li­gence or analy­tics projects often need to be done in a matter of hours rather than months. We are deligh­ted to be working with Piet and Dirk, who are execu­ting their vision for their solu­tion well so far. We are confi­dent that we can help them acce­le­rate their ambi­tious inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion plans.”

Marcel van der Heij­den, Part­ner at Fort­ino Capi­tal“We are deligh­ted to conti­nue to support Piet De Windt, Dirk Vermei­ren and their team in their mission to push the boun­da­ries of auto­ma­tion, which has weathe­red the pande­mic and beyond and conti­nues to thrive as it trans­forms the produc­ti­vity of data teams. A must-have in the current AI era.”

“Vault­Speed is at the fore­front and will use the proceeds to main­tain its compe­ti­tive advan­tage. We are just begin­ning to tap into the huge poten­tial of auto­ma­tion in the cloud data warehouse and lake­house market. For exam­ple, we are explo­ring how AI and abstrac­tion can further revo­lu­tio­nize auto­ma­tion and deli­very of target data models,” explai­ned Dirk Vermei­ren, CTO and co-foun­der of VaultSpeed. ”

Roald Borré, Group Mana­ger Equity Invest­ments at PMV: “Auto­ma­ting data migra­tion to cloud envi­ron­ments is a key cata­lyst for digi­tiz­ing busi­nesses. PMV is exci­ted to support Vault­Speed in its rapid growth towards beco­ming a leader in the data space. The combi­na­tion of the team’s talent and addi­tio­nal funding is the perfect recipe for contin­ued success.”

Ben Kolada and Eddie Harding from ICON Corpo­rate Financewho acted as advi­sors on the tran­sac­tion, added: “We are very proud to have advi­sed Piet and the Vault­Speed team on this trans­for­ma­tive funding round. VaultSpeed’s rapid expan­sion clearly demons­tra­tes that the advan­ced auto­ma­tion capa­bi­li­ties of VaultSpeed’s data trans­for­ma­tion plat­form are exactly what the market demands. In addi­tion, Octo­pus Ventures, with its exten­sive indus­try expe­ri­ence and broad inter­na­tio­nal network, is the perfect part­ner for VaultSpeed’s next phase of growth.”

About Vault­Speed
Vault­Speed is the prefer­red solu­tion of leading compa­nies for auto­ma­ted data trans­for­ma­tion. By combi­ning auto­ma­tion templa­tes, a graphi­cal user inter­face for data mode­ling and a meta­data repo­si­tory in a single plat­form, Vault­Speed enables orga­niza­ti­ons to better deploy and main­tain their cloud data warehou­ses or lake­hou­ses. Vault­Speed has offices in London, Seat­tle, Leuven and Vilnius and coope­ra­tes with compa­nies such as HDI, Olym­pus, Euro­con­trol and Bleckmann.
www.vaultspeed.com

About Octo­pus Ventures

Octo­pus Ventures is one of the largest and most active venture capi­ta­lists in the UK and conti­nen­tal Europe. The company invests in and supports people, ideas and indus­tries that are chan­ging the world. Octo­pus Ventures has acqui­red exper­tise in seven sectors: B2B soft­ware, climate tech, consu­mer tech, deep tech, fintech, biotech and healthcare.
Octo­pus Ventures supports over 180 compa­nies in the UK and conti­nen­tal Europe, inclu­ding highly successful ones such as Zoopla, Wave­Op­tics and Depop. Octo­pus Ventures invests in people and teams — from the idea on a piece of paper to the later growth phases — and provi­des capi­tal, know-how and part­ner­ships. The company mana­ges GBP 1.9 billion (approx. EUR 2.2 billion) for private and insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors and invests GBP 200 million (approx. EUR 230 million) annu­ally. Octo­pus Ventures is part of Octo­pus Invest­ments, an invest­ment company that invests in people, ideas and indus­tries that will change the world. www.octopusventures.com.

About Fort­ino Capital

Fort­ino Capi­tal is a Euro­pean invest­ment company specia­li­zing in high-growth B2B soft­ware solu­ti­ons, mana­ging two private equity growth and two venture capi­tal funds. With offices in Belgium, the Nether­lands and Germany, Fort­ino supports excep­tio­nal and ambi­tious entre­pre­neurs in Europe. Fortino’s venture capi­tal port­fo­lio includes Vertuoza (BE), Tech­Wolf (BE), Timeseer.ai (BE), Zaion (FR), Salon­kee (LUX), Sides (DE), D2X (NL), Peers (DE) and Kosli (NO). Fort­ino Capital’s private equity growth port­fo­lio includes VanRoey (BE), Bizz­Mine (BE), Mobil­eX­pense (BE), Efficy CRM (BE), Tenzin­ger (NL), SpeakUp (NL), Ceno­sco (NL), Maxx­ton (NL), Star­dekk (BE) and Boni­ta­soft (FR). www.fortinocapital.com

About PMV

As an invest­ment company, PMV shapes a sustainable Flemish economy, the engine of our prospe­rity and well-being. We coope­rate with ambi­tious compa­nies and projects that focus on social impact and finan­cial return. PMV finan­ces promi­sing compa­nies from zero hour to growth and inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion. The company offers custo­mi­zed finan­cial solu­ti­ons in the form of capi­tal, loans and guaran­tees to all entre­pre­neurs with a good busi­ness plan and a strong manage­ment team. With and for the govern­ment and other part­ners, PMV also reali­zes important projects for the prospe­rity and well-being of Fland­ers. PMV mana­ges a port­fo­lio worth EUR 1.7 billion. www.pmv.eu/en

About BNP PARIBAS Fortis Private Equity

BNP Pari­bas Fortis Private Equity, the venture capi­tal arm of BNP Pari­bas Fortis, has been active in the Belgian private equity market since the 1980s. BNP Pari­bas Fortis Private Equity is curr­ently acqui­ring mino­rity share­hol­dings and provi­ding mezza­nine finan­cing to high-performing medium-sized compa­nies. BNP Pari­bas Fortis Private Equity also invests in specia­li­zed venture capi­tal and private equity funds in the Belgian market. BNP Pari­bas Fortis Private Equity has direct invest­ments in Studio 100, Konings, eTheRNA, Hanne­card, Quality Assis­tance and PointChaud.

About Cronos Group

At Cronos Groep, we combine entre­pre­neur­ship with a passion for inno­va­tion. Our tech­no­lo­gi­cal exper­tise is used not only to create oppor­tu­ni­ties, but also to promote growth and bring visio­nary ideas to life. We actively invest in start-ups, incu­bate promi­sing concepts and provide the resour­ces, mento­ring and know-how for their success. With the entre­pre­neu­rial spirit embedded in our DNA, we strive to create a future where inno­va­tion and human progress go hand in hand. https://cronos-groep.be/

About ICON CORPORATE FINANCE

ICON has offices in London, Bris­tol and San Fran­cisco and specia­li­zes inter­na­tio­nally in mergers and acqui­si­ti­ons and capi­tal raising. The company works closely with the global M&A, venture capi­tal, private equity and CVC commu­ni­ties. ICON has advi­sed on exits for compa­nies such as Accen­ture, Crayon, Aptean, IQVIA, Aviva, NTT, Syniti and Tels­tra and reali­zed capi­tal raisings with JP Morgan, Synova, BGF, YFM, Mobeus and Moodys. His indus­try exper­tise includes AI & Data­Tech, FinTech, Cyber, Health­Tech, Digi­tal Media, Enab­ling­Tech, Enter­prise Soft­ware and Mana­ged Services.

News

Utrecht (The Nether­lands) — Gilde Health­care announ­ces the final closing of the new Venture&Growth Fund VI with a volume of EUR 740 million. Fund VI thus closes at the upper end of the target volume after announ­cing an initial closing of EUR 600 million in April of this year. The new fund focu­ses on fast-growing compa­nies that deve­lop solu­ti­ons for impro­ved health­care at lower costs.

Gilde Health­care invests in compa­nies in Europe and North America that are active in areas such as digi­tal health, medi­cal tech­no­logy and thera­peu­tics. Gilde Health­care Venture&Growth VI is an Article 9 fund in the context of the Sustainable Finance Disclo­sure Regu­la­tion (SFDR).

Inves­tors include compa­nies from the health­care sector, pension funds, banks, insu­rance compa­nies, funds of funds and sove­reign wealth funds, foun­da­ti­ons, family offices, entre­pre­neurs and the Gilde team.

Pieter van der Meer, Mana­ging Part­ner at Gilde Health­care: “The strong inte­rest from insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors who want to make a sustainable impact with their invest­ments is a clear confir­ma­tion of our mission: inves­t­ing in solu­ti­ons that improve the quality of pati­ent care and are cost-effec­tive at the same time. Our holi­stic and broad-based stra­tegy, which includes invest­ments in digi­tal health, medi­cal tech­no­logy and thera­peu­tics in parti­cu­lar, enables us to find the best and most cost-effec­tive solu­tion for each indi­vi­dual pati­ent. With our team of expe­ri­en­ced indus­try experts, we help compa­nies to scale medi­cal inno­va­tions and make them acces­si­ble worldwide.”

Spen­ding on health­care in the western world is rising steadily and alre­ady exceeds 20% of GDP in the United States. Society as a whole needs cost-effec­tive solu­ti­ons to coun­ter this growth in expen­dit­ure. Gilde Healthcare’s mission to invest in impro­ved health­care at lower cost is supported by the newly formed Impact Coun­cil, chai­red by the former Execu­tive Direc­tor of the Euro­pean Medi­ci­nes Agency (EMA).

The new fund will invest 10–70 million euros per port­fo­lio company. Toge­ther with the last Venture&Growth Fund V (2020) and Gilde Health­care Private Equity IV (2022), Gilde Health­care has raised EUR 1.7 billion in capi­tal in the last three years.

About Gilde Healthcare

Gilde Health­care is an inves­tor specia­li­zing in the health­care sector that mana­ges over 2.6 billion euros with two fund stra­te­gies: Venture&Growth and Private Equity. Gilde Healthcare’s Venture&Growth fund invests in fast-growing compa­nies in the fields of digi­tal health, medi­cal tech­no­logy and thera­peu­tics based in Europe and North America. Gilde Healthcare’s private equity fund invests in profi­ta­ble, medium-sized health­care compa­nies based in north-western Europe. Further infor­ma­tion can be found at: www.gildehealthcare.com

News

The Munich and Frank­furt offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP have advi­sed Alibaba Inter­na­tio­nal Digi­tal Commerce Group (“AIDC”) in connec­tion with an invest­ment in the Visa­ble Group via a subsidiary.

The German Visa­ble Group, a former port­fo­lio company of Capvis, opera­tes one of Europe’s leading B2B market plat­forms with over 3 million Euro­pean corpo­rate custo­mers. The manage­ment of the Visa­ble Group remains inves­ted in the company.

For AIDC, an inde­pen­dent divi­sion of the Chinese tech­no­logy group Alibaba Group Holding, which bund­les the inter­na­tio­nal e‑commerce plat­forms, this invest­ment is of stra­te­gic importance due to the inten­ded expan­sion of its B2B platform.

Advi­sor Alibaba: Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Munich corpo­rate part­ners Manuel-Peter Fringer and Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt were in charge and compri­sed part­ner Benja­min Rapp (Tax, Frank­furt), coun­sel Florian Wessel (Regu­la­tory, Munich), Thomas Zimmer­mann (Finance, Munich), Julian Schwa­ne­beck (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt) and Dr. Konstan­tin Hoppe (IP/IT, Munich) as well as asso­cia­tes Amelie Zabel, Chris­to­pher Schlet­ter (both Corpo­rate, Munich), Alexia Kuhn­münch (Regu­la­tory, Munich), Silvia Lengauer (Finance, Munich), Mario Kuhn (Data Protec­tion, Frank­furt), Fabian Kraupe (Labor Law, Munich) and Stef­fen Giolda (Anti­trust Law, Munich).

About Weil

Weil, Gotshal & Manges is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,100 lawy­ers. Weil has offices in New York, Boston, Brussels, Dallas, Frank­furt, Hong Kong, Hous­ton, London, Miami, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Prince­ton, Shang­hai, Washing­ton, D.C. and Sili­con Valley. In Germany, the firm has two offices and around 60 lawyers/tax advi­sors in Frank­furt and Munich. The focus here is on provi­ding specia­li­zed advice to natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal clients on cross-border private equity and M&A tran­sac­tions, high-profile liti­ga­tion manda­tes, complex restruc­tu­rings and finan­cings as well as tax structuring.

News

Munich/ London - EQS Group AG (“EQS”), a leading inter­na­tio­nal cloud soft­ware provi­der in the areas of corpo­rate compli­ance, inves­tor rela­ti­ons and ESG, and Thoma Bravo, a leading soft­ware invest­ment firm, have today signed an inves­tor agree­ment pursu­ant to which Thoma Bravo will support the future growth of EQS and launch a public tender offer (the “Offer”) for all outstan­ding shares at an offer price of EUR 40.00 per share in cash.

New regu­la­ti­ons such as the EU Whist­le­b­lo­wing Direc­tive are incre­asing the demand for inno­va­tive compli­ance soft­ware solu­ti­ons. EQS will bene­fit from Thoma Bravo’s expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in soft­ware and opera­ti­ons to acce­le­rate product inno­va­tion and fully capi­ta­lize on the company’s long-term growth oppor­tu­ni­ties in Europe. Thoma Bravo’s invest­ment will also enable EQS to finance future growth initia­ti­ves and poten­tial acqui­si­ti­ons with the aim of jointly deve­lo­ping the Euro­pean market for compli­ance soft­ware. This includes invest­ments in EQS’ plans to address the incre­asingly complex requi­re­ments in the inves­tor rela­ti­ons and corpo­rate compli­ance envi­ron­ment, in parti­cu­lar the demand for auto­ma­ted and simpli­fied proces­ses on a single secure and inte­gra­ted platform.

EQS and Thoma Bravo are convin­ced that such invest­ments are best made outside the stock market. In addi­tion, the inves­tor agree­ment sets out the corner­sto­nes of the part­ner­ship, which also include assu­ran­ces to employees, busi­ness part­ners and other stake­hol­ders. As part of the part­ner­ship, Thoma Bravo has under­ta­ken to provide addi­tio­nal capi­tal upon comple­tion of the offer by subscrib­ing to a cash capi­tal increase of 10% of the EQS shares at the offer price. The tran­sac­tion is Thoma Bravo’s first invest­ment in a German company.

“EQS is a unique German soft­ware company that deve­lops inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons for the three mega­trends of digi­ta­liza­tion, regu­la­tion and ESG and is growing profi­ta­bly thanks to these trends,” said Irina Hemmers, Part­ner at Thoma Bravo. “Toge­ther with Achim Weick and the expe­ri­en­ced team at EQS, we will deve­lop the plat­form into a pan-Euro­pean compli­ance and ESG cham­pion. This will bene­fit clients whose requi­re­ments are constantly chan­ging in this very dyna­mic market. We are very much looking forward to working with the EQS manage­ment team on the further deve­lo­p­ment of state-of-the-art soft­ware solutions.”

“Over the past 23 years, EQS has grown into a leading RegTech company provi­ding soft­ware solu­ti­ons to thou­sands of custo­mers, inclu­ding all DAX40 compa­nies as well as blue chip compa­nies world­wide. From day one, we have firmly belie­ved that trans­pa­rency crea­tes the most important busi­ness asset: trust. We enable compa­nies not only to reach important mile­sto­nes in the capi­tal markets, but also to gain and main­tain the trust of all stake­hol­ders. The colla­bo­ra­tion with Thoma Bravo will enable us to embark on the next chap­ter of our growth story. Toge­ther we will successfully estab­lish our EQS COCKPIT as the leading Euro­pean compli­ance manage­ment system for compa­nies of all sizes,” said Achim Weick, foun­der and Chief Execu­tive Offi­cer of EQS. “With its soft­ware exper­tise, many years of expe­ri­ence and enthu­si­asm for trans­for­ma­tive tech­no­lo­gies, Thoma Bravo is the right part­ner to support our growth plans.”

Today’s announce­ment is the result of a struc­tu­red process in which the EQS Execu­tive Board has been in inten­sive dialog with selec­ted inte­res­ted parties over the past months in order to find the right part­ner and achieve the best possi­ble outcome for EQS and its shareholders.

Key data of the transaction 

Thoma Bravo will offer EQS share­hol­ders EUR 40.00 per share in cash. The offer repres­ents a very attrac­tive premium of 53% over the XETRA closing price of EQS on Novem­ber 15, 2023, the last trading day prior to this publi­ca­tion, and 61% over the volume-weigh­ted average share price over the last three months prior to this date (VWAP). Based on the offer price, the market capi­ta­liza­tion will amount to appro­xi­m­ately EUR 400 million. Thoma Bravo and EQS are convin­ced that the offer offers an extre­mely attrac­tive oppor­tu­nity for all EQS share­hol­ders to realize a signi­fi­cant part of the poten­tial future value appre­cia­tion ahead of time.

Thoma Bravo has alre­ady secu­red a stake of appro­xi­m­ately 60% of all outstan­ding EQS shares through irre­vo­ca­ble tender agree­ments with EQS major share­hol­ders, inclu­ding Achim Weick, the CEO of EQS, wher­eby Achim Weick will also reinvest part of his stake in EQS into the new holding struc­ture. All major share­hol­ders will receive the same offer price under these agreements.

Thoma Bravo finan­ced the tran­sac­tion enti­rely with equity from its funds.

The Manage­ment Board and the Super­vi­sory Board of EQS welcome and support the Offer and intend, subject to review of the Offer Docu­ment, to recom­mend that all EQS Share­hol­ders accept the Offer. In addi­tion to Achim Weick’s obli­ga­tion to tender and parti­ally reinvest, the other members of the Manage­ment Board have also agreed to tender their EQS shares as part of the offer.

Strong stra­te­gic fit 

Thoma Bravo has over 20 years of expe­ri­ence in support­ing fast-growing soft­ware compa­nies with capi­tal and exper­tise. The invest­ment company has acqui­red or inves­ted in over 450 soft­ware and tech­no­logy compa­nies. Having deployed more than €10 billion of equity across 11 tran­sac­tions in Europe over the last 12 years, this tran­sac­tion is Thoma Bravo’s first plat­form invest­ment in Germany.

EQS is a leading inter­na­tio­nal deve­lo­per and provi­der of cloud soft­ware solu­ti­ons in the areas of corpo­rate compli­ance, inves­tor rela­ti­ons and ESG. EQS’ leading compli­ance and inves­tor rela­ti­ons soft­ware solu­ti­ons enable thou­sands of compa­nies world­wide to secu­rely meet complex regu­la­tory requi­re­ments, mini­mize risk and report trans­par­ently on corpo­rate perfor­mance and its impact on society and the environment.

“We have follo­wed the impres­sive growth of EQS over many years. The company has estab­lished itself as a leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons that ensure regu­la­tory compli­ance and effi­ci­ent capi­tal markets,” said Will Downing and David Tse, Vice Presi­dents of Thoma Bravo. “EQS is very well posi­tio­ned to be the part­ner of choice for compa­nies in an incre­asingly complex compli­ance and report­ing envi­ron­ment. The new EU regu­la­ti­ons in parti­cu­lar increase the need for soft­ware work­flows to improve trans­pa­rency and build trust. We look forward to working with the EQS team to further grow the busi­ness through orga­nic product inno­va­tion and M&A activity.”

Details of the tran­sac­tion

The Offer is subject to custo­mary offer condi­ti­ons, inclu­ding regu­la­tory appr­ovals, but will not include a mini­mum accep­tance thres­hold. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to be comple­ted in Janu­ary or Febru­ary 2024.

EQS and Thoma Bravo have agreed that the EQS manage­ment board will apply for the revo­ca­tion of the inclu­sion of the EQS shares in the open market imme­dia­tely after comple­tion of the Offer. A sepa­rate delis­ting offer will not be required.

Further details of the Offer, inclu­ding the terms and condi­ti­ons, will be set out in the Offer Docu­ment, upon publi­ca­tion of which the Offer Accep­tance Period will commence. As EQS Group is not listed on the regu­la­ted market, the Offer is not subject to the German Secu­ri­ties Acqui­si­tion and Take­over Act (Wert­pa­pier­er­werbs- und Über­nah­me­ge­setz — WpÜG). The offer docu­ment (in German and English) and other infor­ma­tion in connec­tion with the Offer will be published on the follo­wing website: www.cloud-solutions-offer.com.

Consul­tant EQS: Gold­man Sachs Bank Europe SE is acting as finan­cial advi­sor and GLNS as legal advi­sor to EQS.

Advi­sor Thoma Bravo: Park­View Part­ners as finan­cial advi­sor and Kirk­land & Ellis as legal advisor. 

About Thoma Bravo

Thoma Bravo is one of the largest soft­ware inves­tors in the world with assets under manage­ment of more than USD 131 billion (as of June 30, 2023). With private equity, growth equity and credit stra­te­gies, the company invests in growth-orien­ted, inno­va­tive compa­nies opera­ting in the soft­ware and tech­no­logy sectors. Thoma Bravo lever­a­ges its deep indus­try know­ledge and proven stra­te­gic and opera­tio­nal capa­bi­li­ties to work with its port­fo­lio compa­nies to imple­ment best prac­ti­ces in opera­ti­ons and drive growth initia­ti­ves. Over the past 20 years, the company has acqui­red or inves­ted in more than 450 compa­nies with an enter­prise value of over 250 billion US dollars — inclu­ding invest­ments with and without a control­ling influence. The company has bran­ches in Chicago, London, Miami, New York and San Fran­cisco. Further infor­ma­tion can be found at www.thomabravo.com.

About EQS

EQS is a leading inter­na­tio­nal cloud soft­ware provi­der in the areas of corpo­rate compli­ance, inves­tor rela­ti­ons and sustaina­bi­lity. Over 10,000 compa­nies world­wide use EQS products to build trust by relia­bly and secu­rely meeting complex regu­la­tory requi­re­ments, mini­mi­zing risk and report­ing trans­par­ently on their busi­ness perfor­mance and its impact on society and the climate. EQS products are bund­led in the cloud-based EQS COCKPIT soft­ware. This allows compli­ance proces­ses in the areas of whist­le­b­lower protec­tion and case hand­ling, policy manage­ment and appr­oval proces­ses to be mana­ged just as profes­sio­nally as busi­ness part­ner manage­ment, insi­der list manage­ment and report­ing obli­ga­ti­ons. Listed compa­nies also use a global news­wire, inves­tor targe­ting and cont­act manage­ment, as well as IR websites, digi­tal reports and webcasts for effi­ci­ent and secure inves­tor commu­ni­ca­tion. EQS also offers soft­ware for the manage­ment of ESG data (envi­ron­men­tal, social, gover­nance), the fulfill­ment of human rights due dili­gence obli­ga­ti­ons along corpo­rate supply chains, and for compli­ant sustaina­bi­lity report­ing. EQS was foun­ded in Munich in 2000. Today, the Group has around 600 employees in the world’s most important finan­cial centers.

News

Düssel­dorf, Novem­ber 2023 — niiio finance group AG, a public limi­ted company listed on the open market, acqui­res a stake in private equity inves­tor Pollen Street Capi­tal. The aim of the inves­tor is to create a new market leader in the field of soft­ware for asset and wealth manage­ment. — A Deloitte Legal team led by coun­sel Chris­toph Meves advi­sed niiio finance group on this transaction.

As part of the invest­ment, all shares in the German funds­ac­cess AG, the Luxem­bourg-based Fund­Hero S.A. and the Geor­gian FinTecc LLC, among others, are to be contri­bu­ted to niiio finance group AG.

The growth stra­tegy of niiio finance group AG, which consists of both orga­nic and inor­ga­nic growth, is thus to be contin­ued. The company aims to create a “one-stop store” in all areas rele­vant to Euro­pean asset and wealth manage­ment. In parti­cu­lar, funds­ac­cess AG, which would increase the Group’s reach in wealth manage­ment services, and Fund­Hero S.A., which expands the range of asset manage­ment services, are to provide the company with important buil­ding blocks in achie­ving this goal.

Chris­toph Meves has been advi­sing niiio finance group AG on capi­tal markets law and tran­sac­tions since 2018. After joining Deloitte Legal, Deloitte Legal has advi­sed niiio finance group AG since the begin­ning of 2022, inclu­ding on gene­ral meetings, capi­tal increa­ses and the acqui­si­tion of FIXhub GmbH.

Advi­sor niiio finance group AG: Deloitte Legal

Chris­toph Meves (Corporate/M&A), Niko Jako­vou (Corporate/M&A/Capital Markets, both lead, both Düsseldorf)

Advi­sor to Pollen Street Capi­tal Limi­ted: White & Case (Frank­furt am Main)

News

Menold Bezler has advi­sed Singa­pore-based BW Water Group on the acqui­si­tion of H+E Pharma GmbH (“H+E Pharma”) and S‑Tec GmbH (“S‑Tec”), each based in Klipp­hau­sen near Dres­den, inclu­ding the busi­ness premi­ses, as part of an asset deal. Both compa­nies are loca­ted in the so-called “Sili­con Saxony”, the largest semi­con­duc­tor clus­ter in Europe.

Stutt­gart — H+E Pharma is a high-tech plant engi­nee­ring company that manu­fac­tures, stores and distri­bu­tes pure water system solu­ti­ons for phar­maceu­ti­cal custo­mers. S‑Tec manu­fac­tures equip­ment and systems for the puri­fi­ca­tion and treat­ment of water and other liquids of all kinds. Both compa­nies had been in self-admi­nis­te­red insol­vency procee­dings since August 2023.

Foun­ded in 2017, BW Water Group, a joint venture of BW Group, is a leading provi­der of water and waste­wa­ter systems for the indus­trial and muni­ci­pal markets. The acqui­si­tion is part of BW Water’s global expan­sion and streng­thens the company’s Euro­pean presence and expertise.

Advi­sors to BW Water: Menold Bezler (Stutt­gart)
Jost Ruders­dorf (lead, part­ner), Ann-Chris­tin Heine­mann (both distres­sed M&A), Dr. Axel Klumpp (part­ner, real estate law), Dr. Jan Nehring-Köppl (foreign trade law), Kath­rin Seiz (coun­sel, employ­ment law), Dr. Julia Schnei­der (part­ner, IP law)

About Menold Bezler

Menold Bezler is a part­ner­ship-struc­tu­red commer­cial law firm based in Stutt­gart. More than 120 profes­sio­nals offer legal advice, tax advice, audi­ting and busi­ness manage­ment advice from a single source. Our clients include well-known medium-sized compa­nies, listed corpo­ra­ti­ons, the public sector and its compa­nies as well as non-profit orga­niza­ti­ons. More at www.menoldbezler.de.

News

Paris/ Munich — EMZ Part­ners (“EMZ”) acqui­res a signi­fi­cant stake in H&Z Unter­neh­mens­be­ra­tung (“H&Z”). In addi­tion to EMZ, a total of 120 H&Z employees will parti­ci­pate in the group, forming one of the largest employee parti­ci­pa­tion programs in the manage­ment consul­ting indus­try in DACH. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the finan­cial details of the invest­ment. The tran­sac­tion is subject to appr­oval by the anti­trust authorities.

H&Z was foun­ded in 1997 as an inde­pen­dent consul­ting firm in Munich and has since pursued the unique approach of “consul­ting with brain, heart and hand”. The consul­ting projects focus stron­gly on sustainable trans­for­ma­tion and tangi­ble results for custo­mers. The company has conti­nuously expan­ded its market posi­tion and repu­ta­tion over the past 25 years and has once again signi­fi­cantly acce­le­ra­ted its growth in the last three years.

H&Z curr­ently advi­ses its clients prima­rily in the areas of Procu­re­ment & Supply Chain, Stra­tegy & Perfor­mance and Sustaina­bi­lity & Trans­for­ma­tion, from stra­tegy deve­lo­p­ment through to successful imple­men­ta­tion. In the coming years, the manage­ment team plans to further expand the range of consul­ting services orga­ni­cally and inor­ga­ni­cally and to deve­lop H&Z into the leading Euro­pean consul­ting firm for the circu­lar economy.

“H&Z impres­sed us right from the start with its impres­sive growth history and leading posi­tion in the field of value chain manage­ment. We appre­ciate the corpo­rate culture estab­lished by the manage­ment team around Stefan Aich­bauer, Michael Santo, Harald Enz and Stefan Franz and the “hands-on” menta­lity of the entire team, which is fully in line with EMZ’s philo­so­phy. We are deligh­ted to be able to help shape the future deve­lo­p­ment as share­hol­ders and part­ners of the manage­ment team,” says Klaus Maurer, Senior Part­ner at EMZ.

Harald Enz, one of the three members of the H&Z Manage­ment Board, under­lines the growth plans: “EMZ’s invest­ment gives our ambi­tious growth targets a further strong boost. In addi­tion to strong orga­nic growth, we are plan­ning joint acqui­si­ti­ons to streng­then our core busi­ness, expand our exper­tise and deve­lop and extend our regio­nal presence in Central and Nort­hern Europe.”

Advi­sors to EMZ: Latham & Watkins (“Legal, Corpo­rate, & Struc­ture”), goetz­part­ners (“Commer­cial”), RSM Ebner Stolz (“Finan­cial, Tax”), MCF Corpo­rate Finance (“M&A”), Houli­han Lokey (“Debt Advi­sory”) and Good­win Proc­ter (“Legal, Financing”).

About H&Z

H&Z Unter­neh­mens­be­ra­tung stands for consul­ting with brain, heart and hand. The company’s experts design, manage and support trans­for­ma­tion proces­ses with measura­ble results. With this unique consul­ting approach, H&Z ensu­res sustainable results for corpo­rate groups and leading inter­na­tio­nal SMEs. The consul­ting focus is on the areas of procu­re­ment, stra­tegy & perfor­mance, sustaina­bi­lity & trans­for­ma­tion and custo­mer expe­ri­ence — where H&Z is one of the leading consul­tancies in Europe. www.hz.group

About EMZ Partners

EMZ is a leading Euro­pean invest­ment company with offices in Paris and Munich. EMZ focu­ses on small and medium-sized compa­nies and offers flexi­ble capi­tal solu­ti­ons in close part­ner­ship with foun­ders, family share­hol­ders and mana­gers. EMZ is majo­rity-owned by its own employees and has a base of Euro­pean insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors. The current fund has a volume of more than 1.3 billion euros, with invest­ments ranging from 10 to 200 million euros. www.emzpartners.com

News

Munich — Hermann Rosen, foun­der of the ROSEN Group, has sold a majo­rity stake in the company to Part­ners Group, one of the world’s leading mana­gers of private market invest­ments. Hermann Rosen will remain on the board of the ROSEN Group and will reinvest in the company along­side Part­ners Group. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the finan­cial details of the transaction.

The closing of the tran­sac­tion is still subject to the usual regu­la­tory appr­ovals and is expec­ted to take place in the first half of 2024. POELLATH provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to the manage­ment of the ROSEN Group in connec­tion with the transaction.

As an inno­va­tion leader, the ROSEN Group, based in Stans (Switz­er­land), has been deve­lo­ping, produ­cing and distri­bu­ting products and services for the inspec­tion, diagno­sis and moni­to­ring of indus­trial plants for over 40 years. In its core busi­ness, the company builds inspec­tion devices that are used to inspect pipe­lines for damage. The ROSEN Group also offers soft­ware solu­ti­ons that opera­tors can use to deter­mine the condi­tion of their systems. The ROSEN Group opera­tes in over 120 count­ries at 25 loca­ti­ons and employs around 4,300 people world­wide, inclu­ding around 400 employees of the new ventures that are not part of the transaction.

The tran­sac­tion is part of Hermann Rosen’s succes­sion plan­ning and concludes a process that was initia­ted around a year ago in the inte­rests of all of the company’s stake­hol­ders. Toge­ther with his manage­ment team, Herr­mann Rosen exami­ned stra­te­gic opti­ons in order to create the condi­ti­ons for ROSEN’s long-term success.

Part­ners Group is a leading global private markets invest­ment mana­ger. Since 1996, the company has inves­ted USD 200 billion world­wide in private equity, private real estate, private debt and private infra­struc­ture on behalf of its clients. Part­ners Group seeks to gene­rate strong returns by inves­t­ing in thema­tic growth trends, ther­eby reali­zing the poten­tial of compa­nies and assets.

Part­ners Group will work with the manage­ment of ROSEN Group to leverage the company’s capa­bi­li­ties to expand into new areas and adja­cent markets, inclu­ding future energy sources, inclu­ding new oppor­tu­ni­ties in the energy tran­si­tion, such as hydro­gen pipelines.

Consul­tant to the ROSEN Group: POELLATH

Dr. Bene­dikt Hohaus (Part­ner, Manage­ment Investments/Private Equity)
Ida Süß, LL.M. (UCLA) (Asso­ciate, Manage­ment Participations/Private Equity)
Jan Lukas Jung­claus, LL.M. (Stel­len­bosch) (Asso­ciate, Manage­ment Participations/Private Equity)

News

Berlin — Rivus Ventures, Auxxo Female Cata­lyst Fund, DN Capi­tal, YZR Capi­tal and Lukas Keindl (Vet), invest 5.1 million euros in Filu. The Berlin start-up focu­ses on digi­tal vete­ri­nary prac­ti­ces. Rivus Capi­tal, Auxxo Female Cata­lyst Fund and busi­ness angels have alre­ady inves­ted around EUR 2 million in Filu GmbH.

Filou was foun­ded by Anna Magda­lena Nade­rer, Chris­tian Köhler and Justus Buchen. Filu GmbH’s mission is to make pet care more perso­nal, modern and conve­ni­ent. The company estab­lishes tech­no­logy-supported vete­ri­nary prac­ti­ces. Filu tack­les the struc­tu­ral problems of vete­ri­nary medi­cine and uses tech­no­logy to create new work oppor­tu­ni­ties with less admi­nis­tra­tive effort and more flexi­ble working models.

Advi­sor Rivus Capi­tal: Green­Gate Part­ners Rechts­an­walts­ge­sell­schaft mbH 

Marc René Spitz, LL.M. (Partner/ Corpo­rate), Dr. Tobias Schön­haar, LL.M. (Bond) (Partner/ Corpo­rate), Dr. Leonie Singer, LL.M. (Associate/ Corporate)

About Rivus Capital

Rivus Capi­tal is a family office based in Munich and origi­na­tes from the SME sector. Invest­ments are made exclu­si­vely in compa­nies that are alre­ady crea­ting a sustainable, clean, safe and healthy world for current and future gene­ra­ti­ons; the social, ecolo­gi­cal and digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion is to be promo­ted. The focus is on the effi­ci­ent use of resour­ces and healthy living. www.rivuscapital.com

About Green­Gate Partners

Green­Gate Part­ners is a tech­no­logy law firm with special exper­tise in tran­sac­tions and venture capi­tal. From our offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers offer their clients first-class advice on an equal footing. Green­Gate Part­ners conti­nues to set bench­marks in the German market.

News

Eiter­feld near Bad Hersfeld/ Munich/ Paris — The Euro­pean private equity company EMZ Part­ners has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in imes-icore Holding GmbH (“imes-icore”), a leading provi­der of CNC CAD/CAM systems for the dental indus­try. The seller is the French inves­tor Ardian. In addi­tion to EMZ, foun­der and CEO Chris­toph Stark, CFO/COO Chris­tian Müller and other members of the imes-icore manage­ment team will remain or become signi­fi­cant share­hol­ders of the company.

The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the finan­cial details of the tran­sac­tion. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is still subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory approvals.

Advi­sor imes-icore: POELLATH provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to the co-foun­der and CEO Chris­toph Stark and the manage­ment team of imes-icore in connec­tion with the transaction.

Foun­ded in 2002 and based in Eiter­feld near Bad Hers­feld (Hesse), imes-icore is one of the global market leaders for digi­tal dental CAD/CAM produc­tion systems. The company curr­ently offers the world’s largest port­fo­lio of milling and grin­ding machi­nes, cove­ring all dental market segments such as dentists, dental clinics, dental labo­ra­to­ries and milling centers. imes-icore employs 274 people at loca­ti­ons in Germany, the USA and South East Asia.

EMZ Part­ners is a leading Euro­pean private equity firm that acts as a dedi­ca­ted part­ner for medium-sized compa­nies that own or are seeking to acquire a signi­fi­cant or majo­rity stake in a company. The company has inves­ted in over 160 compa­nies in the last 20 years, inclu­ding company take­overs by mana­gers, buy-outs of mino­rity share­hol­ders and add-on acquisitions.

POELLATH advi­sed the co-foun­der and CEO Chris­toph Stark and the manage­ment team of imes-icore on all legal aspects of the tran­sac­tion with the follo­wing Munich-based team:
Dr. Bene­dikt Hohaus (part­ner, lead, manage­ment participation/private equity), Dr. Nico Fischer (part­ner, tax), Silke Simmer, LL.M. (Senior Asso­ciate, Manage­ment Participations/Private Equity), Andreas Gesell (Asso­ciate, Tax), Jan Lukas Jung­claus, LL.M. (Stel­len­bosch) (Asso­ciate, Manage­ment Participations/Private Equity). www.pplaw.com

News

Hamburg — Proven­tis Part­ners advi­ses Customs Support Group on the acqui­si­tion of iZD Group. Customs Support streng­thens its presence in Germany with the merger with the iZD Group.

Customs Support, the leading provi­der of customs services in Europe, is plea­sed to announce the merger with iZD Group, a freight forwar­ding inde­pen­dent customs service provi­der based in Southern Germany. The connec­tion with the iZD Group is part of Customs Support’s stra­tegy to streng­then its presence and growth in Germany.

The Customs Support Group is commit­ted to provi­ding the best possi­ble service to its custo­mers and the merger with the iZD Group is evidence of this contin­ued commit­ment. With the inte­gra­tion of the iZD Group, the Customs Support Group is now even better posi­tio­ned to serve its custo­mers in Germany and the surroun­ding countries.

”We have also had a branch in Switz­er­land for many years and are stri­ving for further inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion toge­ther with Customs Support,” says Gerd Stro­bel, Mana­ging Director.

”Quali­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive growth is what we do best, which is why we want to push this even more stron­gly toge­ther with the Customs Support Group from now on,” says Clau­dia Stro­bel, Mana­ging Direc­tor of the Customs Support Group.

“We are deligh­ted to announce the merger with the iZD Group in Germany, which repres­ents a signi­fi­cant mile­stone in our ongo­ing commit­ment to expan­ding our Euro­pean busi­ness. With the iZD Group, our custo­mers are supported with an even higher level of exper­tise and resour­ces. We look forward to the jour­ney ahead of us as we conti­nue to provide our custo­mers with the highest quality services and faci­li­tate smooth inter­na­tio­nal trade,” explains Frank Weer­mei­jer, CEO Customs Support.

The role of Proven­tis Partners

Proven­tis­Part­ners has been the exclu­sive M&A advi­sor to Customs Support for its expan­sion in the DACH region for many years. In addi­tion to iden­ti­fy­ing the customs agency and cont­ac­ting the share­hol­ders, Proven­tis Part­ners carried out the stra­te­gic analy­sis of the target company and accom­pa­nied the further tran­sac­tion process from due dili­gence to commer­cial nego­tia­ti­ons and successful comple­tion. The Proven­tis Part­ners tran­sac­tion team consis­ted of Jost Hart­mann (Part­ner, Hamburg), Dr. Leon­hard Aust­mann (Asso­ciate, Hamburg) and Leon Holt­mann (Asso­ciate, Hamburg).

About iZD Group

The iZD Group, consis­ting of iZD GmbH and iZS GmbH, was foun­ded in 2000 and is one of the indus­try leaders among freight forwar­ding-inde­pen­dent customs service provi­ders in Germany with addi­tio­nal exper­tise for customs decla­ra­ti­ons in Switz­er­land. It also offers specia­li­zed customs soft­ware solu­ti­ons, trai­ning and consul­ting services in the customs sector. iZD GmbH has set itself the task of opti­mi­zing the digi­tal land­scape and simpli­fy­ing the customs clearance process for its custo­mers. The common goal of digi­ta­liza­tion and the compa­nies’ shared values and culture pave the way for grea­ter effi­ci­ency, inno­va­tion and impro­ved services. This is perfectly comple­men­ted by the new part­ner­ship with the Customs Support Group. In addi­tion to its customs clearance services, the iZD Group offers a variety of in-house and online trai­ning cour­ses via iZS GmbH, cove­ring a wide range of topics. The custo­mi­zed trai­ning cour­ses are highly valued by customers.

About Customs Support Group

Head­quar­te­red in the Nether­lands, Customs Support Group is Europe’s leading inde­pen­dent, digi­tal and neutral provi­der of customs services, employ­ing nearly 2,000 dedi­ca­ted customs experts who serve over 30,000 clients annu­ally. Customs Support Group is a port­fo­lio company of Castik Capi­tal. Through our compre­hen­sive suite of services and digi­tal capa­bi­li­ties, we consis­t­ently help clients maxi­mize compli­ance, achieve opera­tio­nal effi­ci­en­cies, opti­mize import duties, customs plan­ning, and conti­nuously evolve in an ever-chan­ging customs land­scape. In addi­tion to tradi­tio­nal brokerage and digi­tal services, the Customs Support Group offers customs consul­ting and gas measu­re­ment services. The company curr­ently opera­tes in the Nether­lands, Belgium, Germany, Poland, France, the United King­dom, Ireland, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Switz­er­land and Spain. In Europe, Customs Support Group serves nume­rous cross-border custo­mers in various sectors such as the auto­mo­tive indus­try, the food and beverage indus­try, the manu­fac­tu­ring indus­try and many others. Customs Support Group is the number one digi­tal customs broker and is inves­t­ing heavily in the digi­ta­liza­tion of customs processes.

About Castik Capital

Castik Capi­tal S.à r.l. (“Castik Capi­tal”) mana­ges private equity invest­ments. Castik Capi­tal is a Euro­pean private equity firm that acqui­res signi­fi­cant stakes in Euro­pean private and listed compa­nies where long-term value can be crea­ted through active part­ner­ships with manage­ment teams. Foun­ded in 2014, Castik Capi­tal is based in Luxem­bourg and focu­ses on iden­ti­fy­ing and deve­lo­ping invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties across Europe. Invest­ments are made by the Luxem­bourg-based fund EPIC II SLP. The advi­sor to Castik Capi­tal S.à r.l. is Castik Capi­tal Part­ners GmbH, based in Munich.

About Proven­tis Partners

Proven­tis Part­ners is a part­ner-led M&A advi­sory firm whose clients are predo­mi­nantly medium-sized family busi­nesses, corpo­rate groups and private equity funds. With 30 M&A advi­sors, Proven­tis Part­ners is one of the leading inde­pen­dent M&A consul­tancies in the German-spea­king region and can look back on more than 20 years of M&A expe­ri­ence and over 430 comple­ted tran­sac­tions. The M&A consul­tants with offices in Frank­furt, Hamburg and Zurich are active in the Indus­tri­als, Chemi­cals & Mate­ri­als, Busi­ness Services, Tech­no­logy & Media, Consu­mer & Retail and Health­care sectors. The exclu­sive member­ship in the Mergers Alli­ance — an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner­ship of leading M&A specia­lists — enables Proven­tis Part­ners to support clients in 30 count­ries in the most important markets world­wide. The members of the Mergers Alli­ance, with more than 250 M&A profes­sio­nals, offer Proven­tis Part­ners and its clients unique access to local markets in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa. www.proventis.com.

News

Munich — Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Bird & Bird has advi­sed Eco-FinTech company “The Land­ban­king Group” on an US$11 million seed finan­cing round with an inter­na­tio­nal group of investors.

The Land­ban­king Group supports with the finan­cing the launch of its natu­ral capi­tal plat­form Landler.io, the first inte­gra­ted manage­ment and invest­ment plat­form for natu­ral capi­tal (biodi­ver­sity, soil, water, carbon). This allows farmers and landow­ners to become provi­ders of natu­ral capi­tal, and compa­nies in the food indus­try, for exam­ple, to become natu­ral capi­tal inves­tors. The finan­cing will enable the company to expand its custo­mer base in the agri­cul­tu­ral and food sectors and enter new markets in infra­struc­ture, energy and finan­cial services. It also allows for the deve­lo­p­ment of moni­to­ring models for addi­tio­nal biomes and ecore­gi­ons, as well as further expan­sion of usable land (agri­cul­ture and urban land) into conservation.

The seed round was led by high impact fund BonVen­ture toge­ther with natu­ral capi­tal pioneer André Hoff­mann. Venture capi­tal funds such as 4P Capi­tal, Vana­gon and Planet A will contri­bute their exper­tise in marke­ting, refi­nan­cing and impact measu­re­ment. In addi­tion, the SUN Insti­tute of the Deut­sche Post Foun­da­tion and ten fami­lies and private inves­tors, inclu­ding Prince Maxi­mi­lian von und zu Liech­ten­stein, Alexa Firmenich, Jan-Hendrik Gold­beck and Fabian Strüng­mann, are support­ing the company’s development.

Advi­sor to The Land­ban­king Group: Bird & Bird

Coun­sel Andrea Schlote (Lead, photo © Bird&Bird), Part­ner Stefan Münch, Coun­sel Dr. Chris­tina Lorenz, Asso­ciate Louisa Graf (all Corporate/M&A, Munich) and Asso­ciate Kilian Hummel (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt), Part­ner Dr. Markus Körner and Asso­ciate Yvonne Schaafs (both IP, Munich), Part­ner Dr. Rolf Schmich, Coun­sel Michael Brüg­ge­mann and Asso­ciate Luca Eckrich (all Tax, Frankfurt).

Alre­ady in 2022, the team around Andrea Schlote and Stefan Münch supported The Land­ban­king Group in the pre-seed finan­cing round. Bird & Bird also works with The Land­ban­king Group beyond that, advi­sing them on banking regu­la­tory and IP matters, among other things.

The Landler.io plat­form combi­nes cutting-edge tech­no­lo­gies — earth obser­va­tion, digi­tal in-situ data, machine lear­ning and decen­tra­li­zed ledgers. It can thus assign a “para­me­tric” natu­ral capi­tal account to each hectare of the planet. Thus, land coope­ra­ti­ves, mana­gers, or owners become provi­ders of ecosys­tem services measu­red in nature, and corpo­ra­ti­ons or inves­tors become inves­tors in “nature equity” contracts. These contracts are a new balance sheet-quality asset class and are attrac­tive to food, agri­cul­ture, energy, resource and infra­struc­ture compa­nies, but also incre­asingly to insu­rance compa­nies and finan­cial institutions.

Bird & Bird is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,400 lawy­ers in 32 offices in 22 count­ries in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia Paci­fic and Africa, and main­ta­ins close rela­ti­onships with law firms in other parts of the world. In Germany, we are repre­sen­ted by more than 250 lawy­ers in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt, Hamburg and Munich. We focus our consul­ting in parti­cu­lar on indus­trial sectors that are deve­lo­ping new tech­no­lo­gies and helping to shape digi­ta­liza­tion. Our attorneys:in cover the full range of busi­ness and corpo­rate law, parti­cu­larly in areas where tech­no­logy, data, regu­la­tion and intellec­tual property play a special role. www.twobirds.com.

News

Berlin / Munich — Travel soft­ware company Lanes & Planes announ­ces €33 million ($35 million) Series B finan­cing to fuel growth. The round was led by US venture capi­tal fund Smash Capi­tal. Exis­ting inves­tors Battery Ventures, Copa­rion, DN Capi­tal and AllI­ron also parti­ci­pa­ted in the round. The invest­ment is expec­ted to support Lanes & Planes’ growth and expan­sion efforts.

Accor­ding to its own data, the startup has increased its reve­nue by more than nine times since the begin­ning of 2022. With the Series B finan­cing, the company aims to increase its reach as well as expand inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons tail­o­red to the needs of busi­ness travelers.

Lanes & Planes is one of the first travel manage­ment solu­ti­ons as soft­ware-as-a-service that fully digi­tally maps all areas of busi­ness travel, an all-in-one solu­tion for busi­ness travel. The start-up was foun­ded in 2017 by Dr. Veit Blum­schein and Daniel Nolte and is based in Munich. The tool provi­des a compre­hen­sive soft­ware solu­tion for compa­nies to effi­ci­ently manage travel services, bookings, billing and expense reports. Orga­niza­ti­ons bene­fit from compre­hen­sive report­ing capa­bi­li­ties and secure rights manage­ment accor­ding to their poli­cies, while still saving up to 33% on costs.

The freshly raised capi­tal is to be used to inten­sify the Euro­pean growth stra­tegy and to expand the team in terms of personnel.

Consul­tant Lanes & Planes: YPOG

Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Tobias Lovett (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin Farina Weber (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin

About Battery Ventures

Battery part­ners with excep­tio­nal foun­ders and manage­ment teams deve­lo­ping ground­brea­king compa­nies in soft­ware and services, enter­prise infra­struc­ture, consu­mer tech­no­logy, health­care IT, indus­trial tech­no­logy, and life science instru­men­ta­tion. Foun­ded in 1983, the company supports compa­nies at all stages, from seed and early stage to growth and buyout, and invests globally from offices in Boston, San Fran­cisco, Menlo Park, New York, London and Tel Aviv.

About copa­rion

copa­rion is a venture capi­tal fund for early growth stage start­ups focu­sed on SaaS and tech­no­logy-enab­led market­place models. The fund supports them in growing quickly and sustain­ably over seve­ral rounds of finan­cing. Toge­ther with other inves­tors, copa­rion invests in the compa­nies. The fund does not take the lead, but plays an active role as a share­hol­der or advi­sory board to support the compa­nies. copa­rion has inves­ted in leading start-ups such as Clark, Grover, Holidu and Plan A.

About DN Capital

DN Capi­tal is a leading Euro­pean early stage venture capi­tal firm with offices in London, Berlin and Sili­con Valley. The firm focu­ses on Series A invest­ments in soft­ware, fintech, markets and consu­mer inter­net. DN Capital’s mission is to help entre­pre­neurs become global market leaders. DN has been an early stage inves­tor in leading global compa­nies such as Auto1, Shazam, Endeca, Incode, Go Student, Job and Talent, Mister Spex, Home­togo, OLX, Remitly, Quan­doo and Yassir.

About Connect Ventures

Connect is a thesis-driven venture fund. The company invests in Europe’s leading product compa­nies that deve­lop compel­ling products, made with passion and appre­cia­ted by many. Its invest­ments include Type­form, Khei­ron, Oyster, Life­bit and True­layer. The fund invests in the pre-seed and seed stages in the consu­mer, health­care, B2B Saas and fintech sectors. Toge­ther, they are exci­ted about the power of products to change people’s lives. www.connectventures.co

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Funds, Tax, Banking & Finance and Tran­sac­tions. The YPOG team advi­ses a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. YPOG is one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in Germany. The firm and its part­ners are natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally ranked by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, and Cham­bers and Part­ners. Today, YPOG employs more than 100 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

 

News

Zug/ Ever­ett (Washing­ton) — Bregal Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal (BU), a leading private equity firm in the DACH region and Nort­hern Italy, today announ­ced the sale of EA Elek­tro-Auto­ma­tik (EA), a leading German supplier of elec­tro­nic test and measu­re­ment equip­ment, to US-based Fortive Corpo­ra­tion (Fortive) (NYSE: FTV). The tran­sac­tion is based on an enter­prise value of €1,585 million and is subject to custo­mary closing condi­ti­ons and regu­la­tory appr­ovals; it is expec­ted to close early in the first quar­ter of 2024.

EA was foun­ded in 1974 and is head­quar­te­red in Vier­sen, Germany. The company designs and manu­fac­tures programma­ble power supplies, elec­tro­nic loads and bidi­rec­tional power supplies used to test elec­tro­nic compon­ents in various indus­trial and R&D appli­ca­ti­ons. With over 400 employees, EA is a leading provi­der of tech­ni­cally advan­ced elec­tro­nic test and measu­re­ment equip­ment, specia­li­zing in the high-power segment of the market as well as high-growth end markets such as e‑mobility, battery storage, rene­wa­ble energy and hydrogen.

BU had acqui­red EA from the company’s foun­ders in 2019 as part of a succes­sion plan through its second fund, BU II. As part of the BU invest­ment, the manage­ment team was signi­fi­cantly streng­the­ned, EA’s inter­na­tio­nal sales and marke­ting acti­vi­ties and R&D team were greatly expan­ded, and seve­ral tech­no­lo­gi­cally leading new product lines were laun­ched. BU has also inves­ted substan­ti­ally in produc­tion capa­city at the Vier­sen site and expan­ded it signi­fi­cantly. The number of employees has increased by 250 in recent years, more than doubling. As a result, sales have increased by an average of appro­xi­m­ately 40% annu­ally since 2020.

“We are very grateful for BU’s support over the past years. Toge­ther, we have made signi­fi­cant progress on our jour­ney from a Euro­pean tech­no­logy leader to a global market leader,” says Markus Schy­boll, CEO of EA. “We are very plea­sed to be joining forces with Fortive — toge­ther we will further acce­le­rate our growth and expand our inter­na­tio­nal reach even more. We want to conti­nue to be our custo­mers’ part­ner of choice when it comes to elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and achie­ving carbon neutra­lity in our world.”

Florian Schick, co-foun­der and mana­ging part­ner of BU (photo © Bregal), adds: “We are very proud of the fanta­stic perfor­mance of EA’s manage­ment team and employees and are happy to have found a good new home for EA. Toge­ther, we stron­gly inter­na­tio­na­li­zed the company, achie­ved leading market posi­ti­ons in seve­ral fast-growing end markets, and more than tripled sales during our holding period. This tran­sac­tion is a true success story and a prime exam­ple of BU’s invest­ment approach to forging strong part­ner­ships with leading, foun­der-led compa­nies and helping them signi­fi­cantly acce­le­rate their growth.”

About Bregal Entre­pre­neu­rial Capital

Bregal Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal (BU) is a leading private equity firm with offices in Zug, Munich and Milan. As part of a family busi­ness that has grown over gene­ra­ti­ons, BU’s funds invest in medium-sized compa­nies head­quar­te­red in Germany, Austria, Switz­er­land and nort­hern Italy, cove­ring a wide range of indus­tries. In its efforts to be the part­ner of choice for entre­pre­neurs and family busi­nesses, BU speci­fi­cally focu­ses on part­ner­ships with market leaders and “hidden cham­pi­ons” with a strong manage­ment team and great growth poten­tial. Since its estab­lish­ment in 2015, the funds mana­ged by BU have inves­ted over €2.7 billion in this frame­work in more than 100 compa­nies with over 20,000 employees. In close part­ner­ship with entre­pre­neurs and fami­lies, their compa­nies are further deve­lo­ped, inter­na­tio­na­li­zed and digi­ta­li­zed — so that sustainable values are crea­ted on a respon­si­ble basis in the inte­rests of the next gene­ra­tion. www.bregal.ch

About Fortive

Fortive is a provi­der of essen­tial tech­no­lo­gies for networked work­flow solu­ti­ons in a number of attrac­tive end markets. Fortive’s stra­te­gic segments include well-known brands with leading posi­ti­ons in their markets. The company’s busi­nesses encom­pass the design, deve­lo­p­ment, service, manu­fac­ture and marke­ting of engi­nee­red products, soft­ware and services and have leading brands, inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies and strong market posi­ti­ons. Fortive is head­quar­te­red in Ever­ett, Washing­ton, and employs more than 18,000 people in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment, manu­fac­tu­ring, sales, distri­bu­tion, service and admi­nis­tra­tion in more than 50 count­ries world­wide. www.fortive.com

 

News

Stuttgart/ Dres­den — Stutt­gar­ter Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft Süd Betei­li­gun­gen GmbH (SüdBG) and Wachs­tums­fonds Mittel­stand Sach­sen (WMS) sell their shares in Fabma­tics Holding GmbH. The remai­ning shares held by the foun­ding share­hol­ders Dr. Stef­fen Pollack, Lothar Andritzke and Manfred Jähnert also change hands. The new owner of the rapidly growing semi­con­duc­tor specia­list will be SCIO Auto­ma­tion GmbH, a global auto­ma­tion plat­form head­quar­te­red in Fran­ken­thal. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to regu­la­tory appr­ovals; no finan­cial details are disclosed.

Fabma­tics, foun­ded in 1991 and with loca­ti­ons in Dres­den and Utica (USA), is one of the leading suppli­ers in the auto­ma­tion of mate­rial flows in the high-tech envi­ron­ment, espe­ci­ally in the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try. The range of services covers a modu­larly desi­gned product range that includes both hard­ware and soft­ware solu­ti­ons for the auto­ma­tion of hand­ling, trans­port and storage proces­ses, mobile robo­tics and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and loca­liza­tion solu­ti­ons. Fabma­tics works for almost all well-known chip manu­fac­tu­r­ers worldwide.

SüdBG and WMS joined the company in 2014 to secure the succes­sion and to promote further growth, while the three foun­ding share­hol­ders remained invol­ved. During the part­ner­ship, Fabma­tics has grown stron­gly, now employ­ing around 300 people and gene­ra­ting annual sales of around 45 million euros.

In addi­tion to struc­tu­ring manage­ment succes­sion, the acqui­si­tion and inte­gra­tion of Roth & Rau Ortner GmbH and the estab­lish­ment of the site in Utica (USA), parti­cu­lar empha­sis was placed on product deve­lo­p­ment, the modu­la­riza­tion of the product port­fo­lio and the expan­sion of sales.
“We are plea­sed that we were able to expand the market posi­tion of Fabma­tics in a trus­ting and close coope­ra­tion with the employees, the manage­ment, the foun­ding share­hol­ders and the advi­sory board. In addi­tion to streng­thening the orga­niza­tio­nal struc­tures, the company has successfully imple­men­ted further inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion as well as the expan­sion of the custo­mer port­fo­lio and is thus excel­lently posi­tio­ned today,” explain Gunter Max (Mana­ging Direc­tor; Photo©SüdBG) and Marius Meyer (Invest­ment Direc­tor) from SüdBG.

Dr. Stef­fen Pollack, foun­ding part­ner of Fabma­tics, adds: “Toge­ther we have deve­lo­ped Fabma­tics into a leading player in the auto­ma­tion of the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try. We are convin­ced that with SCIO at its side, Fabma­tics will bene­fit from inter­na­tio­nal networ­king and conti­nue its extra­or­di­na­rily successful development.”

About SüdBG

Süd Betei­li­gun­gen GmbH (SüdBG) is a wholly owned subsi­diary of Landes­bank Baden-Würt­tem­berg (LBBW) and has been support­ing medium-sized compa­nies for more than 50 years with custo­mi­zed equity and equity-rela­ted solu­ti­ons in the context of succes­sion plan­ning, growth finan­cing and share­hol­der changes.
As one of the leading invest­ment compa­nies in the German-spea­king region and a long-term inves­tor, SüdBG has supported over 70 compa­nies in the past 10 years with around 600 million euros and a broad network in sustainable corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment. www.suedbg.de.

News

London/ Bad Homburg — Verdane, the Euro­pean growth-focu­sed inves­tor, has acqui­red a port­fo­lio of five profi­ta­ble tech­no­logy compa­nies and part­ne­red with HQ Equita, a leading invest­ment firm in Germany. This is Verdane’s 19th invest­ment in the DACH region and follows the opening of Verdane’s second office in Germany earlier this year.

The port­fo­lio of HQ Equita Fund V compri­ses five invest­ments: Ebert­lang, a leading pan-Euro­pean value-added distri­bu­tor of cyber­se­cu­rity and infra­struc­ture soft­ware; Muegge, an indus­trial tech­no­logy provi­der of plasma and micro­wave tech­no­lo­gies for end markets, inclu­ding the produc­tion of sustainable, lab-grown diamonds; r2p Group, a provi­der of intel­li­gent tech­no­logy systems for public trans­port; inde­vis, a cyber­se­cu­rity provi­der; and The Pack­a­ging Group, which deve­lops advan­ced pack­a­ging tech­no­lo­gies that help custo­mers switch from plas­tic to sustainable paper packaging.

The tran­sac­tion provi­des liqui­dity for the LPs and conti­nuity for the HQ Equita team, along with custo­mi­zed value crea­tion plans, stra­tegy road­maps and follow-on capi­tal for each of the five compa­nies and their respec­tive manage­ment teams. To achieve this, Verdane worked closely with HQ Equita’s team, as well as with repre­sen­ta­ti­ves from HQ Direct as the GP’s share­hol­der and the fund’s MLPs. Verdane and HQ Equita will work toge­ther to scale these assets and plan to explore future M&A oppor­tu­ni­ties for contin­ued inter­na­tio­nal growth beyond the DACH region.

HQ Equita was foun­ded in 1992 and is an estab­lished mid-market private equity inves­tor in Germany, backed by inves­tors such as insti­tu­ti­ons, foun­da­ti­ons, trusts and the Quandt Family Office.

Verdane can invest as a majo­rity or mino­rity owner, either in indi­vi­dual compa­nies or in port­fo­lios of compa­nies, and has one of the most flexi­ble invest­ment manda­tes in Europe, allo­wing for both direct invest­ments and port­fo­lio tran­sac­tions. Verdane’s unique approach is reflec­ted in its tran­sac­tion struc­ture and gover­nance model, which takes into account the indi­vi­dual inte­rests of all stake­hol­ders. In this parti­cu­lar case, the port­fo­lio tran­sac­tion crea­tes an option for the exis­ting LPs while provi­ding conti­nuity for the HQ Equita GP team, with a clear focus on unlo­cking value in the port­fo­lio compa­nies through an opti­mi­zed owner­ship structure.

Verdane will support the growth of the port­fo­lio compa­nies, and Elevate, Verdane’s team of inter­nal opera­tio­nal experts, will work closely with manage­ment in areas such as go-to-market, data, finance and talent. Verdane invests thema­ti­cally in the areas of digi­ta­liza­tion and decar­bo­niza­tion. Since its incep­tion in 2003, Verdane has comple­ted 60 port­fo­lio acqui­si­ti­ons. Another nota­ble port­fo­lio buyout and GP part­ner­ship with UK-based Lang­holm Capi­tal in 2021.

Verdane has also streng­the­ned its opera­ti­ons in the DACH region, with nota­ble invest­ments inclu­ding Hornet­secu­rity Group, a leading Euro­pean cyber­se­cu­rity soft­ware company, and Momox, Europe’s largest re-commerce plat­form. Follo­wing this tran­sac­tion, Verdane will have 19 port­fo­lio compa­nies in the DACH region.

Emanuel Johns­son, Part­ner at Verdane (photo © Verdane), commen­ted, “This is a perfect ‘Verdane port­fo­lio deal’ in the sense that we worked closely with seve­ral stake­hol­ders: HQ Equita, their long-stan­ding LP base, and the manage­ment teams of each company in the port­fo­lio. It has been a plea­sure to work closely with HQ Group repre­sen­ta­ti­ves and the team at HQ Equita, and we are exci­ted to support each of these five great compa­nies indi­vi­du­ally by lever­aging the Verdane plat­form and our exten­sive expe­ri­ence in scaling Euro­pean tech­no­logy companies.”

Malte Rippel, CEO of HQ Holding, commen­ted, “On behalf of the Harald Quandt family and HQ Group, we are very plea­sed with the outcome of this tran­sac­tion as we have found a long-term part­ner for the HQ Equita team and the fund’s portfolio.”

Hans J. Moock, a part­ner at HQ Equita, commen­ted, “We have been working with some of the compa­nies in our HQ Equita port­fo­lio since 2018 and this is an exci­ting oppor­tu­nity to conti­nue our part­ner­ship with them along­side Verdane and leverage Verdane’s global expe­ri­ence network to conti­nue their growth.”

Florian Wiem­ken, Part­ner at HQ Equita, added: “Our entire team is exci­ted about the pros­pect of part­ne­ring with Verdane, whose invest­ment will support our exis­ting stra­te­gies while offe­ring an attrac­tive long-term perspec­tive. We are very proud to embark on this jour­ney with a high-quality plat­form like Verdane.”

Fair­view Capi­tal Group, Ltd. acted as exclu­sive finan­cial advi­sor in the transaction.

Milbank served as legal coun­sel for Verdane.

Clif­ford Chance acted as legal advi­sor to HQ Equita Fund V.

News

Frank­furt a. M./Nuremberg — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) invests in ProMik Program­mier­sys­teme für die Mikro­elek­tro­nik GmbH (ProMik), a leading global systems provi­der of programming and test systems for elec­tro­nics series produc­tion. A fund advi­sed by DBAG will acquire the majo­rity of the shares from the foun­ding family, who will remain as mino­rity share­hol­ders by means of a reverse share­hol­ding. Alex­an­der Rosen­ber­ger and Jens Rosen­ber­ger are members of the foun­ding family and will remain with the company as CTO and CMO, respectively.

A Cham­pion from Nurem­berg — ProMik Serves a Global Market

ProMik was foun­ded in Nurem­berg in 1995 and has since deve­lo­ped into a family busi­ness with global rele­vance based on more than 5,000 successful projects. More than 60 employees deve­lop sophisti­ca­ted soft­ware-driven solu­ti­ons for a market with double-digit annual growth rates. The scope of appli­ca­tion is very broad and covers the mobi­lity sector, such as in the field of auto­no­mous driving as well as the energy manage­ment of battery elec­tric vehicles.

In addi­tion, ProMik is active in consu­mer goods, e‑bikes and white goods. Indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons and solu­ti­ons for the produc­tion faci­li­ties of elec­tro­nic assem­bly manu­fac­tu­r­ers, which serve to opti­mize test and programming proces­ses, round off the company’s profile.

“ProMik is opera­ting in a thri­ving market, and we are plea­sed to have access to such exci­ting invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties through our network. The company offers an excel­lent product port­fo­lio and the poten­ti­als are accor­din­gly oppor­tu­ni­ties for stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons, this is where our exten­sive M&A expe­ri­ence comes into play”, says Jannick Hune­cke, member of DBAG’s Manage­ment Board.

Winfried Rosen­ber­ger, foun­der of ProMik says: “We are looking forward to the coope­ra­tion with DBAG and the oppor­tu­nity to work toge­ther on the further deve­lo­p­ment of our service port­fo­lio. We have built up the company over the past almost three deca­des, and along­side DBAG we are opti­mi­stic about the future because we have found the ideal inves­tor for the succes­sion plan­ning of our company.”

About DBAG

Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG), listed on the stock exch­ange since 1985, is one of Germany’s most renow­ned private equity compa­nies. As an inves­tor and fund advi­sor, DBAG’s invest­ment focus has tradi­tio­nally been on medium-sized compa­nies with a focus on well-posi­tio­ned compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial, prima­rily in the DACH region. The indus­try focus is on manu­fac­tu­ring compa­nies, indus­trial service provi­ders and Indus­try­Tech compa­nies — i.e. compa­nies whose products enable auto­ma­tion, robo­tics and digi­tiza­tion — as well as compa­nies from the broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services, soft­ware and health­care sectors. Since 2020, DBAG has also been repre­sen­ted in Italy with its own office in Milan. Assets mana­ged or advi­sed by the DBAG Group amount to appro­xi­m­ately 2.5 billion euros.

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