ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Frank­furt a. Main — Neos­fer, the early-stage inves­tor of Commerz­bank, parti­ci­pa­tes in the EUR 3 million finan­cing round of the start-up Vamo. Also invol­ved are the newly formed Colo­gne-based VC Realyze Ventures and Caesar Ventures from Munich. Promi­nent angel inves­tors from the German start-up scene, inclu­ding McMak­ler & MAYD foun­der Hanno Heint­zen­berg, Valen­tin Sawad­ski, foun­der of Tado, or Max Schroe­ren, foun­der of Enter, complete the round.

The foun­ding team of Vamo, Laurenz Ohlig, Falk Hantl and Dr. Jan Ossen­brink, follows the vision of advan­cing the heat tran­si­tion in Germany and focu­ses on the trendy topic of heat pumps. The advan­tage of this tech­no­logy is that it is mature and has the poten­tial to decar­bo­nize the buil­ding sector in the near future. What is miss­ing from Vamo’s point of view is speed in the instal­la­tion of the heat pumps.

Vamo is a specia­list company opera­ting throug­hout Germany, specia­li­zing in heat pumps, and has set itself the goal of acce­le­ra­ting the heat tran­si­tion in Germany. In addi­tion to the consis­tent digi­ta­liza­tion of sales, logi­stics and instal­la­tion proces­ses, Vamo is also working on its own soft­ware for the opera­tion of heat pumps. The capi­tal raised in the finan­cing round is to be used to scale the core business.

As a wholly owned subsi­diary and early-stage inves­tor of Commerz­bank, neos­fer bene­fits from in-depth indus­try know-how for the imple­men­ta­tion of inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons. The company was foun­ded in 2013 and employs 35 people.

Advi­sor neos­fer: DLA Piper

Part­ner Simon Vogel and Coun­sel Marcel Nurk (both Corporate/Private Equity, Munich).

About neos­fer

neos­fer GmbH, an early-stage inves­tor and inno­va­tion unit of Commerz­bank Group, inves­ti­ga­tes future tech­no­lo­gies that are rele­vant to busi­ness and society, promo­tes and deve­lops sustainable digi­tal solu­ti­ons, and brings these profi­ta­bly to Commerz­bank and its custo­mers. This is done via the three areas invest, build and connect. Through stra­te­gic venture capi­tal (invest), in-house deve­lo­p­ment of tech­no­lo­gies and busi­ness models (build), and buil­ding ecosys­tems around the sustainable and digi­tal future of society (connect), neos­fer crea­tes access to innovation.

With a port­fo­lio of over 30 digi­tal and sustainable start-ups, the company is always looking to the future and conti­nuously deve­lo­ping. Some successful proto­ty­pes have alre­ady emer­ged from this and are being used in the Commerz­bank Group. These include Project Lissi, a block­chain-based iden­tity network for self-deter­mi­ned iden­ti­ties. Through its own events, such as the monthly tech start-up event series “Between the Towers” and the IMPACT FESTIVAL, neos­fer streng­thens its network in the inno­va­tion, venture and sustaina­bi­lity sectors.
www.neosfer.de

neos­fer is a wholly owned subsi­diary of Commerz­bank AG, head­quar­te­red in Frank­furt am Main.

About DLA Piper

DLA Piper is one of the world’s leading commer­cial law firms, with offices in more than 40 count­ries in Africa, Asia, Austra­lia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. In Germany, DLA Piper is repre­sen­ted by more than 250 lawy­ers at its offices in Frank­furt, Hamburg, Colo­gne and Munich.

News

Frank­furt a. M. / Berlin — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) enters into a part­ner­ship with ELF Capi­tal Group (ELF Capi­tal), thus expan­ding its range of flexi­ble finan­cing solu­ti­ons for medium-sized compa­nies to include private debt. To this end, DBAG has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in ELF Capi­tal, which includes ELF Capi­tal Advi­sory GmbH, based in Frank­furt am Main. The terms of the tran­sac­tion were not disc­lo­sed to the extent legally possible.

ELF Capi­tal Advi­sory GmbH advi­ses funds offe­ring flexi­ble private debt finan­cing for estab­lished, market-leading medium-sized compa­nies with a geogra­phi­cal focus on the DACH region, Bene­lux and Scan­di­na­via. The part­ner­ship with DBAG offers both compa­nies the poten­tial to gene­rate rapid and sustainable growth and to realize synergies.

DBAG intends to invest EUR 100 million in the ELF Capi­tal funds as a limi­ted part­ner, simi­lar to DBAG’s usual stra­tegy of co-inves­t­ing along­side DBAG funds. Further­more, to gradu­ally increase its stake in ELF Capi­tal to 100% over the coming years.

ELF Capi­tal is a leading German provi­der of private debt finan­cing and advi­ses funds offe­ring flexi­ble finan­cing solu­ti­ons for medium-sized compa­nies in the DACH region, Bene­lux and Scan­di­na­via. Through the merger, DBAG expands its range of flexi­ble finan­cing solu­ti­ons for SMEs to include private debt. Further­more, DABG will parti­ci­pate in the ELF Capi­tal Funds at €100 million as a limi­ted part­ner. This is in line with DBAG’s usual stra­tegy of making co-invest­ments along­side its own funds.

As part of the part­ner­ship, the foun­der and Mana­ging Part­ner of ELF Capi­tal Advi­sory GmbH, Chris­tian Frit­sch, as well as Mana­ging Part­ner Florian Wimpff will conti­nue to be respon­si­ble for the private debt invest­ment busi­ness and actively drive the company’s deve­lo­p­ment. ELF Capi­tal Advi­sory GmbH will in future be supported by the two DBAG board members Tom Alzin (© DBAG) and Jannick Hune­cke and will at the same time bene­fit from DBAG’s opera­tio­nal and finan­cial resour­ces, inves­tor rela­ti­ons and network.

The addi­tion of private debt finan­cing solu­ti­ons to DBAG’s offe­ring requi­res an expan­sion of DBAG’s corpo­rate purpose. The Manage­ment Board of DBAG will submit the corre­spon­ding amend­ment to the Artic­les of Asso­cia­tion to the Annual Gene­ral Meeting of DBAG for resolution.

About DBAG

Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG), listed on the stock exch­ange since 1985, is one of the most renow­ned private equity compa­nies in Germany. 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 (before transaction).

Advi­sor DBAG: YPOG 

Andreas Rodin (Lead, Funds), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Berlin Dr. Malte Berg­mann (Tax), Part­ner, Hamburg
Dr. Tammo Lüken (Tax), Part­ner, Hamburg, Dr. Niklas Ulrich (Funds), Senior Asso­ciate, Hamburg Lukas Schmitt (Tax), Asso­ciate, Hamburg, Benja­min von Mangoldt (Funds), Asso­ciate, Berlin Dr. Phil­ipp Busch (Funds), Asso­ciate, Hamburg

 

News

Hamburg/ Berlin — Planet A Ventures has raised an invest­ment volume of € 160 million for its first impact fund. Inves­tors include Alli­anz Invest­ment Manage­ment, BMW, KfW Capi­tal, REWE and the Danish state invest­ment fund Vaekst­fon­den. In addi­tion, the fund is supported by well-known serial entre­pre­neurs such as Rolf Schröm­gens (Triv­ago Co-Foun­der) Maxi­mi­lian Back­haus (Global CMO HelloFresh) and Rubin Ritter (Ex-Zalando Co-CEO).

The fund scores high on its scien­ti­fic approach to impact inves­t­ing. Planet A Ventures, for exam­ple, has its own scien­ti­fic team that carries out so-called “life cycle analy­ses” as part of the due dili­gence process. In addi­tion to CO2 emis­si­ons, this form of analy­sis also takes into account, among other things, biodi­ver­sity protec­tion, resource conser­va­tion and waste reduction.

About Planet A Ventures

Planet A Ventures is a venture capi­ta­list inves­t­ing in Euro­pean green tech start­ups that have a signi­fi­cant posi­tive impact on our planet. As a venture capi­ta­list, Planet A aims to contri­bute to an economy within plane­tary boun­da­ries. Planet A supports inno­va­tions in four key areas: Climate protec­tion, waste preven­tion, resource conser­va­tion and biodi­ver­sity protec­tion. As the first Euro­pean VC, Planet A bases its invest­ment decis­i­ons on scien­ti­fic life­cy­cle analy­sis and helps founders:in scale their impact. Invest­ments include trace­l­ess mate­ri­als (plas­tic alter­na­ti­ves), Inera­tec (e‑fuels), C1 (green metha­nol), GA Dril­ling (geother­mal), 44.01 (carbon storage), and Maker­site (supply chain decar­bo­niza­tion). More infor­ma­tion about the invest­ment approach is available through Planet A’s website: https://planet‑a.com/about/

Advi­sor Planet A Ventures: YPOG

Dr. Julian Albrecht (Structuring/Tax), Part­ner There­sia M. R. Hein­rich (Struc­tu­ring), Asso­ciate Lenn­art Lorenz (Regu­la­tory), Part­ner, Stefa­nie Nagel (Regu­la­tory), Senior Associate

News

Hamburg — Bioe­co­nomy startup trace­l­ess mate­ri­als, which produ­ces a natu­ral bioma­te­rial as an alter­na­tive to plas­tic, announ­ces the closing of a €36.6 million finan­cing round. The Series A finan­cing round is led by private equity fund UB Forest Indus­try Green Growth Fund (“UB FIGG”), which invests in sustainable and resource-effi­ci­ent forestry and bioba­sed indus­tries, and comple­men­ted by SWEN Blue Ocean, which invests in inno­va­tions that help address three exis­ten­tial thre­ats to ocean health: over­fi­shing, pollu­tion and climate change. A local bank consor­tium consis­ting of GLS Bank, Hamburg, and Hambur­ger Spar­kasse also parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round, as did the company’s three exis­ting inves­tors, green tech inves­tor Planet A, seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) and deep tech inves­tor b.value.

Trans­for­ma­tion to circu­lar economy

Plas­tics not only leave behind the visi­ble traces of global plas­tic pollu­tion, but also contri­bute signi­fi­cantly to the climate crisis due to their resource-inten­sive produc­tion from fossil raw mate­ri­als. As part of a sustainable circu­lar economy, the bioe­co­nomy offers a solu­tion: trace­l­ess mate­ri­als has deve­lo­ped a holi­stic sustainable mate­rial to combat the plas­tic crisis. The natu­ral bioma­te­rial trace­l­ess® is certi­fied fully bio-based, home compost­a­ble and plas­tic-free. By using agri­cul­tu­ral resi­dues, valuable biomass resour­ces are conser­ved. The patent-pending tech­no­logy is based on natu­ral poly­mers, conta­ins no poten­ti­ally harmful chemi­cals, and has a mini­mal envi­ron­men­tal foot­print: compared to plas­tic, it saves 91% of CO2 emis­si­ons and 89% of fossil energy requi­re­ments during produc­tion and disposal.

“By scaling our inno­va­tive tech­no­logy, we are demons­t­ra­ting that a climate-friendly, circu­lar, resi­li­ent and rege­ne­ra­tive indus­try is possi­ble. With our novel bioma­te­rial, we can make a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to solving plas­tic pollu­tion. We believe that UB FIGG and SWEN are a great addi­tion to our share­hol­ders as they have rele­vant know­ledge in our indus­try. The fact that both our inves­tors and the banks fully support our mission was a decisive criter­ion for us,” explains Dr. Anne Lamp (Photo© Anne Lamp), CEO and co-foun­der of trace­l­ess.

To imple­ment the inno­va­tive tech­no­logy on an indus­trial scale for the first time, trace­l­ess is buil­ding a demons­tra­tion plant in Hamburg. With this produc­tion faci­lity, the company will replace seve­ral thousand tons of conven­tio­nal plas­tic annu­ally while saving signi­fi­cant amounts of CO2 emis­si­ons, fossil resour­ces, water and agri­cul­tu­ral land.

“The trace­l­ess approach of using widely available agri­cul­tu­ral side streams to replace fossil plas­tics, and the finan­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties their solu­tion offers, convin­ced us both econo­mic­ally and envi­ron­men­tally. The trace­l­ess team has achie­ved extre­mely good results in terms of mate­rial perfor­mance, deve­lo­p­ment times and commer­cia­liza­tion of the new mate­rial. We look forward to support­ing Anne, Johanna and the team as they scale up this inno­va­tive tech­no­logy,” said Sakari Saarela, Part­ner at UB FIGG.

After the German Fede­ral Minis­try for the Envi­ron­ment (BMUV) appro­ved a €5 million grant for the cons­truc­tion of this demons­tra­tion plant earlier this year, the Series A finan­cing round is now the second part of the company’s finan­cing stra­tegy to expand its produc­tion capacities.

“Finan­cing capi­tal-inten­sive start­ups is still unfa­mi­liar to many inves­tors and banks. This makes it a special chall­enge for indus­trial manu­fac­tu­ring start­ups like us that are deve­lo­ping the inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies of tomor­row. We are very plea­sed to have found part­ners in UB FIGG, SWEN Blue Ocean, Planet A, HTGF, b.value and our local bank consor­tium who share our vision and have reco­gni­zed and unders­tood the chal­lenges of finan­cing our hard­ware scale-up. With their support, we will achieve our ambi­tious goals,” says Johanna Baare, COO and co-foun­der of traceless

The company produ­ces trace­l­ess® mate­ri­als in the form of a granu­late that can be further proces­sed using stan­dard tech­no­lo­gies in the plas­tics and pack­a­ging indus­try. As a result, the mate­rial can be used in a wide range of end products — from rigid molded parts and flexi­ble films to paper coatings or adhesives.

“The Blue Ocean Fund seeks to invest in start­ups that provide inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons to the three biggest thre­ats to our oceans: Over­fi­shing, marine pollu­tion and climate change. With plas­tic pollu­tion being one of the biggest thre­ats to our oceans, we were imme­dia­tely taken with trace­l­ess. The bio-based and biode­gra­da­ble mate­rial can replace plas­tics in products that easily enter the envi­ron­ment and thus our oceans, such as disposable pack­a­ging and hidden plas­tics in adhe­si­ves and paper coatings. trace­l­ess is a compel­ling alter­na­tive for appli­ca­ti­ons where reusable solu­ti­ons are not sustainable and tech­ni­cal recy­cling is not possi­ble,” says Olivier Raybaud, Mana­ging Direc­tor of SWEN Capi­tal Partners.

About Trace­l­ess

The bioe­co­nomy start-up trace­l­ess mate­ri­als GmbH was foun­ded in 2020 by Dr. Anne Lamp and Johanna Baare in Hamburg. The mission: to contri­bute to a rege­ne­ra­tive, climate-friendly economy and a future free of plas­tic pollu­tion. With its inno­va­tive tech­no­logy, the company produ­ces natu­ral bioma­te­ri­als from agri­busi­ness plant resi­dues that are bio-based, home-compost­a­ble, plas­tic-free and have a mini­mal envi­ron­men­tal foot­print. To exploit the ecolo­gi­cal poten­tial, the tech­no­logy is now being scaled up from pilot scale to indus­trial scale. www.traceless.eu

About UB Forrest Indus­try Green Growth Fund

UB FIGG is a private equity fund that invests in compa­nies focu­sed on repla­cing plas­tics and other fossil fuel-based mate­ri­als, higher value and more effi­ci­ent use of wood and agri­cul­tu­ral feedstock side streams, and increased use of these feedstocks in a broad range of inter­me­diate and end-use appli­ca­ti­ons. Through its invest­ments, the fund will help the forestry and bioba­sed indus­tries deve­lop solu­ti­ons to miti­gate climate change. UB FIGG is a signa­tory to the Opera­ting Prin­ci­ples for Impact Manage­ment and reports on the envi­ron­men­tal and climate impacts of its investments.

About Swen Blue Ocean

SWEN Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading player in respon­si­ble private wealth inves­t­ing in Europe, with more than €7.7 billion* in assets under manage­ment, and offers a wide range of invest­ment programs for insti­tu­tio­nal and private clients. Since 2012, the manage­ment company has inte­gra­ted ESG crite­ria into all its asset manage­ment acti­vi­ties and has imple­men­ted a climate stra­tegy since 2017. In 2021, it streng­the­ned its actions in favor of more equi­ta­ble and sustainable growth by laun­ching Blue Ocean. SWEN Capi­tal Part­ners is owned by OFI Invest Group, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa and part of their team. Since Janu­ary 2022, SWEN Capi­tal Part­ners has been a co-part­ner in the NEC initia­tive, which has deve­lo­ped a metho­do­logy that enables socio-econo­mic actors to measure their contri­bu­tion to envi­ron­men­tal change in order to achieve a common goal: buil­ding a respon­si­ble and sustainable economy.

About HTGF

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported more than 700 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of the fourth fund, HTGF has around 1.4 billion euros under manage­ment. The team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. To date, exter­nal inves­tors have inves­ted around EUR 5 billion in the HTGF port­fo­lio in more than 2,000 follow-on finan­cing rounds. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 170 companies.
Fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, and 45 compa­nies from a wide range of industries.
www.htgf.de

 

News

Gronau — The pan-Euro­pean invest­ment company Active Capi­tal Company (ACC) invests in broco­lor LACKFABRIK GmbH as well as broco­lor Immo­bi­lien GmbH (Broco­lor). The German company Broco­lor, based in Gronau, is conside­red a chemi­cal expert in the field of paints, primers, coatings, adhe­si­ves and other chemi­cal products. With this plat­form invest­ment, ACC conti­nues its growth in Germany, bene­fiting from its hands-on invest­ment approach and strong track record of inves­t­ing in chemi­cal compa­nies. The inter­na­tio­nal tran­sac­tion was accom­pa­nied by Marktlink.

Expan­sion of inter­na­tio­nal custo­mer busi­ness and further focus on sustainability

To meet demand from exis­ting and future custo­mers, Broco­lor has expan­ded its warehouse in 2019 and plans to signi­fi­cantly increase produc­tion capa­city in the near term. The stra­te­gic growth plan provi­des for an expan­sion of the high-quality contract manu­fac­tu­ring offering.

Hart­wig Oster­meyer (Photo © ACC), Part­ner at ACC: “We are impres­sed with Brocolor’s R&D capa­bi­li­ties and process know-how, which are clear diffe­ren­tia­tors from tradi­tio­nal contract manu­fac­tu­r­ers. Broco­lor is a valuable deve­lo­p­ment part­ner to its diverse custo­mer base and we look forward to support­ing the company as it conti­nues to grow. Broco­lor is a specia­li­zed market leader with the highest envi­ron­men­tal, social and gover­nance stan­dards and we intend to offer its services to other leading inter­na­tio­nal chemi­cal companies.”

Successful tran­sac­tion consul­ting by Markt­link brought the right part­ners together
The acqui­si­tion was also made possi­ble by advice from Markt­link. “This latest tran­sac­tion high­lights the incre­asing inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of the M&A market, which Markt­link is actively respon­ding to through its inter­na­tio­nal network,” said Tom Belt­man of Markt­link. “The market approach for this acqui­si­tion was deli­bera­tely kept small to reflect Brocolor’s highly speci­fic busi­ness know­ledge and inter­na­tio­nal custo­mer base. Both stra­te­gists and finan­cial inves­tors showed inte­rest, but ulti­m­ately ACC’s future plans proved most compa­ti­ble with the vision of Brocolor’s shareholders.”

About Broco­lor

Broco­lor, based in Gronau, Germany, began as a paint whole­sa­ler in 1921 and was acqui­red by the current seller in 2002. The core compe­tence lies in the contract manu­fac­tu­ring of paints, primers, adhe­si­ves, coatings and other chemi­cal products. Brocolor’s rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment team is conti­nuously working on the intro­duc­tion of new tech­no­lo­gies and the chemi­cal deve­lo­p­ment of formu­la­ti­ons and proces­ses to improve the quality of current and new products. As a result, the company has accu­mu­la­ted a signi­fi­cant base of know-how and opera­tio­nal exper­tise, meeting the latest and expec­ted regu­la­ti­ons in the chemi­cal indus­try. www.brocolor.de

About Active Capi­tal Company

ACC is an inde­pen­dent, hands-on private equity inves­tor focu­sed on small and medium-sized compa­nies in the Nether­lands and Germany. ACC invests in compa­nies opera­ting in the indus­trial, tech­ni­cal whole­sale and busi­ness services sectors with sales of between €10 million and €100 million. Through a highly entre­pre­neu­rial and proac­tive approach, ACC maxi­mi­zes the long-term value of its invest­ments by support­ing manage­ment in the execu­tion of value-added projects and provi­ding access to its exten­sive part­ner network. ACC is curr­ently inves­t­ing from its fourth fund and began opera­ti­ons in Germany in 2019 with its invest­ment in and successful trans­for­ma­tion of Schahl­LED Light­ing. ACC has also been inves­ted in Werner Lieb GmbH (www.werner-lieb.de) since May 2022. ACC has offices in Amster­dam and Munich. www.activecapitalcompany.com

About Market­link

Since 1996, Markt­link has grown to become the largest inde­pen­dent acqui­si­tion specia­list in the upper mid-market segment of the Bene­lux. A team of more than 200 inter­nal M&A specia­lists supports (inter)national compa­nies with a tran­sac­tion value of 5 to 250 million euros. With a wide­spread Euro­pean network of offices in Germany, Belgium, the UK, Denmark and the Nether­lands, and an exten­sive network of buyers and sellers, Markt­link has alre­ady successfully comple­ted 150 tran­sac­tions in 2022. www.marktlink.com .

News
Rosenheim/ Hano­ver — From Octo­ber 2023, the Best­Fit Group will have 120 fitness studios under its roof: with the acqui­si­tion of all 9 loca­ti­ons of the premium value chain FLEXX Fitness, the nort­hern holding subsi­diary Best­Fit Group is thus growing signi­fi­cantly in the Colo­gne area. Thus, the Best­Fit Group remains the fastest growing fitness chain in Germany and reaches another mile­stone with more than 400,000 members.

With 111 studios to date, over 350,000 members and around 1,400 employees, the Best­Fit Group is one of the largest fitness opera­tors in Germany. With its estab­lished brands Ai Fitness and jumpers fitness, the Best­Fit Group is posi­tio­ned in the fast-growing premium value segment.

With the acqui­si­tion of all 9 loca­ti­ons of FLEXX Fitness, another step in the expan­sion stra­tegy of the Best­Fit Group has now been taken. With the regio­nal distri­bu­tion of FLEXX Fitness, the Best­Fit Group is expan­ding its local presence in the Colo­gne area. FLEXX Fitness loca­ti­ons will conti­nue to operate under the Ai Fitness brand.

Rainer Mast, CFO of the Best­Fit Group, comm­ents, “The fact that we have been able to expand our growth even further and reach our goal ahead of sche­dule makes me very proud. The highly successful FLEXX Fitness brand repres­ents the perfect exten­sion for us.” “The entire Best­Fit team is very exci­ted about the nine FLEXX clubs and their more than 50,000 members,” adds Stephan Schulan, CEO of the Best­Fit Group.

Even at the time of the merger of Ai Fitness and jumpers fitness in Octo­ber 2020, the Best­Fit Group, which was foun­ded at the same time, recor­ded the stron­gest growth rates within the German fitness market. Through targe­ted acqui­si­ti­ons of indi­vi­dual loca­ti­ons in North Rhine-West­pha­lia, Hesse and Baden-Würt­tem­berg, the Best­Fit Group has alre­ady grown by more than 35 clubs since summer 2022 to date, which are also mana­ged under the Ai Fitness and jumpers fitness brands.

“With the acqui­si­tion of FLEXX Fitness, we again under­line our clear focus on premium value fitness in Germany. We conti­nue to see signi­fi­cant growth poten­tial in the German market. With our two estab­lished brands AI and jumpers Fitness, we are very well posi­tio­ned for this,” explains Maxi­mi­lian Frey (Photo © Nord­hol­ding), Prin­ci­pal at NORD Holding.

On the part of NORD Holding, the tran­sac­tion was imple­men­ted by Maxi­mi­lian Frey and Moritz Stolp.

About Best­Fit Group
With 120 studios and around 400,000 members, the Best­Fit Group is one of the most successful and fastest growing fitness groups on the German market. The Best­Fit Group emer­ged in 2020 from the merger of jumpers fitness and Ai Fitness and is now one of the largest fitness chains in the growing premium value segment in Germany. Thanks to the parti­ci­pa­tion of the equity inves­tor NORD Holding from Hano­ver, it has been possi­ble to imple­ment an ambi­tious growth course in the German-spea­king region in recent years. The brands of the Best­Fit Group jumpers fitness and Ai Fitness present them­sel­ves with an excel­lent price-perfor­mance ratio, state-of-the-art equip­ment and a diverse and inno­va­tive fitness offering.
About Nord­hol­ding

With a history of over 50 years and assets under manage­ment of € 3 billion, NORD Holding is one of the leading private equity and asset manage­ment compa­nies in Germany. The focus is on the busi­ness areas of direct invest­ments and fund invest­ments. The focus of the direct busi­ness is on the struc­tu­ring and finan­cing of corpo­rate succes­sion models, the acqui­si­tion of group divisions/subsidiaries and the expan­sion finan­cing of medium-sized compa­nies. In contrast to most other finan­cial inves­tors, who only manage time-limi­ted funds, NORD Holding acts as a so-called “ever­green fund” with no time limit and invests from its own balance sheet. The company is curr­ently invol­ved with more than 15 compa­nies in Germany and other German-spea­king count­ries. The Fund Invest­ments busi­ness unit targets the micro and small cap segment of mid-market-orien­ted private equity funds in Europe. The focus here is on primary, secon­dary and co-invest­ments. NORD Holding focu­ses stron­gly on buyout mana­gers newly estab­lished on the market, opera­tio­nal invest­ment stra­te­gies and also regu­larly acts as an anchor inves­tor. www.nordholding.de

News

Cologne/ Dort­mund — Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek advi­sed TRM Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH (TRM) on the sale of a major portion of its shares in FORTEC Elek­tro­nik Akti­en­ge­sell­schaft, Germe­ring (FORTEC). The two Colo­gne-based Heuking capi­tal market experts Dr. Mirko Sickin­ger, LL.M. and Sven Radke, LL.M. had alre­ady advi­sed TRM in 2012 on the acqui­si­tion of the share­hol­ding and a volun­t­ary public take­over offer made in this context. Since 2012, TRM has held more than 30% of the shares in FORTEC. With the current sale, TRM’s share­hol­ding is redu­ced to 5.16%, and an acqui­ring group acqui­res 25.07% of the shares from TRM.

The FORTEC Group is a leading supplier of indi­vi­dual compon­ents and systems in the fields of display tech­no­logy, embedded systems and power supplies. FORTEC’s shares are admit­ted to trading on the regu­la­ted market of the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange, Prime Stan­dard segment. FORTEC-Group could report sales in the amount of Euro 89 million in 2022.

Advi­sors to TRM Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Mirko Sickin­ger, LL.M., Photo © Heuking (lead), Sven Radke, LL.M., Lena Pfeu­fer, Fran­ziska Marisa Decker, LL.B., M.A. (all Capi­tal Markets Law), all Cologne.

News

Hamburg — ECO Group, a group of compa­nies focu­sed on sustainable consu­mer goods brands, has inves­ted in the natu­ral cosme­tics brand BEN&ANNA from JM Nature GmbH. The invest­ment was prece­ded by a €7.5 million Series A finan­cing round. The finan­cing round was led by Euro­pean growth inves­tor Acton Capi­tal; exis­ting inves­tor Fair Capi­tal Part­ners also joined the round. — YPOG provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal and tax advice to ECO Group on its invest­ment in the natu­ral cosme­tics brand BEN&ANNA from JM Nature GmbH.

This stra­te­gic step will enable the ECO Group to expand its capa­ci­ties in the area of sustainable consu­mer goods and streng­then its market presence. As part of the tran­sac­tion, ECO Group will also become a share­hol­der in Global Eco Pack GmbH, a manu­fac­tu­rer of pack­a­ging mate­ri­als specia­li­zing in the use of paper instead of plastic.

Foun­ded in Bad Homburg in 2022 by Chris­toph Schwerdtle and Thomas Nehfi­scher, the start-up bund­les sustainable brands such as Hydro­phil, Naiked, Kuno and Herbalind under one roof. The ECO Group pursues the goal of enab­ling healthy and envi­ron­men­tally conscious living through sustainable consu­mer goods. The Group’s growth is based on the ongo­ing deve­lo­p­ment of product inno­va­tions and the acqui­si­tion of sustainable compa­nies in rele­vant cate­go­ries of the consu­mer goods industry.

The entry into BEN&ANNA marks a stra­te­gic, important step in the joint mission to promote sustainable life­styles. BEN&ANNA was foun­ded in 2017 by Marco Hüls­beck and stands for high-quality and vegan natu­ral cosme­tics. The sustainable natu­ral products consist of one hundred percent natu­ral ingre­di­ents, if possi­ble even from orga­nic cultivation.

This move unders­cores the joint commit­ment to redu­cing plas­tic waste while provi­ding inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons for more envi­ron­men­tally friendly packaging.

Consul­tant ECO Group: YPOG

Dr. Martin Scha­per (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Pia Meven (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin
Rosa Wizisla (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin;
Dr. Stefan Witte (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Hamburg Dr. Martin Scha­per (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Johan­nes Schmidt (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Hamburg
Boris Schin­zel (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin;
Dr. Malte Berg­mann (Tax), Part­ner, Hamburg, Ann-Kris­tin Loch­mann (Tax), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Hamburg

News

Düssel­dorf — McDer­mott Will & Emery has advi­sed KRÜGER GROUP on the acqui­si­tion of the rights to the Kaba, Suchard Express and Benco cocoa brands. KRÜGER is acqui­ring the brands from the French confec­tion­ery company Caram­bar & Co. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to be comple­ted in early 2024.

KRÜGER plans to gradu­ally inte­grate produc­tion of the three brands, which include cocoa-based powde­red bever­a­ges as well as powde­red bever­a­ges for fruit-mix milk drinks, choco­late bars, and ready-to-drink choco­late milk, start­ing next year; the focus will then be on laun­ching new products.

The KRÜGER GROUP is a leading company in the food indus­try with more than 5,000 employees and sales of appro­xi­m­ately 2.3 billion euros. The product port­fo­lio of the globally active family company includes bever­a­ges, confec­tion­ery and choco­late products, infant nutri­tion, dietary supple­ments, OTC and phar­maceu­ti­cal products, and food ingredients.

The French company Caram­bar & Co. gene­ra­tes annual net sales of around 400 million euros with 14 brands. Katjes Inter­na­tio­nal, the invest­ment arm of confec­tion­ery manu­fac­tu­rer Katjes Group, has a stake of around 23 percent in Caram­bar & Co.

McDer­mott regu­larly advi­ses KRÜGER GROUP on inter­na­tio­nal tran­sac­tions and natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal anti­trust and compe­ti­tion law issues.

Advi­sors KRÜGER GROUP: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Düsseldorf

Chris­tian Krohs (Anti­trust), Dr. Thomas Ammer­mann (Corporate/M&A), Stef­fen Woitz (IP/IT, Munich), Nico­las Lafont (Corporate/M&A, Paris), Romain Desmonts (Tax, Paris), Carina Kant (Coun­sel, Anti­trust); Asso­ciate: Max Kütt­ner (Anti­trust)
Inhouse: Dr. Martin Fröh­lich (Lead, M&A), Dr. Kai Danel­zik (Corpo­rate), Kai Piepen­stock (Head of Tax), Nives Gara­se­vic (Tax)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery

McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,400 lawy­ers in more than 20 offices in Europe, North America and Asia. Our lawy­ers cover the entire spec­trum of commer­cial and corpo­rate law with their advice. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit: https://www.mwe.com/de/

News

Frankfurt/ Nörd­lin­gen — Gibson, Dunn & Crut­cher LLP advi­sed Eura­zeo Invest­ment Mana­ger S.A. in connec­tion with the finan­cing of the acqui­si­tion of LRE Medi­cal GmbH by Gyrus Capi­tal. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the transaction.

Eura­zeo is a leading global invest­ment company listed on the Euron­ext Paris Stock Exch­ange. Through its Direct Lending team, it provi­des flexi­ble senior and subor­di­na­ted finan­cing for acqui­si­ti­ons and Euro­pean SMEs with a valua­tion between EUR 30 million and EUR 300 million.

LRE Medi­cal, head­quar­te­red in Nörd­lin­gen, Germany, supports its global custo­mer base with a compre­hen­sive service offe­ring that provi­des high-quality tech­ni­cal solu­ti­ons and manu­fac­tu­ring of medi­cal and life science diagno­stic equip­ment. LRE Medi­cal was foun­ded in 1961 and employs more than 250 people at two loca­ti­ons in Germany.

Gyrus Capi­tal is a Euro­pean invest­ment firm specia­li­zing in trans­for­ma­tive invest­ments in health and sustaina­bi­lity. Based in Geneva, Switz­er­land, Gyrus invests in compa­nies that address struc­tu­ral needs of society and the envi­ron­ment and are focu­sed on long-term, sustainable growth. Gyrus focu­ses on complex tran­sac­tions with a parti­cu­lar empha­sis on corpo­rate spin-offs and busi­ness succes­si­ons in the €50 million to €500 million range.

The Gibson Dunn team, led by Frank­furt finance part­ner Sebas­tian Schoon (© Gibson Dunn), included finance coun­sel Alex­an­der Klein and finance asso­ciate Bastiaan Wolters (both Frankfurt).

About Gibson Dunn
Gibson, Dunn & Crut­cher LLP is one of the leading inter­na­tio­nal law firms and is ranked among the top law firms world­wide in indus­try surveys and by autho­ri­ta­tive publi­ca­ti­ons. With more than 1,800 lawy­ers in 20 offices, the firm has a global presence in all major econo­mic regi­ons. Gibson Dunn offices are loca­ted in Abu Dhabi, Brussels, Century City, Dallas, Denver, Dubai, Frank­furt, Hong Kong, Hous­ton, London, Los Ange­les, Munich, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, Paris, Beijing, San Fran­cisco, Singa­pore and Washing­ton, D.C. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.gibsondunn.com.

News

Berlin — AI defense company Helsing announ­ced that it has raised €209 million in a Series B funding round led by Gene­ral Cata­lyst. The Swedish Saab Group is also parti­ci­pa­ting in the round as a stra­te­gic inves­tor, thus deepe­ning the exis­ting partnership.

Foun­ded in 2021, the Munich-based company is a new breed of defense contrac­tor deve­lo­ping AI-based capa­bi­li­ties to protect demo­cra­cies. Helsing’s pure soft­ware-based approach and close part­ner­ship with the indus­try have led to rapid market adop­tion across Europe. In June 2023, the German govern­ment selec­ted Helsing and its part­ner Saab to deli­ver the new AI-enab­led elec­tro­nic warfare capa­bi­li­ties for the upco­ming Euro­figh­ter update. In August 2023, Helsing and its consor­tium part­ners were tasked with provi­ding arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) deve­lo­p­ment infra­struc­ture for the Future Combat Air System (FCAS).

“This round of finan­cing is a vote of confi­dence in Europe,” said Tors­ten Reil, co-foun­der of Helsing. “Gene­ral Catalyst’s commit­ment to global and Euro­pean resi­li­ence aligns with our mission to protect Euro­pean democracies.”

“We foun­ded Helsing because we believe AI will be essen­tial to conti­nue defen­ding demo­cra­tic values. Our recent contracts show that this belief is shared by govern­ments and indus­try. This round of funding is further vali­da­tion from a leading global inves­tor, as well as from our part­ner Saab,” added Dr. Gund­bert Scherf, co-foun­der of Helsing (photo © helsing.ai).

Helsing places parti­cu­lar focus on the ethi­cal appli­ca­tion of new tech­no­lo­gies, espe­ci­ally arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The company takes a targe­ted approach to trans­pa­rency, explaina­bi­lity, and the effec­ti­ve­ness of “human in the loop.” To ensure tech­ni­cal excel­lence and diverse thin­king, Helsing recruits employees from a variety of back­grounds and encou­ra­ges criti­cal thin­king and feed­back from its teams.

“We believe Helsing is an indus­try-shaping soft­ware company that is fully aligned with our global resi­li­ence thesis — the need to moder­nize our major indus­tries for the powerful chan­ges in the world,” said Paul Kwan, Mana­ging Part­ner, Gene­ral Cata­lyst.

Helsing’s mission to protect demo­cra­cies places parti­cu­lar focus on the ethi­cal appli­ca­tion of new tech­no­lo­gies, espe­ci­ally arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The company takes a targe­ted approach to trans­pa­rency, explaina­bi­lity, and the effec­ti­ve­ness of “human in the loop.”

Consul­tant Helsing: YPOG
Team: Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Berlin Tobias Lovett (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin Dr. Chris­toph Cordes (IP/IT), Asso­ciate, Berlin; Farina Weber (Corpo­rate), Asso­ciate, Berlin

About Helsing

Helsing is a key tech­no­logy and soft­ware company of the latest gene­ra­tion. In focus: criti­cal AI capa­bi­li­ties for secu­rity and defense. Helsing was foun­ded as an owner-mana­ged tech­no­logy company to pursue the exclu­sive busi­ness purpose of deve­lo­ping and deploy­ing AI capa­bi­li­ties in the secu­rity sector. It is Helsing’s claim, as a Euro­pean tech­no­logy pioneer, to enable demo­cra­tic socie­ties to make sove­reign decis­i­ons and enforce their own ethi­cal standards.

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. www.ypog.law

News

Tübin­gen — SHS Capi­tal has raised appro­xi­m­ately €270 million for its sixth gene­ra­tion of funds. Due to strong demand, the fund’s origi­nal target volume of 200 million euros was signi­fi­cantly excee­ded and is now more than double that of the prede­ces­sor fund. The invest­ment focus of the new SHS VI fund is on growing Euro­pean health­care companies.

The new fund is targe­ting ten to fifteen invest­ments in the form of both majo­rity and mino­rity stakes. The invest­ment amount of the fund is 10 to 40 million euros. Toge­ther with LPs and other inves­tors, tran­sac­tion values of up to 150 million euros can be reali­zed. SHS invests exclu­si­vely in compa­nies that are alre­ady gene­ra­ting signi­fi­cant sales, are on a growth trajec­tory and have the goal of beco­ming Euro­pean health­care champions.

Inves­tors in the SHS VI Fund include fund of funds, insu­rance compa­nies, pension funds, foun­da­ti­ons, family offices, banks, health­care groups, church inves­tors and entre­pre­neurs. Further­more, the SHS invest­ment team itself has inves­ted significantly.

“Health­care is an indis­pensable sector and ther­e­fore offers many exci­ting oppor­tu­ni­ties for invest­ment. With us, inves­tors have the oppor­tu­nity to parti­ci­pate in the deve­lo­p­ment of this growth market. Our track record to date shows that we have been able to gene­rate attrac­tive returns for our inves­tors while helping to improve health­care through inno­va­tion and opti­mize pati­ent care,” explains Manfred Ulmer-Weber, Mana­ging Part­ner at SHS.

“The volume of the new fund has signi­fi­cantly excee­ded our expec­ta­ti­ons and confirmed our posi­tio­ning as the leading private equity health­care specia­list in the German, and thus largest Euro­pean health­care market. We are very plea­sed that many of our exis­ting SHS inves­tors are also inves­ted in our new fund, in some cases with signi­fi­cant increa­ses in subscrip­ti­ons. In addi­tion, we were able to further inter­na­tio­na­lize our inves­tor base and expand it to include renow­ned addres­ses. We would like to thank our inves­tors for the trust they have placed in us,” says SHS Mana­ging Part­ner Sascha Alilovic.

News

Munich — Comi­tis Capi­tal (“Comi­tis”) has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in Cloud7 GmbH (“Cloud 7”). Petra Junge­bluth, the foun­der of Cloud7 (photo © cloud7), reta­ins a signi­fi­cant stake in the company and will conti­nue to steer Cloud7’s inter­na­tio­nal growth as CEO.

Cloud7, based in Berlin and Königs-Wuster­hau­sen, was foun­ded in 2010 by fashion desi­gner Petra Junge­bluth. Since then, the company has become the leading brand in the premium dog access­ories market in DACH. The brand is known for its range of aesthe­tic, high-quality and sustainable dog products and has won nume­rous brand and product design awards.

Comi­tis Capi­tal is a growth inves­tor based in Frank­furt am Main. Cloud7 is Comi­tis’ second growth part­ner­ship in the broa­der pet sector.

Consul­tant Cloud7: POELLATH 

Chris­tian Tönies, LL.M. Eur. (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner, M&A/VC)
Dr. Sebas­tian Gerlin­ger, LL.M. (Part­ner, M&A/VC)
Markus Döll­ner, LL.M. (London) (Senior Asso­ciate, M&A/VC)
Ludwig Niller (Asso­ciate, M&A/VC)

News

Amster­dam — CVC, a leading global private markets mana­ger focu­sed on private equity, secon­da­ries and lever­a­ged finance, has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in DIF Capi­tal Part­ners (“DIF”), a leading infra­struc­ture mana­ger. The merger will create a global private markets mana­ger with seven comple­men­tary stra­te­gies and total assets under manage­ment of appro­xi­m­ately EUR 177 billion*.

This stra­te­gic acqui­si­tion gives CVC access to a leading infra­struc­ture plat­form that ideally comple­ments the company’s exis­ting private equity, secon­da­ries and credit stra­te­gies. The acqui­si­tion also acce­le­ra­tes DIF’s growth. The company will conti­nue to operate under the DIF brand and main­tain its inde­pen­dence in terms of busi­ness acti­vi­ties and invest­ment decisions.

Head­quar­te­red in Amster­dam, DIF mana­ges EUR 16 billion in assets, employs more than 225 people in 11 offices and pursues two distinct invest­ment stra­te­gies: core/­build-to-core funds and core-plus funds. Foun­ded in 2005, the company has estab­lished itself as a leading provi­der of mid-sized infra­struc­ture invest­ments with a focus on Europe, North America and Austra­lia. By joining forces with CVC, DIF will acce­le­rate its growth and further expand its invest­ment capa­bi­li­ties, geogra­phic reach and global inves­tor base. DIF will conti­nue to be led by its current CEO and part­ners and will operate under the DIF brand.

Commen­ting on the tran­sac­tion, Rolly van Rappard, Chair­man and Co-Foun­der of CVC, said: “Expan­ding into the infra­struc­ture sector is a logi­cal next step for us, as we are convin­ced of the long-term growth trends in this area and it comple­ments our exis­ting stra­te­gies. We have known the DIF team for many years and are exci­ted to have one of the world’s leading pure-play infra­struc­ture manage­ment compa­nies with an impres­sive track record of success and growth on our side going forward.”

Rob Lucas, Mana­ging Part­ner at CVC (Photo © cvc), added: “We are looking forward to working with DIF, a leading global infra­struc­ture mana­ger. DIF’s busi­ness model and culture are a great fit with our local foot­print and their new infra­struc­ture plat­form will be a great comple­ment to our leading private equity, secon­da­ries and credit stra­te­gies. We welcome Wim, the DIF part­ners and the entire DIF team to the CVC Group and look forward to working toge­ther to become a leading global infra­struc­ture manager.”

Wim Blaasse, CEO and Mana­ging Part­ner DIF, said: “The merger with CVC is a natu­ral step in the deve­lo­p­ment of our company. Toge­ther with my part­ners, I look forward to leading DIF into the next phase of growth. We have known the CVC team for a long time and have been impres­sed with what they have built. That is why we are exci­ted to become part of the CVC Group. With this tran­sac­tion, we bene­fit from CVC’s global plat­form, scale and excel­lent inves­tor connec­tions. At the same time, we can fully focus on important infra­struc­ture areas such as the energy tran­si­tion and digi­ta­liza­tion without losing our inde­pen­dence in invest­ment decisions.”

The tran­sac­tion is subject to regu­la­tory and other appr­ovals and is expec­ted to close in the fourth quar­ter of 2023 or the first quar­ter of 2024. The Dutch works coun­cil of DIF has been infor­med about the tran­sac­tion and has appro­ved it.

Advi­sors to CVC: inter alia JPMorgan. 

Advi­sors to DIF: advi­sed by Morgan Stan­ley & Co Plc, Loyens & Loeff, PwC and De Brauw, among others.

News

Essen/ Colo­gne — The corpo­rate and capi­tal markets law experts Dr. Mirko Sickin­ger, LL.M., Part­ner, and Lena Pfeu­fer, Sala­ried Part­ner, advi­sed the listed 11 88 0 Solu­ti­ons AG on a capi­tal increase from autho­ri­zed capi­tal exclu­ding share­hol­ders’ subscrip­tion rights and, toge­ther with the accom­pany­ing bank, on the admis­sion of the new shares to the regu­la­ted market of the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange (Prime Standard).

The capi­tal increase was made against contri­bu­ti­ons in kind in order to acquire the “pay-per-lead” provi­der Ormigo GmbH, based in Colo­gne. Euro Serve Media GmbH, which is part of the Müller Medien family of compa­nies and which in turn holds a majo­rity stake in 11 88 0 Solu­ti­ons AG via its holding company united verti­cal media GmbH, contri­bu­ted Ormigo GmbH to 11 88 0 Solu­ti­ons AG as a contri­bu­tion in kind as part of the capi­tal increase and recei­ved 1 million new shares in return.

Ormigo GmbH was acqui­red in order to deve­lop the “pay per lead” busi­ness area more stron­gly, to acce­le­rate growth in this area and to save costs for the further deve­lo­p­ment of the “pay per lead” business.

11 88 0 Solu­ti­ons AG has its head­quar­ters in Essen. For over twenty years, 11 88 0* and 11880.com have deli­vered relia­ble results in sear­ches for indi­vi­du­als and local and natio­nal vendors in all indus­tries. Germany’s second-largest direc­tory assis­tance service, which can be reached by dial­ing 11 88 0*, offers perso­nal support, while the online busi­ness direc­tory 11880.com and the app of the same name provide targe­ted infor­ma­tion and direct users to suita­ble provi­ders in the desi­red region.

Advi­sor 11 88 0 Solu­ti­ons AG: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek

Dr. Mirko Sickin­ger, LL.M., Photo (lead), Lena Pfeu­fer, Fran­ziska Marisa Decker, M.A. (all corpo­rate and capi­tal markets law), all Cologne.

News

Jena/Munich — With the support of invest­ment bank Bryan, Garnier & Co, Jena-based rooom AG has just raised over 17 million euros in a successful finan­cing round. The finan­cing round is backed by a consor­tium of insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors led by Munich-based finan­cial inves­tor Marondo Capi­tal. Growth capi­tal provi­ders such as Tech­no­lo­gie-Grün­der­fonds Sach­sen (TGFS) and bm‑t Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment Thürin­gen as well as other exis­ting inves­tors are also involved.

Jena-based rooom AG has raised over 17 million euros in fresh capi­tal as part of a successful finan­cing round. In addi­tion to the new inves­tors Marondo Capi­tal and TGFS, exis­ting inves­tors such as bm|t and others parti­ci­pa­ted. This invest­ment also unders­cores the growing importance of 3D visua­liza­tion and Meta­verse solu­ti­ons in the enterprise.

Foun­ded in 2016, rooom AG offers soft­ware solu­ti­ons for crea­ting 3D content and digi­tal expe­ri­en­ces in augmen­ted and virtual reality, which are used in Meta­verse, among others. rooom’s custo­mers include Deut­sche Tele­kom, BMW, Zeiss, porta and Bosch. The Jena-based company curr­ently employs around 100 people and now reaches more than six million users in over 120 countries.

“Hans Elst­ner and his team have deve­lo­ped a proprie­tary tech­no­logy for crea­ting 3D content that stands up to global compa­ri­son. Without the use of special apps or virtual reality glas­ses, users can easily immerse them­sel­ves in virtual worlds and explore any type of 3D object using only their smart­phones,” explains Sebas­tian Schirl, Mana­ging Direc­tor at Bryan, Garnier & Co, who advi­sed on the transaction.

“A successful growth finan­cing round is anything but a matter of course in these tense times. We now want to use the funds raised prima­rily for marke­ting and further inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion, above all in the USA,” empha­si­zes Hans Elsner, foun­der and CEO of rooom AG.

Slowing tran­sac­tion momen­tum after initial hype in virtual reality soft­ware deve­lo­per market

As an analy­sis by Bryan, Garnier & Co shows, provi­ders of hard­ware and soft­ware solu­ti­ons in the areas of meta­verse and augmen­ted and virtual reality have been in high demand over the past two years: in 2021 and 2022, start­ups and tech­no­logy compa­nies were able to raise around €25 billion in capi­tal in almost 4,000 indi­vi­dual tran­sac­tions, but since the end of 2022, the number of tran­sac­tions has drop­ped signi­fi­cantly: In the first half of 2023, compa­nies raised only around EUR 2.0 billion in 542 tran­sac­tions, accor­ding to one result of the analysis.

“The initial hype around the Meta­verse has curr­ently died down a bit, but the market for virtual expe­ri­en­ces has long been there,” Schirl said. “Howe­ver, many compa­nies in this field are still in their infancy. rooom is one of the very few compa­nies here that is alre­ady selling its solu­ti­ons with great commer­cial success.” It is no coin­ci­dence that rooom was also named “Top Manage­ment Solu­tion Provi­der” and “Cool Vendor” by Gart­ner, the world’s leading rese­arch and consul­ting company in the IT sector.

Manage­ment consul­tants at Bain & Company expect that the market for meta­verse solu­ti­ons and virtual expe­ri­en­ces could reach a market volume of $700 billion to $900 billion by 2030. Until then, it will also become clear who the real winners in the market are.

The Bryan, Garnier & Co deal team consis­ted of Falk Müller-Veerse (photo © Bryan Garnier & Co), Sebas­tian Schirl, Berk Kirca, Alex­an­der Rein­auer and Paul Hirsch.

About Marondo

Marondo, with offices in Munich and Stutt­gart, is an invest­ment company for fast-growing, tech­no­logy-orien­ted, next-gene­ra­tion SMEs in Germany and DACH. The fund invests in compa­nies from the German tech­no­logy sector through majo­rity and mino­rity tran­sac­tions. These include soft­ware & IT, Indus­try 4.0, envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­lo­gies, new mate­ri­als, and health & medi­cal tech­no­lo­gies. In addi­tion to exten­sive expan­sion capi­tal, Marondo also offers liqui­dity solu­ti­ons for exis­ting share­hol­ders. The part­ner­ship is led by four part­ners with over 80 years of indus­try expe­ri­ence, 90 finan­ced compa­nies and seve­ral hundred tran­sac­tions over the past two deca­des. www.marondo.com.

About TGFS

The TGFS Tech­no­lo­gie­grün­der­fonds Sach­sen provi­des tech­no­logy-orien­ted foun­ders with equity capi­tal for the seed and start-up phase. The fund was first laun­ched in 2008 by the Free State of Saxony (inclu­ding ERDF funding) and Saxon finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons and has since supported over 100 start-ups. In 2023, the TGFS laun­ched its third gene­ra­tion of funds. The target compa­nies of the TGFS are young, inno­va­tive, tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies that belong to the ICT, semi­con­duc­tor and micro­sys­tems tech­no­logy, medi­cal tech­no­logy, life science, envi­ron­men­tal and energy tech­no­logy, and new media sectors and have their head­quar­ters or opera­ting faci­li­ties in Saxony. www.tgfs.de

About bm|t

bm|t betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment thürin­gen gmbh, based in Erfurt, is the first address for venture capi­tal and private equity finan­cing in Thurin­gia. bm|t curr­ently mana­ges eleven funds with a total volume of more than 440 million euros and invests in inno­va­tive compa­nies in almost all sectors and in all phases of corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment — from the start-up and growth phase to corpo­rate succes­sion and buyouts. www.bm‑t.com

About rooom

rooom AG is an IT company from Jena, which was foun­ded in 2016. They offer web-based solu­ti­ons for the crea­tion, manage­ment and play­out of immersive 3D content. The plat­form can be used for a wide range of appli­ca­ti­ons and works with augmen­ted reality, virtual reality and gene­ra­tive AI. In recent years, the company has been awarded various inno­va­tion prizes such as the German Inno­va­tion Award, the Euro­pean Meta­verse Award and the Inno­va­tion and Excel­lence Award. rooom employs around 100 people and its most important custo­mers include Deut­sche Tele­kom, BMW, Zeiss, porta and Bosch. In addi­tion, the plat­form reaches over six million users in 120 count­ries. www.rooom.com/de

About Bryan, Garnier & Co

Bryan, Garnier & Co, foun­ded in 1996 in Paris and London, is an invest­ment bank focu­sed on Euro­pean growth compa­nies with over 200 employees in six offices in Europe (London, Paris, Munich, Stock­holm, Oslo, Amster­dam) and the US (New York). As an inde­pen­dent, full-service invest­ment bank, Bryan, Garnier & Co provi­des compre­hen­sive finan­cing advice and support along the complete life­cy­cle of its clients — from initial rounds of finan­cing to a poten­tial sale or IPO with subse­quent follow-on finan­cing. On average, the bank accom­pa­nies a good 70 tran­sac­tions per year.

The range of services includes equity analy­sis, equity sales and trading, private and public capi­tal raising, and M&A advi­sory for growth compa­nies and their inves­tors. The focus is on the growth sectors of tech­no­logy, health­care and sustaina­bi­lity. Bryan, Garnier & Co is a regis­tered broker and licen­sed with the AMF and FCA in Europe and FINRA in the US. www.bryangarnier.com

News

Frank­furt — Mitsu­bi­shi HiTec Paper Europe GmbH (MPE) has sold MPE Flens­burg GmbH (MPEF). The buyers are various funds advi­sed by Quan­tum Capi­tal Part­ners. A multi­di­sci­pli­nary and multi-site Deloitte team led by Corporate/M&A Part­ner Andreas Jent­gens and Coun­sel Marc Oliver Stock advi­sed Mitsu­bi­shi HiTec Paper Europe GmbH (MPE) on the sale of MPE Flens­burg GmbH (MPEF). The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the transaction.

MPE is a wholly owned subsi­diary of Mitsu­bi­shi Paper Mills (MPM), a company that not only manu­fac­tures and deve­lops prin­ting paper, prin­ting plate mate­ri­als and prin­ting systems for offset and other prin­ting proces­ses, but also supplies media for almost all recor­ding formats, such as pres­sure-sensi­tive, ther­mal, magne­tic, elec­tro­gra­phic, silver halide photo paper and inkjet paper. In addi­tion, MPM is expan­ding its opera­ting busi­ness to include func­tional mate­ri­als such as highly func­tional filters and is incre­asingly focu­sing on rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment in new busi­ness areas.
MPEF is active in the produc­tion of specialty papers with a focus on ther­mal and barrier papers and opera­tes one paper machine and two coating lines with a total capa­city of 35,000 tons per year. The Flens­burg mill has more than 300 years of company history and is known for its tech­no­lo­gi­cal know-how, product speci­fi­ca­ti­ons and quality paper used for various appli­ca­ti­ons such as event tickets, lottery tickets, trans­por­ta­tion, food stamps, cash regis­ter receipts, pack­a­ging and more.

Deloitte provi­ded compre­hen­sive support to MPE in the sale. Thanks to the inter­di­sci­pli­nary coope­ra­tion of Deloitte Legal’s legal advi­sors with the experts from Deloitte’s Corpo­rate Finance Advi­sory Team, led by Clau­dius Thiell, follo­wing the “one-stop-shop” approach, the tran­sac­tion was comple­ted effi­ci­ently and successfully. With this tran­sac­tion, the Deloitte team once again demons­tra­ted its finan­cial lead advi­sory and legal & SPA advi­sory capa­bi­li­ties and its exper­tise in execu­ting cross-border M&A transactions.

Advi­sor Mitsu­bi­shi HiTech Paper Europe GmbH: Deloitte Legal Germany
Andreas Jent­gens, photo (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A; © Deloitte), Marc Oliver Stock (Coun­sel, Lead, Corporate/M&A), Jana Hupfer (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A), Linda Korn (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Nicola Werry (Part­ner, Data Protec­tion), Juliane Franze (Senior Asso­ciate, Data Protec­tion), Marco Engel­mann (Coun­sel, Real Estate), Susan Lange (Senior Asso­ciate, Real Estate), Rebecca Gulden (Asso­ciate, Real Estate), Claus Wilker (Coun­sel, Employ­ment), Katha­rina Zicker­mann (Coun­sel, Antitrust).

About Deloitte Legal and Deloitte

Deloitte Legal refers to the legal advice prac­ti­ces of the member compa­nies of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limi­ted, its affi­lia­tes or affi­lia­tes that provide legal services.
Deloitte provi­des indus­try-leading audit and assu­rance, tax, consul­ting, finan­cial advi­sory and risk advi­sory services to nearly 90% of Fortune Global 500® compa­nies and thou­sands of private compa­nies. Legal services in Germany are provi­ded by Deloitte Legal. Our people deli­ver measura­ble, long-term results that help build public confi­dence in the capi­tal markets, help our custo­mers trans­form and grow, and lead the way to a stron­ger economy, a more equi­ta­ble society, and a sustainable world. Deloitte builds on more than 175 years of history and opera­tes in more than 150 count­ries. Learn more about how Deloitte’s more than 415,000 employees live the mission state­ment “making an impact that matters” every day: www.deloitte.com/de

News

Stock­holm — Main Capi­tal Part­ners (“Main”) is plea­sed to announce the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in Unik System Design (“Unik”). Unik is a leading soft­ware provi­der with deep indus­try and subject matter exper­tise in housing and property manage­ment and legal admi­nis­tra­tion. Main will act as a stra­te­gic part­ner to the manage­ment team, support­ing Unik’s jour­ney to become a leading pure-play soft­ware-as-a-service (“SaaS”) provi­der focu­sed on an inter­na­tio­nal buy and build strategy.

Foun­ded in 1985, Unik is an inno­va­tive Danish provi­der of indus­try-speci­fic soft­ware with +240 employees and consul­tants in Vejle, Aalborg, Copen­ha­gen and Warsaw. With nearly four deca­des of expe­ri­ence, the company has posi­tio­ned itself with the most widely used soft­ware solu­ti­ons on the market, serving more than 900 custo­mers, from large private and public housing asso­cia­ti­ons to law firms and corpo­rate legal depart­ments throug­hout Denmark.

Unik is in the process of reinven­ting itself, not only to deli­ver higher levels of effi­ci­ency, auto­ma­tion and digi­tiza­tion to its ever­y­day users, but also to push the boun­da­ries of what happens when digi­tal inno­va­tion meets deep indus­try know­ledge. Over the next few years, the two new SaaS products HabiCen for housing and property manage­ment and Justi­Case for legal manage­ment will gradu­ally replace the current products Unik Bolig and Unik Advosys.

Going forward, Main Capi­tal Part­ners will actively support Unik in main­tai­ning its strong growth momen­tum by further expan­ding its product offe­ring to exis­ting custo­mers. In addi­tion to orga­nic growth initia­ti­ves, stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons will be an important pillar of the stra­tegy to comple­ment the inno­va­tive product port­fo­lio and streng­then the market posi­tion both in Denmark and abroad.

Jens Find, CEO of Unik System Design, comm­ents, “In our dialo­gue with Main, we reco­gni­zed the poten­tial that this part­ner­ship could bring. After 38 years as CEO and prin­ci­pal owner, I clearly feel that this is the right decis­ion for Unik, our custo­mers and our employees. We will conti­nue with the current manage­ment and the current owners will retain a signi­fi­cant 40% stake. For us, it’s more of a part­ner­ship than a sale.”

Tonni Rasmus­sen, CTO of Unik System Design, comm­ents, “Our custo­mers rely on our inno­va­tion and indus­try exper­tise to set the stan­dard for how soft­ware can auto­mate their busi­ness proces­ses. The deve­lo­p­ment of two ground­brea­king SaaS products, HabiCen and Justi­Case, is part of Unik’s next major inno­va­tion, with a focus on impro­ved secu­rity and opera­tio­nal efficiency.”

Wessel Ploeg­ma­kers (photo © Main­Ca­pi­tal), Part­ner at Main Capi­tal Part­ners, summa­ri­zes: “Unik has been on our radar for a long time as one of the leading Danish soft­ware provi­ders, and we are plea­sed to have the oppor­tu­nity to support the company on its jour­ney to become a leading inter­na­tio­nal SaaS provi­der. We are confi­dent that our targe­ted orga­nic growth initia­ti­ves, combi­ned with a selec­tive buy-and-build stra­tegy, will create an enhan­ced value propo­si­tion for exis­ting and new customers.”

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading soft­ware inves­tor in the Bene­lux, the DACH region, the Nordic count­ries and the United States. Main has over 20 years of expe­ri­ence in streng­thening soft­ware compa­nies and works closely with the manage­ment teams in its port­fo­lio as a stra­te­gic part­ner to achieve sustainable growth and larger, outstan­ding soft­ware groups. A leading soft­ware inves­tor mana­ging private equity funds in Northwest Europe and North America, Main employs 60 people and has offices in The Hague, Stock­holm, Düssel­dorf, Antwerp and a branch office in Boston. Main mana­ges assets of over €2.2 billion and curr­ently has an active port­fo­lio of over 40 soft­ware companies.

News

Cologne/ Berlin — Food tech company Circus has acqui­red Berlin-based cooking robot startup Aitme. Through the acqui­si­tion, Circus secu­res access to cutting-edge tech­no­logy in kitchen robo­tics. With the acqui­si­tion, Circus also expands its team with expe­ri­en­ced experts in robo­tics and inte­gra­tes the sophisti­ca­ted cooking robots into its infra­struc­ture. The robots are expec­ted to operate cost-effec­tively with mini­mal labor and streng­then the level of auto­ma­tion in Circus’ micro-kitchens.

Former Foodora marke­ting chief Julian Stoß and Foodora CEO Emanuel Pallua have co-foun­ded Aimte. The robo­tics startup is funded with tens of milli­ons of dollars from big-name inves­tors and has deve­lo­ped a cooking robot to market since its foun­ding in 2019.

About Circus
Circus has crea­ted tech­no­logy-driven micro-kitchen hubs that intel­li­gently combine auto­ma­tion and digi­tiza­tion. The recipes for Circus’ wide culinary selec­tion are deve­lo­ped by Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence — allo­wing for a large number of perso­na­li­zed dishes at low produc­tion costs and effi­ci­ent use of resour­ces. Since laun­ching in summer 2022, Circus has alre­ady rolled out its service in Hamburg, Colo­gne, Berlin and Duis­burg and raised a total of €18 million from investors.

Imme­dia­tely prior to the Aitme acqui­si­tion, a YPOG team led by Dr. Johan­nes Janning also advi­sed Circus on a €5.5 million finan­cing round led by venture capi­ta­lists Black­Mars Capi­tal and 2bx.

Consul­tant Circus: YPOG

Dr. Johan­nes Janning (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Cologne
Nina Ahlert (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Asso­ciate, Cologne
Matthias Kres­ser (Tran­sac­tion), Part­ner, Berlin/Hamburg
Dr. Malte Berg­mann (Tax) Part­ner, Hamburg
Lukas Schmitt (Tax), Asso­ciate, Hamburg
Dr. Matthias Schatz (Corpo­rate), Part­ner, Cologne
Jannis Fischer (Corpo­rate), Asso­ciate, Cologne
Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Berlin
Dr. Chris­toph Cordes (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Asso­ciate, Berlin

 

 

News

Munich — Funds advi­sed by DPE Deut­sche Private Equity Manage­ment III GmbH (“DPE”) have sold their stake in SERCOO Group, one of the leading German provi­ders of services for opera­tors of biogas plants and combi­ned heat and power plants and the corre­spon­ding engine tech­no­logy. The buyer was the tech­ni­cal buil­ding equip­ment and energy service provi­der Elevion Group, which will become a leading service provi­der for biogas plants, decen­tra­li­zed coge­nera­tion and engine conver­sion as a result of the acquisition.

The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the finan­cial details of the tran­sac­tion. POELLATH advi­sed DPE on tax law in the context of the tran­sac­tion under the leader­ship of Dr. Michael Best.

Foun­ded in 2014 and based in Lingen (Ems), Lower Saxony, SERCOO Group is one of Germany’s leading service provi­ders in the Energy and Indus­trial Services busi­ness area, cove­ring the entire value chain of biogas plants, CHP units and engi­nes, as well as rota­ting equip­ment. In 2014, DPE acqui­red a stake in the then BU Bücker & Essing GmbH as part of a buy-and-build stra­tegy with the aim of crea­ting a leading German tech­ni­cal service provi­der in the context of the energy tran­si­tion. Within the past 9 years, eight compa­nies have been successfully acqui­red and inte­gra­ted. As a result, the Group has signi­fi­cantly increased the breadth of its product range and the depth of its value chain. Today, SERCOO Group is one of the leading one-stop-shop provi­ders in this field and thus contri­bu­tes signi­fi­cantly to the expan­sion of an inde­pen­dent and decen­tra­li­zed energy supply as well as to the sustainable reduc­tion of CO2 emissions.

Mark Sude­row (photo © DPE), Part­ner at DPE, added: “DPE belie­ves in inves­t­ing in busi­ness models that make a posi­tive contri­bu­tion to society. That is why we have been inves­t­ing in various compa­nies in the “Rene­wa­ble Ener­gies” sector since 2008.

DPE is an inde­pen­dent German invest­ment company and is one of the largest growth capi­tal provi­ders in Germany. DPE invests in medium-sized compa­nies in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land and focu­ses on indus­tries with posi­tive long-term deve­lo­p­ment pros­pects. DPE was foun­ded in 2007 and has since inves­ted in 40 compa­nies that have comple­ted more than 100 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons and now employ more than 10,000 people. DPE has total assets under manage­ment of appro­xi­m­ately 3 billion euros.

Consul­tant DPE: 

PwC (M&A), Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek (Legal), Ebner Stolz (Finan­cial), Pöllath (Struc­ture) and Crescendo Part­ners (Manage­ment Coaching) advised.

News

Wall­dorf — The inves­tor group of LeanIX has sold the company to the Wall­dorf-based soft­ware group SAP. Sellers include inves­tors such as Insight Part­ners, DTCP, Capna­mic Ventures, Iris Capi­tal, Dawn Capi­tal and Gold­man Sachs. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the fourth quar­ter of 2023, subject to custo­mary closing condi­ti­ons and regu­la­tory appr­ovals. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the terms of the transaction.

LeanIX was foun­ded in 2012 by Jörg Beyer and André Christ in Bonn. The start-up is a global leader in enter­prise archi­tec­ture manage­ment (EAM) and offers a cloud plat­form that enables custo­mers to gain visi­bi­lity into their IT systems, which is also a prere­qui­site for moder­ni­zing their own infor­ma­tion technology.

With the plan­ned acqui­si­tion, SAP aims to expand its product port­fo­lio and help custo­mers more easily manage chan­ges in the busi­ness envi­ron­ment and perma­nently improve busi­ness proces­ses through LeanIX’s Saas offe­ring. In addi­tion, LeanIX recently laun­ched an AI wizard to help compa­nies leverage the poten­tial of gene­ra­tive AI to manage IT landscapes.

Advi­sors to SAP: Allen & Overy
Led by part­ner Dr. Roman A. Kasten (Corporate/Private Equity, Frank­furt) and senior asso­ciate Linda Mayer (Corporate/M&A, Munich); the team also included part­ner Dr. Heike Weber (Tax Law, Frank­furt) as well as part­ner Dr. Börries Ahrens (Anti­trust Law, Hamburg), senior asso­cia­tes Catha­rina Glugla (Data Protec­tion), Anna Kräling (IP/IT, both Düssel­dorf), Merle Herr­mann (Labor Law, Hamburg) and asso­ciate Vero­nika Gaile (Corporate/M&A, Frankfurt).

Also advi­sing were part­ner Dr. Alex­an­der Veith (Corporate/M&A, Munich), coun­sel Dr. René Galle (Anti­trust, Hamburg), Dr. Stephan Bühner (FDI), Dr. Manuel Köchel (Tax, both Frank­furt), Henri­ette Hermann, (Anti­trust, Hamburg), Katha­rina Jüne­mann (IP/IT), Pascal Yves Schroe­der (Data Protec­tion, both Düssel­dorf), Mert Guel­mez (Anti­trust, Hamburg), Hendrik Slab­sche (Corporate/Private Equity, Frank­furt), the Tran­sac­tion Support Lawyer Corvin Kiesel­horst (Corporate/M&A, Munich) and Laura Thiel (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) as well as the Tran­sac­tion Offi­cers Lotte Dillen (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and Sophia Merkl (Corporate/M&A, Munich).

In addi­tion, Allen & Overy lawy­ers from the USA, UK, France, Nether­lands, Turkey, Italy, Poland, Spain, Luxem­bourg, Austra­lia, Belgium and Hungary advised.

Rojs, Peljhan, Preles­nik & Part­ners, Slove­nia, acted as part­ner law firm.

Advi­sor Dawn Capi­tal: YPOG
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Tobias Lovett (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin Farina Weber (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin

About Dawn Capital

Dawn Capi­tal is Europe’s largest specia­li­zed B2B soft­ware inves­tor. The company part­ners with inno­va­tive compa­nies that can become cate­gory-defi­ning global titans through excep­tio­nal teams, products and busi­ness models. Dawn is an early-stage inves­tor that supports Series A and B compa­nies and funds the best-performing compa­nies through growth rounds to exit. In B2B soft­ware, Dawn focu­ses on four areas: Data and Analy­tics, Secu­rity, Fintech, and the Future of Work. Previous invest­ments have included the likes of Mime­cast and iZettle, while current invest­ments include some of Europe’s leading soft­ware compa­nies such as Colli­bra, Show­pad, Data­iku, Templafy, Quan­texa, Garri­son and Tink.

 

News

Hamm/ Odense (Denmark) — Micro Matic prevai­led in a bidding process against seve­ral compe­ti­tors and acqui­res DISPTEK from the listed Dutch Aalberts Group, which is dispo­sing of the invest­ment for stra­te­gic reasons to opti­mize its own group struc­ture. A Heuking team led by part­ners Dr. Martin Imhof and Dr. Hermann Ali Hinde­rer, LL.M. provi­ded legal advice to Micro Matic on the acqui­si­tion of DISPTEK Group.

Micro Matic is the global market leader in dispen­sing solu­ti­ons for the beverage indus­try. Foun­ded in 1953, the tradi­tio­nal company is head­quar­te­red in Odense, Denmark. Today, 70 years later, Micro Matic employs around 1350 people world­wide and is repre­sen­ted by nine produc­tion sites, distri­bu­tion warehou­ses and compe­tence centers in 14 count­ries and on all conti­nents. In fiscal year 2022/2023, Micro Matic gene­ra­ted sales of €270 million with custo­mers of all sizes, from start­ups to major global beverage companies.

The DISPTEK Group compri­ses in parti­cu­lar the four compa­nies D.S.I. Geträn­ke­ar­ma­tu­ren GmbH, Taprite Inc., Disp­tek UK Ltd. and Vin Service S.r.l., which jointly pool their many years of exper­tise in the field of inno­va­tive and custo­mi­zed dispen­sing solu­ti­ons with loca­ti­ons in Germany, Italy, England and the USA. DISPTEK produ­ces and supplies, among other things, tops, keg connec­tions, pres­sure regu­la­tors, dispen­sing guns, taps, dispen­sing systems and refri­ge­ra­tion machi­nes for the beverage indus­try. The end markets include in parti­cu­lar brewe­ries, soda produ­cers, keg manu­fac­tu­r­ers, and the food service industry.

With the acqui­si­tion of the DISPTEK Group, Micro Matic is further expan­ding its global posi­tion as a leading supplier of dispen­sing systems while streng­thening its exper­tise in inno­va­tive digi­tal solutions.

Advi­sor Micro Matic: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek

Dr. Martin Imhof (Lead Part­ner), Düssel­dorf, Dr. Hermann Ali Hinde­rer, LL.M. (Univer­sity of San Diego), Stutt­gart, Sebas­tian Poll­meier, Düssel­dorf, Natha­lie Hemmer­ling (all Corporate/M&A), Hamburg;
Dr. Chris­tiane Vikto­ria Göb-Krumme (Commer­cial Law/M&A), Düsseldorf,
Fabian G. Gaffron, Simon Pommer, LL.M. (both tax law), both Hamburg,
Beatrice Stange, LL.M. (Kings’s College London) (merger control), Astrid Lued­tke (IP/IT), Michael Below (public law/environmental law), Sandra Janberg (public law), all Düsseldorf,
Michael Kreis­ler, LL.M. (Foreign Trade and Payments Law), Berlin,
Dr. Chris­toph Gerhard (Labor Law), Frank­furt am Main,
Fabian Schmitz (Real Estate Law), Düsseldorf,
Dr. Till­mann Peter Rübben, LL.M. (Insu­rance Law), Cologne,
Chris­tina Tsiti­ri­dis (Corpo­rate Finance), Düsseldorf

Kromann Reumert:
Bent Kemplar, Copen­ha­gen, Kath­rine Hyld­gaard Gamst, Copenhagen

Gianni & Origoni:
Kath­leen Lemmens, Milan, Riccardo Fogliano, Milan

Burr & Forman:
Ches­ter J. Hosch, Atlanta

News

Aachen — Yester­day, TVF Manage­ment GmbH (TVFM) presen­ted the Tech­Vi­sion Fonds II (TVF II) at the Enter­prise Inte­gra­tion Center on the RWTH Aachen Campus. The new edition of the startup fund initi­ally compri­ses a volume of 42 million euros and is to be expan­ded over the next six to twelve months. It provi­des tech­no­logy-orien­ted start­ups with invest­ments of up to €6 million each in the Pre-Seed, Seed and Series A phases. In addi­tion to the Rhine­land, the target region for inves­tors is now the entire Eure­gio Meuse-Rhine (inclu­ding Hasselt, Maas­tricht, Eupen and Liège).

“Even though we are curr­ently expe­ri­en­cing a some­what quie­ter startup phase, the entire Rhine­land has grown and become stron­ger as a startup ecosys­tem. As soon as the econo­mic para­me­ters brigh­ten up, it will become very dyna­mic,” said Dr. Ansgar Schlei­cher, Mana­ging Part­ner of TVF Manage­ment GmbH, at the launch event for the new fund yester­day. “Univer­si­ties, rese­arch insti­tu­tes and nume­rous cross-border initia­ti­ves in the Rhine­land and the Eure­gio create an ecosys­tem extre­mely rich in poten­tial for startups.”

The group of inves­tors in TVF ll compri­ses the two anchor inves­tors NRW.BANK and Spar­kasse Aachen as well as other savings banks from the west of North Rhine-West­pha­lia and nume­rous private inves­tors. In the process, many new entre­pre­neurs and compa­nies from diffe­rent indus­tries (curr­ently 17) joined as investors.

Over 50 start­ups in the invest­ment balance

This is TVF’s management’s fourth startup fund since 2007, finan­cing inno­va­tive compa­nies in the life scien­ces, soft­ware, deep and medtech, and new mate­ri­als sectors. With incre­asing fund volu­mes and a steadily growing circle of fund inves­tors, TVF not only provi­des the Rhine­land start-up scene with capi­tal, but also with stra­te­gic know­ledge and a far-reaching network. “To date, we have helped more than 50 start­ups deve­lop their tech­no­logy and bring it to market,” says Bern­hard Kugel, also a mana­ging part­ner at TVFM. “We empha­size long-term support and the possi­bi­lity of further rounds of finan­cing, which we usually imple­ment with co-inves­tors.” The funds’ port­fo­lio compa­nies include well-known upstarts such as Hemo­vent, Sile­xica and Taxy.io.

Networ­king the Euro­pean startup scene

TVF ll can also provide start-up teams from neigh­bor­ing Dutch and Belgian regi­ons with capi­tal and know-how. “We want to conti­nue our successful course and also network start­ups across count­ries with busi­ness part­ners and addi­tio­nal inves­tors,” Schlei­cher said. “This is how we streng­then and drive tech­no­lo­gi­cal inno­va­tion at the Euro­pean level.”

About TVF Management

The Tech­Vi­sion Fund (TVF) is the leading early-stage VC fund from the Rhineland/NRW region focu­sing on tech­no­logy start­ups in the pre-seed to Series A phases. TVF focu­ses on outstan­ding teams from the region inclu­ding. the borde­ring Nether­lands and Belgium. TVF Manage­ment has expe­ri­ence from four gene­ra­ti­ons of funds and curr­ently has over €100 million in assets under manage­ment. The fund is backed by potent inves­tors such as NRW.BANK, seven savings banks from western NRW, and more than 15 successful entrepreneurs.
TVF supports foun­ding teams with proxi­mity, network and exper­tise, paving the way for them to become the next inter­na­tio­nal indus­try leader. Through the S‑UBG Group network, TVF provi­des unique access to over 150 successful compa­nies in various indus­tries, and estab­lishes cont­acts between start­ups and their first custo­mers, part­ners and advi­sors. www.techvision-fonds.de

News

Washing­ton, DC — Subway is one of the most well-known fast food chains in the world. Subway has been selling its sand­wi­ches since 1965. And since then, the company has also been owned by the foun­ding fami­lies of Fred DeLuca and Peter Buck. That is about to change, accor­ding to the US news­pa­per Wall Street Jour­nal.

Accor­ding to the news­pa­per report, the finan­cial inves­tor Roark Capi­tal is about to take over the sand­wich chain. The owner of fast-food chains Arby’s and Buffalo Wild Wings will put about $9.6 billion on the table for Subway, the WSJ repor­ted, citing people fami­liar with the matter. A deal could be fina­li­zed in the near future, he said.

Subway had said in Febru­ary that the chain was looking into a sale. The sand­wich chain is hoping for a price well in excess of nine billion dollars in a sale. Subway has been owned by the foun­ding fami­lies since its incep­tion in 1965.

Subway with almost 700 stores in Germany

Subway has more than 37,000 stores in over 100 count­ries, with nearly 700 of the sand­wich chain’s stores in Germany alone. This makes it one of the fast-food chains with the most bran­ches in the world, but it is behind the giant McDonald’s. Howe­ver, the chain’s sales have decli­ned in recent years. Nevert­hel­ess, Subway had recently expres­sed a plan to build even more stores internationally.

News

Colo­gne — The EIC Fund invests in the tech start-up STABL Energy GmbH. The invest­ment was made as an equity invest­ment in a Series A finan­cing round under the Hori­zon Europe program. Oppen­hoff has again compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed the EIC Fund on its invest­ments in Germany.

The EIC Fund is the special fund of the Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Coun­cil and thus the central invest­ment vehicle of the Euro­pean Commis­sion. It serves to imple­ment the Euro­pean Commission’s EIC Acce­le­ra­tor program, which supports inno­va­tive and sustainable Euro­pean growth compa­nies. The EIC (Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Coun­cil) was estab­lished under the pilot project “Hori­zon 2020 — the Frame­work Programme for Rese­arch and Inno­va­tion” and successfully contin­ued in 2021 with the launch of the “Hori­zon Europe Programme”. With a dura­tion from 2021 to 2027 and a total budget of up to €95.5 billion, it is one of the largest funding programs for rese­arch and inno­va­tion world­wide. In 2022, the EIC Fund was the largest Euro­pean deept­ech VC fund with 71 invest­ments. Oppen­hoff has advi­sed the EIC Fund on its Germany invest­ments since 2021.

STABL Energy GmbH deve­lops energy storage systems from discarded vehicle batte­ries. The aim is to increase the use of rene­wa­ble ener­gies with the help of energy storage systems and at the same time to extend the life cycle of car batte­ries. The finan­cing round has a total volume of up to EUR 15 million.

Advi­sor EIC Fund: Oppenhoff

The Oppen­hoff team, led by Dr. Peter Etzbach (photo © Oppen­hoff), included Dr. Jonas Weise (both Corpo­rate /M&A), Georg Leche­ler, Dr. Patric Mau (both IP), Dr. Johan­nes Kaes­bach (Labor Law); Chris­tian Saßen­bach and Dr. Axel Grätz (both IT&C).

About Oppen­hoff

Oppen­hoff regu­larly advi­ses compa­nies in the venture capi­tal envi­ron­ment, most recently, for exam­ple, the EIC Fund on its invest­ment in biotech start-up CO2BioClean, on its invest­ment in tech start-up enote, on its invest­ment in tech start-up Nyris as well as on nume­rous other invest­ments in German start-ups, SellerX on its acqui­si­tion of KW-Commerce, Beyond­Build on its stra­te­gic merger of spaceOS and Equiem Holdings.
The full-service law firm Oppen­hoff finds indus­try-speci­fic solu­ti­ons for groups, large owner-mana­ged compa­nies and finan­cial inves­tors. More than 100 attor­neys advise on all major areas of busi­ness and tax law.

 

News

Switz­er­land — Rolex, by far the largest and most important Swiss watch brand, acqui­res Buch­erer, by far the largest and most important Swiss Rolex dealer. This is the message Buch­erer sent out a few days ago to the brands the Lucerne-based company sells in its own stores. This was announ­ced by the Swiss “Handels­zei­tung”.

Buch­erer patron Jörg Buch­erer has no descen­dants and ther­e­fore sought a viable, syner­gi­stic solu­tion for his empire. Accor­ding to Buch­erer, the take­over still has to be appro­ved by the rele­vant compe­ti­tion autho­ri­ties. This should be a mere forma­lity, as Buch­erer and Rolex operate in diffe­rent markets — retail and watch­ma­king. The two tradi­tio­nal houses have been working closely toge­ther since 1924, and Buch­erer sells Swiss luxury watches and offers the offi­cial repair service in over 100 specia­list stores worldwide.

The company produ­ces about one million watches a year, accor­ding to Morgan Stan­ley esti­ma­tes, gene­ra­ting sales of more than 10 billion Swiss francs. By compa­ri­son, the second and third largest brands in terms of sales, Cartier (watches) and Omega, account for less than 3 billion Swiss francs. No other luxury watch brand produ­ces anywhere near as many watches as Rolex.

News

Monheim am Rhein/ Frank­furt a. Main — The Natsana Group, a supplier of high-quality nutri­tio­nal supple­ments, has raised debt capi­tal to finance its growth stra­tegy. Network Corpo­rate Finance exclu­si­vely advi­sed the share­hol­ders and manage­ment of Natsana Group in the struc­tu­ring and nego­tia­tion of the growth finan­cing. — The debt finan­cing volume is EUR 50 million and is prima­rily used for product expan­sion and internationalization.

About Natsana

Natsana Group was foun­ded in 2019 by Marcus Thiel­king, Florian Bell, Alex­an­der Oeing and brings toge­ther the most successful brands of premium nutri­tio­nal supple­ments on Amazon in Germany. In addi­tion to Amazon, the products of the three brands are also sold via the company’s own web store and in leading drugs­to­res in Germany and Austria. — As inves­tors, they had brought on board former racing drivers Jörg Schmidt-Staade and Peter Sche­ufen as well as the Schweyer family of inves­tors (Flip­ca­pi­tal).

In 2022, a stra­te­gic coope­ra­tion agree­ment was signed with Bayer, under which Bayer acqui­red a 30 percent stake in Natsana with the aim of better serving the growing demand for high-quality nutri­tio­nal supple­ments. This coope­ra­tion was a stra­te­gic step to deve­lop a large network with world­wide part­ners for the 3 brands Natu­ral Elements, Nature Love and Feel Natu­ral. Toge­ther we will work relia­bly on the best natu­ral products and offers for our custo­mers. In a strong team that shares the same good ideas and values. This is parti­cu­larly important in an envi­ron­ment where factors such as Corona, growing infla­tion and supply bott­len­ecks are making it incre­asingly diffi­cult to main­tain consis­t­ently high quality and avai­la­bi­lity in a stable manner.

About Network Corpo­rate Finance (ncf)

Network Corpo­rate Finance is an inde­pen­dent, owner-mana­ged advi­sory firm focu­sed on advi­sing on corpo­rate sales and acqui­si­ti­ons (mergers & acqui­si­ti­ons), capi­tal markets tran­sac­tions, and equity and debt finan­cings. Our core compe­ten­cies lie in the struc­tu­ring and execu­tion of complex corpo­rate tran­sac­tions — natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal — such as company sales to stra­te­gic inves­tors and finan­cial inves­tors, IPOs or struc­tu­red corpo­rate finan­cing. We advise estab­lished entre­pre­neurs, corpo­ra­ti­ons, finan­cial inves­tors as well as young start-ups. In teams, we deve­lop indi­vi­dual solu­ti­ons tail­o­red to the needs of our clients. We cover all areas of stra­te­gic corpo­rate financing.

 

News

Aachen — S‑UBG AG, the region’s leading invest­ment company for small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses, toge­ther with Mana­ging Direc­tor Martin Petzl, acqui­res 100 percent of the shares in the LD DIDACTIC (LD) group of compa­nies from the pan-Euro­pean alter­na­tive invest­ment group AURELIUS as part of a manage­ment buy-out (MBO). LD offers inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons and teaching tools for digi­tal teaching in science and technology.

The LD DIDACTIC Group, based in Hürth near Colo­gne, was foun­ded in 1850 by Ernst Leybold and acqui­red by AURELIUS in 2009. It deve­lops, produ­ces and sells teaching systems and educa­tio­nal tech­no­logy (EdTech) for science and tech­no­logy teaching. Under the brands ELWE, Feed­back and LEYBOLD, the group serves schools, voca­tio­nal schools and univer­si­ties. These include RWTH Aachen Univer­sity, the city of Colo­gne, Hürth Compre­hen­sive School and Witt­gen­stein Voca­tio­nal College in Bad Berleburg.

The Group sells its products and solu­ti­ons in Germany as well as through a dealer network and selec­ted part­ners in other Euro­pean and non-Euro­pean count­ries. It employs appro­xi­m­ately 160 people and has 5 loca­ti­ons in Germany, England and Hungary.

Expan­sion of sales activities

“We have successfully emer­ged from the pande­mic and are seeing an over­all increase in demand for products for digi­ti­zed teaching,” says Martin Petzl, who has led the company since 2020 and spear­hea­ded the MBO. “I am plea­sed to have found a relia­ble regio­nal part­ner in S‑UBG, which supports us in further expan­ding our port­fo­lio and our sales and placing new products on the market. In the area of tech­no­logy, our focus is on auto­mo­tive and elec­tri­cal engi­nee­ring, energy tran­si­tion as well as energy trans­mis­sion and SMART GRID, respec­tively. In the area of natu­ral scien­ces, we are focu­sing on the further virtua­liza­tion and digi­tiza­tion of the expe­ri­ment port­fo­lio as well as on sustaina­bi­lity topics such as climate change.”

“LD is making a valuable contri­bu­tion to society world­wide with nume­rous solu­ti­ons for modern, digi­tal educa­tion,” says Dr. Ansgar Schlei­cher (photo), CEO of S‑UBG. “We are convin­ced that Martin Petzl and his team will conti­nue to drive LD’s success in the years to come.”

Promi­sing market development

The market for science expe­ri­men­ta­tion equip­ment grew by about 16 percent from 2020 to 2022 to reach 2.2 billion euros. Average growth of around 7 percent per year is expec­ted up to 2027. Experts expect above-average growth in the emer­ging markets in Africa and Asia in parti­cu­lar. The incre­asing digi­tiza­tion of teaching and expe­ri­men­ta­tion is seen as a driver. Accor­ding to fore­casts, the share of digi­tal science expe­ri­ment solu­ti­ons is expec­ted to increase by 150 percent by 2027.

About the S‑UBG Group

For more than 35 years, the S‑UBG Group, Aachen, has been the leading part­ner in provi­ding equity capi­tal for estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies (S‑UBG AG) and young, tech­no­logy-orien­ted start-ups (Tech­Vi­sion Fonds) in the econo­mic regi­ons of Aachen, Krefeld and Mönchengladbach.
S‑UBG AG invests in growth sectors; high quality of corpo­rate manage­ment is a key invest­ment criter­ion for the invest­ment company. She deve­lops invest­ment models for medium-sized compa­nies, both in open and silent form, and she looks back on many years of expe­ri­ence in the deve­lo­p­ment of expan­sion finan­cing models, share­hol­der chan­ges as well as succes­sion arran­ge­ments (MBO/MBI) and exclu­si­vely enters into mino­rity shareholdings.

The S‑UBG Group curr­ently holds stakes in just under 40 compa­nies in the region, giving it a leading posi­tion in the Spar­kas­sen-Finanz­gruppe. Further infor­ma­tion: www.s‑ubg.de; www.techvision-fonds.de

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