ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Milan/London/Paris/Munich — Ambi­enta SGR SpA (“Ambi­enta”), one of Europe’s largest and leading asset mana­gers focu­sed on envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity, is acqui­ring a majo­rity stake in Offi­cine Macca­ferri S.p.A. (“Macca­ferri” or “the Group”) from current share­hol­ders Carlyle Global Credit, Stellex Capi­tal Manage­ment and Man GLG. Toge­ther with the senior manage­ment team, Ambi­enta holds a majo­rity stake in the company. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to be comple­ted in the second quar­ter of 2024.

Offi­cine Macca­ferri, foun­ded in 1879 and based in Bolo­gna, Italy, is a provi­der of envi­ron­men­tal engi­nee­ring solu­ti­ons and a major player in the design and deve­lo­p­ment of solu­ti­ons in the fields of envi­ron­men­tal, civil and geotech­ni­cal engi­nee­ring. Offi­cine Macca­ferri is active in more than 130 count­ries, with produc­tion sites on four conti­nents and around 3,000 employees who realize over 10,000 projects every year. With a turno­ver of over 600 million euros, the company stands for tech­ni­cal excel­lence, relia­bi­lity and ecolo­gi­cal sustaina­bi­lity. Macca­ferri products repre­sent a low-CO2 and envi­ron­men­tally friendly alter­na­tive in the field of buil­ding mate­ri­als. With a focus on envi­ron­men­tally friendly solu­ti­ons, the Group is aiming for growth above the market average. This acqui­si­tion ther­e­fore contri­bu­tes to both resource effi­ci­ency and envi­ron­men­tal protec­tion as part of Ambienta’s envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment (EIA).

The global infra­struc­ture market has a volume of 12 tril­lion euros and is respon­si­ble for five percent of global CO2 emis­si­ons, with buil­ding mate­ri­als accoun­ting for the majo­rity. The market is expe­ri­en­cing conti­nuous growth driven by seve­ral funda­men­tal factors, inclu­ding the growing share of the urban popu­la­tion, the need for new infra­struc­ture in deve­lo­ping count­ries, the moder­niza­tion of infra­struc­ture in deve­lo­ped count­ries and the incre­asing impact of climate-rela­ted hazards. Against this back­drop, Macca­ferri plays a key role as a diffe­ren­tia­ted provi­der of envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy solu­ti­ons with a compre­hen­sive product range that impro­ves the envi­ron­men­tal foot­print by 30 to 90 percent compared to other products in the indus­try. Accor­ding to preli­mi­nary esti­ma­tes, the Group is helping to save mate­ri­als equi­va­lent to the weight of around 700,000 SUVs and reduce emis­si­ons equi­va­lent to the CO2 sequestra­tion of around 2 million trees.

The busi­ness model is also charac­te­ri­zed by its sales approach: on the one hand, direct sales with highly quali­fied specia­lists and, on the other hand, local sales via the world­wide branches.

In a highly frag­men­ted market, Offi­cine Macca­ferri stands out as one of the most respec­ted play­ers and is well posi­tio­ned to conti­nue to grow both orga­ni­cally and through stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons globally. Ambi­enta will support the company in conso­li­da­ting its posi­tion as a leading inde­pen­dent provi­der of envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy solu­ti­ons for the protec­tion of people and nature and in streng­thening its presence in the Asia-Paci­fic region and North America.

Mauro Roversi(photo © ambi­enta), Private Equity Part­ner, Chief Invest­ment Offi­cer and Foun­ding Part­ner of Ambi­enta, said: “We are proud to invest in Offi­cine Macca­ferri, a flag­ship company in the field of green buil­ding solu­ti­ons. It is a unique oppor­tu­nity to take advan­tage of the expec­ted high demand for dura­ble and envi­ron­men­tally friendly solu­ti­ons for infra­struc­ture projects.”

Sergio Iasi, CEO of Macca­ferri, said: “We look forward to working with Ambi­enta to drive Maccaferri’s new phase of growth and deve­lo­p­ment by further conso­li­da­ting our inter­na­tio­nal presence and unique posi­tion. The manage­ment team, which has successfully stee­red the company’s growth to date, is fully behind the part­ner­ship and is inves­t­ing signi­fi­cantly in the tran­sac­tion. Ambienta’s approach and focus on envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity is highly aligned with our core values and we see the company as an ideal part­ner to support Maccaferri’s future growth.”

Consul­tant from Ambienta
Bain (Commer­cial), KPMG (Finan­cial, ESG and Tax), Alix­Part­ners (Opera­ti­ons), PwC (M&A and Debt Advi­sory), Clif­ford Chance (Legal) and FRM (Tax and Structuring).

About Ambi­enta

Ambi­enta is a Euro­pean envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity inves­tor specia­li­zing in private equity, public markets and private credit. From Milan, London, Paris and Munich, Ambi­enta mana­ges assets of more than 3 billion euros. The focus is on invest­ments in private and listed compa­nies that are driven by envi­ron­men­tal mega­trends and whose products or services improve resource effi­ci­ency and envi­ron­men­tal protec­tion. Ambi­enta has made 69 private equity invest­ments to date. In the public equity sector, Ambi­enta has laun­ched one of the world’s largest abso­lute return funds fully focu­sed on envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity and mana­ges a whole range of other sustainable invest­ment products from low-risk multi-asset funds to long-only equity funds. Ambi­enta has also recently laun­ched a private credit stra­tegy, which — as with the other asset clas­ses — focu­ses on envi­ron­men­tal sustainability.
www.ambientasgr.com

News

Stutt­gart — The global invest­ment company Stra­te­gic Value Part­ners, LLC has acqui­red the APCOA Parking Group. Stra­te­gic Value Part­ners, LLC acqui­red all remai­ning shares in the APCOA Parking Group from Center­bridge Part­ners L.P. and other mino­rity investors.

APCOA is a Europe-wide parking space manage­ment company based at Stutt­gart Airport. The company opera­tes more than 1.8 million parking spaces, multi-storey parking lots and park-and-ride faci­li­ties in over 400 cities and offers a wide range of parking manage­ment services. Its annual turno­ver is around EUR 900 million.

Advi­sor APCOA Parking Group: Poellath

Dr. Bene­dikt Hohaus (Part­ner, Lead, Manage­ment Parti­ci­pa­ti­ons, M&A/Private Equity)
Jan Lukas Jung­claus, LL.M. (Stel­len­bosch) (Asso­ciate, Manage­ment Parti­ci­pa­ti­ons, M&A/Private Equity)

About POELLATH

POELLATH is a market-leading inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness and tax law firm with more than 180 lawy­ers and tax advi­sors in Berlin, Frank­furt and Munich. We stand for high-end advice on tran­sac­tions and asset manage­ment. We offer legal and tax services from a single source. In our selec­ted and highly specia­li­zed prac­tice groups, we not only know the law, but also shape best prac­tice in the market toge­ther with our clients. Natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal rankings regu­larly list our consul­tants as leading experts in their field.
We offer compre­hen­sive services in the follo­wing areas: Mergers & Acqui­si­ti­ons | Private Equity | Venture Capi­tal | Private Funds | Real Estate Tran­sac­tions | Corpo­rate and Capi­tal Market Law | Finan­cing | Tax Law | Succes­sion and Assets | Foun­da­ti­ons and Non-Profit Orga­niza­ti­ons | IP/IT, Distri­bu­tion and Anti­trust Law | Liti­ga­tion and Arbi­tra­tion. www.pplaw.com

News

Berlin — The finan­cing round at Myoso­tis was led by TVM. TWIP is invol­ved in the finan­cing round as a co-inves­tor. Myoso­tis, based in Berlin, deve­lops and distri­bu­tes an app for the digi­ta­liza­tion of commu­ni­ca­tion in elderly care. The “myo” app connects elderly care faci­li­ties with rela­ti­ves and service provi­ders. The money will be used to expand the busi­ness in the DACH region and in the UK. The plan is to expand marke­ting acti­vi­ties, opti­mize service quality for exis­ting custo­mers and deve­lop new modules.

About Myoso­tis

Myoso­tis is a Berlin-based start-up with a mission to revo­lu­tio­nize commu­ni­ca­tion in elderly care. The inte­gra­tion of our app into ever­y­day care has a posi­tive effect on ever­yone invol­ved: Faci­li­ties and staff, resi­dents and their fami­lies as well as service provi­ders in elderly care. For more satis­fac­tion, time savings and trans­pa­rency. www.myo.de

Consul­tant: Vogel Heerma Waitz 

Dr. Clemens Waitz, Falko Brüggemann

The law firm
Vogel Heerma Waitz is a Berlin-based law firm specia­li­zing in growth capi­tal, tech­no­logy and media.

News

Munich — The inter­na­tio­nal law firm Bird & Bird has advi­sed the Munich-based food tech­no­logy company Planet A Foods on its Series A finan­cing in the amount of 15.4 million US dollars.

Planet A Foods is a leading company in the field of sustainable food tech­no­logy with the aim of revo­lu­tio­ni­zing the choco­late indus­try. The company has deve­lo­ped its paten­ted ChoViva product with the mission of offe­ring consu­mers world­wide a climate-friendly alter­na­tive to cocoa. Led by the World Fund, this finan­cing round marks a signi­fi­cant mile­stone for Planet A Foods as the company looks to bring its climate-friendly cocoa alter­na­tive ChoViva to a wider custo­mer base.

With the Series A finan­cing, Planet A Foods plans to increase its produc­tion capa­city to meet the growing demand for its cocoa alter­na­tive. The company is also aiming to expand its market beyond Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land to include choco­la­tiers in the UK and the USA. Planet A Foods also intends to address other envi­ron­men­tal issues in the food indus­try, parti­cu­larly palm oil, which is asso­cia­ted with defo­re­sta­tion and harmful emissions.

Consul­tant Planet A Foods: Bird & Bird

Asso­ciate Louisa Graf, LL.M. (Lead, Munich), Part­ner Dr. Stefan Gott­ge­treu (Düssel­dorf), Coun­sel Andrea Schlote (Munich), Asso­ciate Benita Schild (Düssel­dorf) (all Corpo­rate), Part­ner Dr. Ralph Panzer, Coun­sel Sandy Gerlach, Asso­ciate Cara-Marlene Fuchs (all Employ­ment Law, Munich), Part­ner Dr. Markus Körner (IP, Munich), Part­ner Dr. Rolf Schmich (Tax Law, Frankfurt).

www.twobirds.com

News

Inns­bruck — The Inns­bruck-based tech start-up Inner­space, which uses soft­ware and virtual reality (VR) to enable the risk assess­ment of produc­tion proces­ses and the effec­tive trai­ning of clean­room person­nel at leading phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies, can conti­nue its growth trajec­tory follo­wing a very successful finan­cing round. US inves­tor River­side inves­ted in the Tyro­lean company back in July. A few days before the turn of the year, Inner­space fina­li­zed a substan­tial seed round with the new lead inves­tor Matter­wave Ventures. The three exis­ting inves­tors MAD Ventures, aws Grün­dungs­fonds and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds also inves­ted again.

“The great inte­rest shown by inves­tors natu­rally encou­ra­ges us to be on the right track. Digi­tal twins for process design and trai­ning are essen­tial for criti­cal manu­fac­tu­ring proces­ses. We alre­ady count seve­ral of the world’s largest phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies among our custo­mers and will multi­ply both sales and the number of custo­mers in the coming years,” says Walter Ischia, CFO of Innerspace.

“Inner­space enables its custo­mers to avoid quality problems and mini­mize conta­mi­na­tion risks inher­ent in produc­tion. We were impres­sed by the team’s accu­mu­la­ted exper­tise in one of the most highly regu­la­ted indus­tries of all. The tech­no­logy enables signi­fi­cant process impro­ve­ments and, as a result, very substan­tial custo­mer bene­fits,” explains Bene­dikt Kron­ber­ger, Part­ner at Matter­wave Ventures

Inner­space will use the fresh capi­tal to expand its inter­na­tio­nal market presence and further deve­lop its unique “frame-by-frame” tech­no­logy. In future, the Tyro­lean company will focus even more stron­gly on the large growth market of America. Nume­rous well-known compa­nies from the phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­try world­wide alre­ady rely on the company’s expertise.

“The care and precis­ion requi­red in the produc­tion of medi­ci­nes has so far eluded simple digi­ta­liza­tion approa­ches. We break this barrier with our proprie­tary frame-by-frame approach. Design, further deve­lo­p­ment and teaching of any type of manu­fac­tu­ring process can now be carried out in the digi­tal twin. This saves an enorm­ous amount of time and money and also increa­ses process relia­bi­lity and quality,” explains Sebas­tian Sche­ler, co-foun­der and Chief Metho­do­lo­gist at Innerspace

Inner­space also achie­ved another mile­stone in its young company history in the past finan­cial year: the global Paren­te­ral Drug Asso­cia­tion (PDA), which has more than 10,500 members, and Inner­space announ­ced a long-term stra­te­gic part­ner­ship for the deve­lo­p­ment of globally reco­gni­zed PDA trai­ning cour­ses. This close coope­ra­tion includes the use of Inner­space tech­no­logy, i.e. VR simu­la­tors with frame-by-frame risk profile crea­tion func­tions in the PDA’s stan­dard trai­ning cour­ses. The aim of this part­ner­ship is to offer a range of trai­ning cour­ses globally for profes­sio­nals in the phar­maceu­ti­cal and biophar­maceu­ti­cal industry.

The cour­ses contain essen­tial VR modu­les that are much more effec­tive and immersive than tradi­tio­nal methods, but also provide a wealth of data on what people find harder or easier to learn and where there are risks that can be opti­mi­zed through more trai­ning or process redesign.

About Inner­space

The Austrian company Inner­space focu­ses on the risk assess­ment and effec­tive trai­ning of clean­room person­nel at leading phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies. Through the targe­ted use of psycho­lo­gi­cal insights and inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies, Inner­space aims to mini­mize errors in phar­maceu­ti­cal proces­ses and reduce risks. Both the speci­ally deve­lo­ped “Frame-by-Frame Risk Profil­ing” method for compre­hen­sive risk assess­ment and a stan­dar­di­zed clean­room simu­la­tor for trai­ning staff in virtual reality are used. In its role as an offi­cial part­ner of the Paren­te­ral Drug Asso­cia­tion (PDA), Inner­space is actively invol­ved in the deve­lo­p­ment and deli­very of high quality trai­ning cour­ses for the phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­try. https://innerspace.eu

About Matter­wave Ventures

Matter­wave Ventures is a Munich-based venture capi­tal company that has specia­li­zed in deep-tech inno­va­tions with indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons for many years and is active with invest­ments throug­hout Europe. As an early-stage inves­tor, the focus is on early-stage compa­nies and includes soft­ware and hard­ware-based busi­ness models. The aim is to build leading global compa­nies that drive the future of indus­trial value crea­tion, prima­rily through resource effi­ci­ency and digi­ta­liza­tion. The vision is to regain more tech­no­lo­gi­cal leader­ship, produc­tion capa­city and energy and raw mate­rial auto­nomy in Europe. The team has inves­ted in more than 60 compa­nies over the last 20 years and invests “full-stack”, from mate­ri­als and compon­ents to complete systems and soft­ware solu­ti­ons. With over EUR 250m of capi­tal under manage­ment, Matter­wave typi­cally parti­ci­pa­tes in seed and Series A finan­cings across Europe with initial invest­ments of between EUR 1–4m. Inclu­ding follow-on finan­cing rounds, over EUR 10m can be inves­ted per port­fo­lio company. www.matterwave.vc

About the aws start-up fund

The aws Grün­dungs­fonds is an Austrian venture capi­tal fund with a fund volume of approx. 70 million euros. As a seed inves­tor, he supports start-ups from the initial growth phase through further follow-up finan­cing rounds (Series A/B) to the exit. The fund sees itself as a long-term, stable part­ner with a hands-on menta­lity and supports the foun­ding teams as an active spar­ring part­ner. Since 2013, the aws Start-up Fund has inves­ted more than EUR 500 million in 45+ invest­ments toge­ther with natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal co-inves­tors and has been able to realize nume­rous successful exits.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

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, chemi­cals and rela­ted busi­ness areas. To date, exter­nal inves­tors have inves­ted around 5 billion euros in the HTGF port­fo­lio in more than 2,000 follow-up 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 sectors.

News

Milan — Rödl & Part­ner provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal and tax advice to the Hettich Group on the complete take­over of the Italian company Formenti e Giovenz­ana (FGV).

The Hettich and Formenti e Giovenz­ana groups are two family-owned compa­nies with more than 200 years of expe­ri­ence in the furni­ture fittings sector. Hettich was foun­ded in 1888 and is today one of the world’s largest and most successful manu­fac­tu­r­ers of furni­ture fittings. The company is head­quar­te­red in Kirchlen­gern in the furni­ture clus­ter of East West­pha­lia. The FGV Group, which opera­tes in the same sector, was foun­ded in Vedug­gio con Colzano in 1947 and has six produc­tion sites worldwide.

Rödl & Part­ner Italy advi­sed Hettich on the entire contract nego­tia­ti­ons, inclu­ding signing and closing, with an inter­di­sci­pli­nary team. Stefan Bran­des, Mana­ging Part­ner of Rödl & Part­ner Italy, was respon­si­ble for the over­all project manage­ment and was supported in parti­cu­lar by Sebas­tiano Iacono (Mana­ger) during the purchase agree­ment nego­tia­ti­ons and imple­men­ta­tion of the tran­sac­tion. The tax law team was led by Thomas Giuliani (part­ner). In addi­tion to other lawy­ers and tax consul­tants from Rödl & Part­ner Italy, consul­tants from Rödl & Part­ner Poland, Brazil, China, Germany, France and Slova­kia were also invol­ved in the over­all project.

The sellers were advi­sed by UBS (respon­si­ble direc­tor Franco Cappiello) as finan­cial advi­sor and Bonel­liE­rede (respon­si­ble part­ner Feder­ico Vermic­elli) as legal advi­sor. The nota­riza­tion was carried out by ZNR notai.

Advi­sor Hettich Group: Rödl & Partner

Italy:
Stefan Bran­des, Part­ner, M&A Tran­sac­tion, Milan, Over­all Project Manage­ment — Legal
Sebas­tiano Iacono, Mana­ger, M&A Tran­sac­tion, Milan — Legal
Marghe­rita Cera (Asso­ciate Part­ner) — Legal
Anna Maria Desi­dera (Asso­ciate Part­ner) — Legal
Davide Giord­ano (Asso­ciate Part­ner) — Legal
Massimo Riva (Asso­ciate Part­ner) — Legal
Rebecca Salat (Asso­ciate) — Legal
Agata Trivel­lato (Asso­ciate) — Legal

Thomas Giuliani, Part­ner, Tax, Milan — Tax
Birgit Rauschen­dor­fer (Part­ner) — Tax
Manuel Buratti (Part­ner) — Tax
Gior­gia Cavall­aro (Senior Asso­ciate) — Tax
Andrea Crispi (Senior Asso­ciate) — Tax
Erald Karriqi (Asso­ciate) — Tax
Eleo­nora Mangia (Asso­ciate) — Tax

Brazil:
Rafael Martins (Part­ner) — Legal/Labour (Consul­ting)
Samara Abudd (Asso­ciate)

Enrico Pfänd­ner (Asso­ciate Part­ner) — Tax
Edgard Venan­cio (Mana­ger) — Tax
Eric Lerri (Asso­ciate) — Tax
Felipe Fogaca (Asso­ciate) — Tax

China:
Sebas­tian Wien­dieck (Part­ner) — Legal
Qiang Cao (Asso­ciate Part­ner) — Legal
Daojie Wang (Senior Asso­ciate) — Legal
Xiao­lan Zhao (Senior Asso­ciate) — Legal

Vivian Yao (Part­ner) — Tax
Monica Chen (Asso­ciate Part­ner) — Tax
Elisa Guo (Senior Asso­ciate) — Tax

Germany:
Dr. Johan­nes Scher­zin­ger — Legal
Katrin Mikschl (Senior Asso­ciate) — Legal
Dr. Mela­nie Köst­ler (Asso­ciate Part­ner) — Tax
Max Gareis (Senior Asso­ciate) — Tax

France:
Jean-Yves Trochon (Senior Coun­sel) — Legal
Hugues Bois­sel Dombr­e­val (Asso­ciate Part­ner) — Legal
Poland
Jarosław Kamiń­ski (Asso­ciate Part­ner) — Legal
Marta Wiśniewska (Mana­ger) — Legal
Damian Dobosz (Project Leader) — Legal
Maciej Woźnica (Senior Asso­ciate) — Legal

Anna Hara­si­mo­wicz (Asso­ciate Part­ner) — Tax
Anna Ziel­ony (Mana­ger) — Tax
Justina Pomor­ska-Porębska (Mana­ger) — Tax
Marcin Muchow­ski (Senior Asso­ciate) — Tax

USA:
Frank Brei­ten­feldt (Part­ner) — Tax
Dennis Wieckert (Asso­ciate) — Tax

News

Berlin — Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence start-up Qdrant raises €28 million in its Series A finan­cing round. The lead inves­tor in the round was the Ameri­can early-stage inves­tor Spark Capi­tal, accom­pa­nied by exis­ting inves­tors Unusual Ventures and 42CAP.

Qdrant was foun­ded in Octo­ber 2021 by Andre Zayarni and Andrey Vasnetsov in Berlin. The AI start-up is deve­lo­ping a high-perfor­mance, scalable, open-source vector data­base and search engine that is essen­tial for deve­lo­ping the next gene­ra­tion of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and metric lear­ning appli­ca­ti­ons. Qdrant can process billi­ons of vectors and supports the matching of seman­ti­cally complex objects. This allows complex data such as images, audio tracks and videos to be organized.

Qdrant excels at mana­ging and sear­ching high-dimen­sio­nal data and proces­sing billi­ons of vectors with unmat­ched effi­ci­ency and scala­bi­lity. It is ther­e­fore indis­pensable for modern AI and machine lear­ning appli­ca­ti­ons in all indus­tries. In the past year, Qdrant has had more than 5 million down­loads and has been widely used by compa­nies such as Deloitte, Hewlett Packard Enter­prise, Bayer and many other Fortune 500 compa­nies. Qdrant has also recently expan­ded its mana­ged cloud offe­ring through part­ner­ships with AWS, Google Cloud and Micro­soft Azure. Qdrant is commit­ted to data protec­tion and secu­rity, which are crucial for modern AI appli­ca­ti­ons. www.qdrant.tech .

The company intends to use the newly raised capi­tal to expand its vector data­base and improve scala­bi­lity and effi­ci­ency for next-gene­ra­tion AI use cases.

Consul­tant 42CAP: YPOG
Dr. Frede­rik Gärt­ner (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (AI/IP/IT), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Berlin Alex­an­der Sekunde (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin.
Frede­rik Gärtner’s team has alre­ady advi­sed 42CAP on the €2 million pre-seed finan­cing round of Qdrant in 2022 and on the €7.5 million seed finan­cing round in April 2023.

Advi­sor Qdrant Solu­ti­ons GmbH: Green­gate Partners
Marc René Spitz, LL.M. (Lead / Part­ner / Corpo­rate) Dr. Leonie Singer, LL.M. (Asso­ciate / Corpo­rate) Constan­tin Forst­ner (Asso­ciate / Corpo­rate) Alex­an­der Tribess (Part­ner / IT & Data Protection)
Dr. Alex­an­der Raif (Part­ner / Employ­ment Law) Paul Harl­off (Asso­ciate / IT & Data Protection).

Advi­sor Spark Capi­tal: Good­win Procter
Silvio McMi­ken (Coun­sel), Tobias Schulz (Asso­ciate)

Advi­sor Unusual Ventures: Good­win Procter
Sebas­tian Walc­zak (Part­ner), Silvia Rava (Asso­ciate)

About 42CAP

42CAP is a pan-Euro­pean inves­tor team that invests in early-stage compa­nies with global ambi­ti­ons in the B2B tech­no­logy sector. Without excep­tion, the foun­ders and part­ners are them­sel­ves former successful foun­ders who have made compa­nies big, in some cases over deca­des. Foun­ding inves­tors Alex Meyer and Thomas Wilke built eCir­cle into one of Europe’s largest SaaS compa­nies and sold the profi­ta­ble company to Teradata (NYSE:TDC) in 2012. Moritz Zimmer­mann made the soft­ware company Hybris big before it was absor­bed into SAP. Under the “Credo Peers among Entre­pre­neurs”, they support indus­try and product-orien­ted foun­ders, extre­mely data-driven busi­ness models and sustainable corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment. This back­ground is appre­cia­ted by foun­ding perso­na­li­ties such as Nico­las Reboud (SHINE, Paris), Krist­jan Vilo­sius (Katana, Tallinn) and Alex­an­der Igels­böck (Adve­rity, Vienna).

About Spark Capital

Spark Capi­tal is a venture capi­tal firm in the United States that provi­des early-stage finan­cing to start-ups in the consu­mer, retail, FinTech, soft­ware, fron­tier markets and media sectors. It has offices in San Fran­cisco, Boston and New York City. www.sparkcapital.com

About Green­Gate Partners

With its corpo­rate team, Green­Gate Part­ners specia­li­zes in parti­cu­lar in the areas of M&A and venture capi­tal. Green­Gate Part­ners’ legal exper­tise in the venture capi­tal sector ranges from the foun­da­tion to the various finan­cing rounds to the exit. Green­Gate Part­ners regu­larly sets stan­dards in the German market and offers compre­hen­sive advi­sory services for dome­stic and foreign venture capi­tal funds, stra­te­gic inves­tors, busi­ness angels as well as foun­ders, start-ups and managers.

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

Berlin — Vidia Equity has raised a Vidia Climate Fund I of €415 million. The Vidia Climate Fund I aims for finan­cial profi­ta­bi­lity and sustainable climate impact by inves­t­ing in SME solu­ti­ons in three key climate action areas: indus­trial mate­ri­als, elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and circu­lar economy. Vidia focu­ses on redu­cing emis­si­ons in five of the most emis­sion-inten­sive sectors: energy, indus­try, trans­por­ta­tion, buil­dings, food and agriculture.

Vidia was foun­ded to iden­tify and scale indus­trial climate solu­ti­ons with an opera­tio­nal approach to address the urgent need for decar­bo­niza­tion in the DACH region and beyond. The part­ners of the company foun­ded by Johanna Struth­mann (photo © Vidia) and Dr. Stephan Rosa­rius have an exten­sive track record and more than ten years of expe­ri­ence with indus­trial invest­ments in the DACH region and the Nordic countries.

The fund is clas­si­fied as a fund under Article 9 of the Sustainable Finance Disclo­sure Regu­la­tion (SFDR). Vidia has deve­lo­ped a custo­mi­zed climate impact frame­work and score­card for its scree­ning and invest­ment process.

The Vidia Impact Method is based on a multi-laye­red approach to assess the stand-alone impact and long-term rele­vance of a climate protec­tion solu­tion as well as the addi­tio­nal impact for inves­tors. In addi­tion, the fund has been struc­tu­red in such a way that it is possi­ble to influence the port­fo­lio compa­nies in order to ensure the imple­men­ta­tion of the Vidia Impact method.

Fund I has alre­ady made two invest­ments: BPM — a leading German specia­list in mecha­ni­cal recy­cling — and the Wierig Group — a leading provi­der of large-scale indus­trial flat roof refur­bish­ment and solar installations.

Consul­tant VIDIA: YPOG

Dr. Fabian Euhus (Lead, Funds), Part­ner, Berlin Anto­nia von Treu­en­feld (Funds), Asso­ciate, Berlin Dr. Helder Schnitt­ker (Tax), Part­ner, Berlin
Dr. Dajo Sanning (Tax), Senior Asso­ciate, Hamburg

About Vidia Equity

Foun­ded by Johanna Struth­mann and Dr. Stephan Rosa­rius, Vidia was built with the goal of iden­ti­fy­ing and scaling indus­trial climate solu­ti­ons with an opera­tio­nal approach to address decar­bo­niza­tion needs in the DACH region and beyond. The company aims for high finan­cial profi­ta­bi­lity and a sustainable impact on the climate by inves­t­ing in medium-sized solu­ti­ons within three core themes in the most emis­sion-inten­sive sectors. The now 18-strong team has more than 50 years of expe­ri­ence in indus­trial invest­ments, combi­ning invest­ment, impact and opera­tio­nal excel­lence in the DACH region. Vidia’s head­quar­ters are loca­ted in Munich. Further infor­ma­tion can be found at www.vidiaequity.com.

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. Today, YPOG employs more than125 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax consul­tants, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. http://www.ypog.law

 

News

Milan/London/Paris/Munich — Ambi­enta SGR SpA (“Ambi­enta”), one of the largest and leading asset mana­gers in Europe focu­sing on envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity, announ­ces the first closing of the “Ambi­enta Sustainable Credit Oppor­tu­ni­ties” fund (Ambi­enta Credit) with alre­ady around half of the target volume of EUR 500 million.

Ambi­enta Credit is a further deve­lo­p­ment of the corpo­rate stra­tegy and builds on Ambienta’s funda­men­tal concept of sustaina­bi­lity. This is based on the convic­tion that envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity is the biggest macro trend of all time and offers one of the grea­test invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties of this century. More importantly, with the estab­lish­ment of Ambi­enta Credit, Ambi­enta is adding a third invest­ment stra­tegy to its plat­form that focu­ses exclu­si­vely on envi­ron­men­tal cham­pi­ons. Like Ambienta’s private equity and public equity products, the credit products also fall under Article 9 of the Sustainable Finance Disclo­sure Regu­la­tion (SFDR).

Ambi­enta Credit will accom­pany Euro­pean medium-sized compa­nies as a part­ner and support their deve­lo­p­ment. The focus is exclu­si­vely on envi­ron­men­tal cham­pi­ons whose products or services contri­bute to impro­ving resource effi­ci­ency or redu­cing envi­ron­men­tal pollu­tion and which are charac­te­ri­zed by stable end markets and strong defen­sive busi­ness models. In addi­tion to the Credit team led by Ran Land­mann (Part­ner and Chief Invest­ment Offi­cer) and Nishan Srini­va­san (Part­ner and Head of Origi­na­tion), Ambi­enta Credit is supported by the broa­der plat­form and, in parti­cu­lar, the exper­tise of the Sustaina­bi­lity and Stra­tegy team — a team of engi­neers who examine the impact of envi­ron­men­tal issues on science and busi­ness opera­ti­ons across indus­tries and value chains.

The imple­men­ta­tion of the stra­tegy is based on the award-winning methods deve­lo­ped by the company itself, which account for the success of Ambi­enta Private Equity: the “Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Analy­sis” (EIA), which measu­res the posi­tive envi­ron­men­tal balance of a target company, and the “ESG in Action” program, which evalua­tes and impro­ves the ESG profile of the port­fo­lio companies.

Ran Land­mann, Part­ner and Chief Invest­ment Offi­cer, and Nishan Srini­va­san, Part­ner and Head of Origi­na­tion, said: “Sustaina­bi­lity is a long-term trend that will become even more important in the future. We are plea­sed to work with leading inves­tors who, like us, have reco­gni­zed that inves­t­ing in envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity crea­tes value. Ambi­enta Credit comple­ments our exis­ting plat­form and offers the oppor­tu­nity to work with even more sustaina­bi­lity cham­pi­ons who want to finance their growth and are looking for credit solu­ti­ons. We are parti­cu­larly plea­sed that we were able to close our first tran­sac­tion with the finan­cing of a leading water company in Decem­ber 2023.”

Laurent Donin de Rosière, Part­ner and Head of Inves­tor Rela­ti­ons and Stra­te­gic Part­ner­ships, empha­si­zed: “We conti­nue to have a very strong base of limi­ted part­ners and are grateful for the strong support and trust of Ambienta’s exis­ting and new inves­tors. In the current market envi­ron­ment, the importance of private loans is undis­pu­ted. Coupled with the incre­asing role that inves­tors are placing on iden­ti­fy­ing authen­tic, sustainable invest­ment solu­ti­ons, Ambi­enta Credit is a unique offe­ring and an excep­tio­nally well-posi­tio­ned product that opens up both part­ner­ships for corpo­ra­tes and invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for LPs.”

About Ambi­enta

Ambi­enta is a Euro­pean envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity inves­tor specia­li­zing in private equity, public markets and private credit. From Milan, London, Paris and Munich, Ambi­enta mana­ges assets of more than 3 billion euros. The focus is on inves­t­ing in private and publicly traded compa­nies that are driven by envi­ron­men­tal mega­trends and whose products or services improve resource effi­ci­ency and envi­ron­men­tal protec­tion. Ambi­enta has made 68 private equity invest­ments to date. In the public equity sector, Ambi­enta has laun­ched one of the world’s largest abso­lute return funds fully focu­sed on envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity and mana­ges a whole range of other sustainable invest­ment products from low-risk multi-asset funds to long-only equity funds. Ambi­enta has also recently laun­ched a private credit stra­tegy, which — as with the other asset clas­ses — focu­ses on envi­ron­men­tal sustainability.

News

Colo­gne — Food­Tech company Infi­nite Roots has raised $58 million in a Series B finan­cing round. The round was led by Dr. Hans Riegel Holding (HRH), one of the two share­hol­der holding compa­nies of the Haribo Group, with the support of the EIC Fund, an initia­tive of the Euro­pean Commis­sion to make direct equity invest­ments in highly inno­va­tive start-ups and SMEs in Europe, and the REWE Group. — Beta­gro Ventures (Thai­land) and exis­ting inves­tors such as Clay Capi­tal, FoodLabs, Redal­pine, Simon Capi­tal and Happi­ness Capi­tal also parti­ci­pa­ted in the round.

The food tech company was foun­ded in 2018 by Dr. Mazen Rizk under the name Mushlabs. At the end of 2023, the company chan­ged its name to Infi­nite Roots. The start-up culti­va­tes mush­room roots, known as myce­lia, by feeding them with agri­cul­tu­ral waste. The aim is to use fermen­ta­tion to produce a protein-rich substrate, which will then be proces­sed into meat substi­tute products, such as sausa­ges or patties, in a next step.

Infi­nite Roots, which curr­ently employs 67 people from 25 count­ries, will use the new capi­tal injec­tion to further deve­lop the myce­lium tech­no­logy. The fungal myce­lium multi­plies by fermen­ta­tion in biore­ac­tors, regard­less of loca­tion and in a climate-friendly manner. Fungi are omni­vo­res that can also obtain their nutri­ents from waste mate­ri­als. “Rethin­king the produc­tion and consump­tion of food has never been as urgent as it is today,” empha­si­zes foun­der Dr. Mazen Rizk. The 38-year-old biotech­no­lo­gist came to TU Hamburg from Leba­non in 2010 to do his doctorate.

Infi­nite Roots plans to use the funds raised to further deve­lop its paten­ted myce­lium tech­no­lo­gies, expand capa­city and launch its first products. This step follows the conclu­sion of one of the largest invest­ment rounds in the field of myce­lium tech­no­logy in Europe. The company’s long-term vision is to play a key role in trans­forming the global food system by utili­zing the diverse appli­ca­ti­ons of mush­room myce­lium. The Hamburg-based food tech has raised a total of 73 million dollars in capi­tal since it was foun­ded in 2018.

Advi­sor EIC Fund: Oppenhoff 

Jointly led by Dr. Peter Etzbach and Dr. Caro­lin Roßko­then (both Corpo­rate / M&A), the team compri­sed Dr. Maike Mestmä­cker (Corpo­rate), Dr. Patric Mau (IP), Dr. Johan­nes Kaes­bach, Fato­u­mata Kaba (both Employ­ment), Marvin Roch­ner (Real Estate), Jan Tobias Kolla­kow­ski, Dr. Axel Grätz (both IT&C) and Dr. Cars­ten Bormann (Regu­la­tory).

About EIC Fund

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 foun­ded in the context of the pilot project “Hori­zon 2020 — the Frame­work Programme for Rese­arch and Inno­va­tion” and was successfully contin­ued in 2021 with the launch of the “Hori­zon Europe Programme”. With a term from 2021 to 2027 and a total budget of up to 95.5 billion euros, 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 regu­larly advi­sed the EIC Fund on its invest­ments in German start-ups since 2021.

Advi­sor REWE Group: YPOG 

Dr. Johan­nes Janning (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Colo­gne Nina Ahlert (Tran­sac­tion), Senior Asso­ciate, Cologne
Laura Franke (Tran­sac­tion), Senior Project Lawyer, Colo­gne Fabian Lüns­mann (Tran­sac­tion), Asso­ciate, Cologne
Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Berlin Dr. Chris­toph Cordes (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Asso­ciate, Berlin.

About REWE Group

The coope­ra­tively orga­ni­zed REWE Group is one of the leading trading and tourism groups in Germany and Europe. In 2022, the company gene­ra­ted total exter­nal sales of around € 85 billion. Foun­ded in 1927, REWE Group has 380,000 employees and opera­tes in 21 Euro­pean countries.

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 ranked natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, Cham­bers and Part­ners and Leaders League. Today, YPOG employs more than 125 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax consul­tants, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

News

Berlin/ Munich — EQT Ventures has led a Series A finan­cing round of EUR 15 million in the Berlin-based startup Pack­ma­tic, a leading digi­tal purcha­sing plat­form for pack­a­ging in Europe. Other inves­tors included HV Capi­tal and xDeck as well as the foun­ders of Zalando as busi­ness angels. A large part of the invest­ment will be used to further expand the supplier network and the company’s presence in Europe.

More than 100 medium-sized compa­nies and fast-growing digi­tal compa­nies use Pack­ma­tic to achieve sustainable savings poten­tial and opti­mize their pack­a­ging in line with current sustaina­bi­lity stan­dards. With more than 300 pack­a­ging suppli­ers, Pack­ma­tic has access to the largest supplier network in Europe and can access suppli­ers’ machine fleets in just a few clicks with its speci­ally deve­lo­ped Smart Matching technology.

About EQT Ventures

EQT Ventures is the venture capi­tal fund of EQT, a global invest­ment orga­niza­tion. EQT Ventures invests in fast-growing, inno­va­tive and tech­no­logy-driven compa­nies in all sectors world­wide, with a focus on Europe and the US.

Advi­sor to EQT Ventures: DLA PIPER

The DLA Piper team was led by Frank­furt Part­ner Andreas Füch­sel and Senior Asso­ciate Phil­ipp Meyer, toge­ther with Part­ner Mikael Moreira, Senior Asso­ciate Erik Rosberg and Asso­ciate Joacim Kanstedt (all Private Equity/M&A) from Stockholm.

Also invol­ved were part­ners Verena Grent­zen­berg (data protec­tion, Hamburg), Dr. Thilo von Bodun­gen (commer­cial, Munich), senior asso­ciate Eike Bodo Matthes (IP, Frank­furt), asso­cia­tes Monika Marin­cic (commer­cial, Munich), Hannah Modi (employ­ment law), Phil­ipp Schme­chel (data protec­tion, both Hamburg), Damian Merks (private equity/M&A) and trai­nee lawyer Alex­an­der Zwil­ling (corpo­rate, both Frankfurt).

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 290 lawy­ers in Frank­furt, Hamburg, Colo­gne and Munich.

News

Kalten­kir­chen — The BOETTGER GROUP, which also includes the well-known tradi­tio­nal brand Caven­dish & Harvey, is taking over Jahnke Süßwa­ren GmbH from Ragolds Invest GmbH. The take­over adds the Jahnke brand of lico­rice special­ties to the hard candy port­fo­lio. In addi­tion, produc­tion capa­city at the Kalten­kir­chen site is being signi­fi­cantly expanded.

With the take­over of Jahnke Süßwa­ren GmbH, which is known nati­on­wide for its lico­rice sweets, the medium-sized BOETTGER Group is setting the course for its inter­na­tio­nally orien­ted subsi­diary Caven­dish & Harvey Confec­tion­ery GmbH to conti­nue its successful growth. The global market leader for premium fruit sweets is thus not only expan­ding its brand and product port­fo­lio to include lico­rice special­ties, but is also gaining a second produc­tion faci­lity in the imme­diate vici­nity of its own site in Kaltenkirchen.

The role of Proven­tis Partners

Proven­tis Part­ners acted as exclu­sive M&A advi­sor to BOETTGER GRUPPE and Caven­dish & Harvey Confec­tion­ery GmbH. In addi­tion to evalua­ting the target company, Proven­tis Part­ners supported the due dili­gence proces­ses and accom­pa­nied the nego­tia­ti­ons through to their successful conclusion.
The Proven­tis Part­ners tran­sac­tion team consis­ted of Torben Gott­schau (Mana­ging Part­ner, Hamburg) and Leon Holt­mann (Asso­ciate, Hamburg).

About Jahnke Süßwa­ren GmbH

Jahnke Süßwa­ren GmbH is a supra-regio­nal produ­cer of confec­tion­ery. After being foun­ded in Hamburg Altona in the 1970s, Jahnke expan­ded to its current loca­tion in Kalten­kir­chen in 1989. The product port­fo­lio includes hard cara­mels and the natio­nally renow­ned liquo­rice specialties.

About Caven­dish & Harvey Confec­tion­ery GmbH / BOETTGER GRUPPE

Caven­dish & Harvey Confec­tion­ery GmbH is a produ­cer and supplier of high-quality confec­tion­ery “Made in Germany”. At its head­quar­ters in Kalten­kir­chen (Schles­wig-Holstein), the company has 160 employees and produ­ces hard cara­mels, prima­rily for the premium house brand “Caven­dish & Harvey”, which is successfully sold in over 100 count­ries. Purcha­sed specialty products comple­ment the brand port­fo­lio. Caven­dish & Harvey Confec­tion­ery GmbH has been a member of the family-owned BOETTGER GROUP since 2002. The medium-sized group of compa­nies opera­tes in various busi­ness areas in the German and Euro­pean markets. This includes Berlin-based Boett­ger Food Ingre­di­ents GmbH, a high-profile supplier of granu­la­ted and liquid sugar as well as nuts and dried fruit and a close part­ner to the confec­tion­ery, beverage and food industries.

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 indus­trial, chemi­cals & mate­ri­als, services, tech­no­logy & media, consu­mer goods & 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

Advi­sor to Ragolds Invest GmbH: SZA Schil­ling, Zutt & Anschütz

Dr. Thomas Nägele and Dr. Chris­toph Allmen­din­ger (both partners)

News

Gütersloh/Paderborn/Bielefeld/Detmold — The British company 
Texmo Precis­ion Castings
UK Ltd., based in Shef­field, Great Britain, has acqui­red a majo­rity share­hol­ding in the German family-owned company Fein­guss
Blank
 based in Ried­lin­gen, Germany. The merger has crea­ted a leading global invest­ment casting company under the new Texmo Blank brand. Texmo Blank’s custo­mers are leading compa­nies from the auto­mo­tive, indus­trial, aero­space and medi­cal sectors.

The tran­sac­tion was carried out by way of a share deal. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price. BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte advi­ses Texmo Precis­ion Castings on merger with Blank Group.

Texmo Precis­ion Castings is part of the Texmo Group, which was foun­ded in 1956. The core busi­ness at the time was the manu­fac­ture of water pumps and elec­tric motors. With the acqui­si­tion of the majo­rity share­hol­ding, Texmo Blank now has produc­tion faci­li­ties in the USA, Germany, Roma­nia and India with a total of 1710 employees and an annual turno­ver of around 125 million US dollars. Texmo Precis­ion Castings is the only commer­cial foundry in the world with faci­li­ties in Asia, Europe and the USA for the produc­tion of invest­ment castings.

The Blank Group goes back to the foun­ding of a commer­cial agency for tools and machine tools in Ried­lin­gen in 1950 by Wilhelm Blank. The company has grown conti­nuously since it was founded.

Texmo Precis­ion Castings was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by an inter­na­tio­nal team. In Germany, a cross-loca­tion M&A team from the law firm 
BRANDI Attor­neys at Law 
under the leader­ship of Güters­loh partner 
Dr. Cars­ten Christophery
 was active. BRANDI hand­led the mandate toge­ther with the Swiss member of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm network Pangea.net, Probst Part­ner AG. 
Probst Part­ner AG
 from Winter­thur, under the leader­ship of partner 
Franz Probst
. Browne Jacob­son the PANGEA.net member in the UK and Ireland, led by part­ner Richard Cox, provi­ded legal support on the English law aspects of the tran­sac­tion. Probst Part­ner, BRANDI and Browne Jacob­son have been working closely toge­ther for many years as members of the law firm network PANGEA.net. Lawy­ers from the Roma­nian law firm Stra­tu­lat Albu­lescu were also involved.

Probst Part­ner AG, Winter­thur, Switzerland
Franz Probst, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, Corporate/M&A)
Dr. Oliver Frit­schi, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A)
Thomas Würs­ten, Part­ner (Tax Law)
Roy Levy, Part­ner (Labor Law)
Alex­an­dra Williams-Winter, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)

Browne Jacob­son LLP, London
Richard Cox, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A)


Jacobson
the Pangea.net member in the UK and Ireland, led by part­ner Richard Cox, provi­ded legal support on the English law aspects of the tran­sac­tion. Probst Part­ner, BRANDI and Browne Jacob­son have been working closely toge­ther for many years as members of the law firm network Pnagea.net. Lawy­ers from the Roma­nian law firm Stra­tu­lat Albu­lescu were also involved.

Due to the inter­na­tio­nal posi­tio­ning of the parties, various juris­dic­tions were invol­ved in this tran­sac­tion — the indi­vi­dual work­streams were coor­di­na­ted from Germany and Switz­er­land. In addi­tion, inten­sive coor­di­na­tion with the finan­cing banks was required.

BRANDI advi­sed Texmo Precis­ion Castings on the struc­ture and coor­di­na­tion of the tran­sac­tion and on the legal due dili­gence, the nego­tia­tion of the various tran­sac­tion docu­ments under German law and the closing.

The law firm Solu­tio Schnei­der Rechts­an­walts­ge­sell­schaft mbH from Biber­ach acted for the BLANK-Group.

Advi­sor Texmo Precis­ion Castings: BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte Gütersloh/ Paderborn/ Bielefeld/ Detmold

Dr. Cars­ten Chris­to­phery, Part­ner (lead, Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Eva-Maria Gott­schalk, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Dr. Sandra Vyas, Part­ner (Employ­ment Law), Paderborn
Björn Mai, Part­ner (Employ­ment Law), Detmold
Dr. Rüdi­ger Osten, Part­ner (Commer­cial), Detmold
Dr. Chris­toph Rempe, Part­ner (IP/IT, Anti­trust Law), Bielefeld
Jannis Riedl, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Dr. Dennis Piel­sti­cker, Asso­ciate (Commer­cial Tenancy Law), Bielefeld
Chris­tian Rödding, Asso­ciate, (Commer­cial), Detmold

Probst Part­ner AG, Winter­thur, Switzerland
Franz Probst, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, Corporate/M&A)
Dr. Oliver Frit­schi, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A)
Thomas Würs­ten, Part­ner (Tax Law)
Roy Levy, Part­ner (Labor Law)
Alex­an­dra Williams-Winter, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)

Browne Jacob­son LLP, London
Richard Cox, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A)

HLB Stück­mann, Biele­feld (Tax and Financial)
Miriam Roll, Part­ner (Finan­cial Due Diligence)
Dr. Andreas Börger, Part­ner (Tax Due Diligence)
Prof. Dr. Dana Doege, Mana­ger (Finan­cial Due Diligence)
Florian Weeg, Mana­ger (Tax Due Diligence)

Stra­tu­lat Albu­lescu, Bucha­rest, Romania
Silviu Stra­tu­lat, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A)
Ana Kusak, Part­ner (Foreign Trade Law Romania)
Tudor Ciam­bur, Part­ner (Commer­cial Tenancy Law)
Amanda Csaki, Senior Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)

ROCAN, Düssel­dorf
Dr. Timo Anger­bauer, Part­ner (Foreign Trade Law Germany)
Paul Dröß­ler, Part­ner (Foreign Trade Law Germany)

Advi­sor BLANK-Group: Solu­tio Schnei­der Rechts­an­walts­ge­sell­schaft mbH, Biberach
Armin Schnei­der, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner Corporate/M&A)
Manuel Kemp­ter, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)

Crone Consul­tancy, Wachenheim
WP / StB Prof. Andreas Crone (Corporate/M&A, Tax Law)

About BRANDI Attor­neys at Law

BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte is one of the leading medium-sized commer­cial law firms in West­pha­lia and Hano­ver with offices in Biele­feld, Detmold, Güters­loh, Hano­ver, Pader­born and Minden as well as coope­ra­tion offices in Paris and Beijing. Over 100 lawy­ers, 26 of whom are also nota­ries, advise compa­nies in all areas of natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal commer­cial law and public law. BRANDI is a member of the inter­na­tio­nal network PANGEA NET. 
www.brandi.net
.

News

Munich — Copen­ha­gen-based energy start-up Reel announ­ces 5 million euros in seed funding. This is led by Tran­si­tion, a venture capi­tal fund that focu­ses on climate start-ups. Other backers include exis­ting inves­tors UVC Part­ners, The Foot­print Firm and a group of energy specia­lists and foun­ders, inclu­ding Clime­works’ Chief Project Deve­lo­p­ment Offi­cer Daniel Nathan and Netlify co-foun­der Chris­tian Bach.

In order to have a posi­tive impact on climate change, the way in which compa­nies purchase and use elec­tri­city must change. Elec­tri­city is one of the main causes of CO2 emis­si­ons worldwide (
IPCC 2022
). Commer­cial and indus­trial consump­tion is respon­si­ble for two thirds of total global elec­tri­city consumption.

Reel offers compa­nies an alter­na­tive to conven­tio­nal purcha­sing of rene­wa­ble ener­gies, parti­cu­larly with regard to proof of origin. This is because the appli­ca­ble certi­fi­ca­tes are often criti­ci­zed for not really contri­bu­ting to CO2 reduc­tions. With Reel, compa­nies can conclude power purchase agree­ments (PPAs) that offer elec­tri­city at a fixed price and reduce CO2 emis­si­ons by feeding rene­wa­ble energy into the grid.

Anders Engtoft Meldgaard, CCO and co-foun­der of Reel, comm­ents: “These certi­fi­ca­tes lead to compa­nies’ CO2 reduc­tion efforts being greatly overe­sti­ma­ted. Accor­din­gly, the risk of failing to meet the Paris Agree­ment is further increased. Reel, on the other hand, enables compa­nies to achieve carbon-free energy consump­tion every hour of the day.”

Alex­an­der Kiltz (photo © UVC), Prin­ci­pal at UVC Part­ners and Advi­sory Board member at Reel, says: “Since leading Reel’s pre-seed round, we have witnessed the team demons­trate its ability to execute a smart busi­ness model that is deeply embedded in the elec­tri­city value chain. We look forward to the next steps in Reel’s jour­ney as we launch addi­tio­nal products and expand into more regions.”

Reel plans to use the money to expand its product range and intro­duce its elec­tri­city procu­re­ment model to carbon-inten­sive energy markets across Europe. This also includes the expan­sion of the team, parti­cu­larly in the areas of deve­lo­p­ment, sales and operations.

About Reel

Reel is the next gene­ra­tion elec­tri­city supplier and offers compa­nies a new way of purcha­sing elec­tri­city. With Reel, compa­nies can conclude power purchase agree­ments (PPAs) that offer elec­tri­city at a fixed price and reduce CO2 emis­si­ons by feeding rene­wa­ble energy into the grid. Reel’s vision is a world that lives from 100 percent rene­wa­ble energy.

About UVC Partners

UVC Part­ners is a Munich and Berlin-based early-stage venture capi­tal firm inves­t­ing in Euro­pean B2B start-ups in the fields of enter­prise soft­ware, indus­trial tech­no­lo­gies and mobi­lity. The fund gene­rally invests between €0.5 and €10 million at the outset and up to €30 million in total per company. The port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from the exten­sive invest­ment and exit expe­ri­ence of the manage­ment team as well as from the close coope­ra­tion with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s leading inno­va­tion and start-up center. With over 400 employees and more than 100 indus­try part­ners, Unter­neh­mer­TUM can draw on many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding young compa­nies. This coope­ra­tion gives UVC Part­ners the oppor­tu­nity to offer start-ups unique access to talent, indus­try clients and other finan­cial part­ners. www.uvcpartners.com

News

Munich — PRIMEPULSE SE has sold its majo­rity stake in the listed company KATEK SE. The buyer was Kontron Acqui­si­ti­ons GmbH, a wholly-owned subsi­diary of Kontron AG, which is also listed on the stock exch­ange. A HEUKING team led by Munich part­ner Boris Dürr advi­sed PRIMEPULSE SE on this transaction.

Speci­fi­cally, this invol­ved the sale of around 60% of all KATEK shares. The purchase price for the share package is around EUR 130 million. Anti­trust appr­oval is still pending and the tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to be comple­ted by March 2024. Kontron will gain control of KATEK SE as a result of the tran­sac­tion and will make a manda­tory offer to the outside share­hol­ders follo­wing the transaction.

The KATEK Group is one of the leading elec­tro­nics service provi­ders in Europe. The range of services covers the entire life cycle of elec­tro­nic assem­blies and devices. KATEK places parti­cu­lar empha­sis on the deve­lo­p­ment of rene­wa­ble energy tech­no­lo­gies such as control elec­tro­nics for photo­vol­taic systems and intel­li­gent char­ging solu­ti­ons for elec­tric vehic­les. With more than 3,500 employees at loca­ti­ons in Europe, Asia and North America, the KATEK Group is expec­ted to gene­rate sales of over EUR 750 million in the 2023 finan­cial year.

PRIMEPULSE SE is an invest­ment holding company based in Munich. PRIMEPULSE is backed by the successful foun­ders, entre­pre­neurs and long-stan­ding mana­gers of TecDAX-listed CANCOM SE. PRIMEPULSE’s invest­ment acti­vi­ties focus on the IT & tech­no­logy sector and rela­ted growth markets. PRIMEPULSE’s port­fo­lio compa­nies include the listed company Stem­mer Imaging AG and the cloud mana­ged service provi­der glueck­kanja AG.

The Austrian company Kontron AG specia­li­zes in auto­no­mous commu­ni­ca­tion between devices (Inter­net of Things, IoT). With the acqui­si­tion of KATEK, Kontron is expan­ding its product port­fo­lio in the fast-growing areas of photo­vol­taics and eMobi­lity Smart Char­ging. The take­over of KATEK SE is the largest acqui­si­tion in Kontron’s history. In connec­tion with the take­over, Kontron increased its fore­cast for 2024 to a conso­li­da­ted turno­ver of at least EUR 1.9 billion and a net profit of around EUR 100 million.

The Heuking team regu­larly advi­ses PRIMEPULSE on tran­sac­tions and other projects, inclu­ding in 2018 when PRIMPULSE took over the then KATEK GmbH from the Kath­rein Group. HEUKING subse­quently advi­sed on seve­ral add-on tran­sac­tions and also supported the IPO of KATEK SE in 2021.

Consul­tant PRIMEPULSE SE: HEUKING

Boris Dürr (lead, M&A), Chris­tian Schild, LL.M. (corpo­rate law/M&A), Peter M. Schäff­ler (tax law), Andreas Schruff, Felix Noack (both corpo­rate law/M&A), all Munich.

News

Berlin / Munich — Sunday Natu­ral, a leading brand for high-quality vitamins, mine­rals and nutri­tio­nal supple­ments, has secu­red an invest­ment from CVC Fund VIII. The part­ner­ship aims to support the scaling and inter­na­tio­nal reach of the company. The foun­der of Sunday Natu­ral, Jörg Schwei­kart, will conti­nue to play a central role in the stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment of the company and will remain signi­fi­cantly invol­ved in the company.

OMMAX supported Sunday Natu­ral with an expan­sion stra­tegy and the subse­quent crea­tion of a commer­cial fact­book to prepare for the entry of the inves­tor CVC. — With two million custo­mers in German-spea­king countries,Sunday Natu­ral gene­ra­ted a profit of almost twelve million euros in 2021 and is esti­ma­ted to have a valua­tion of 700 million euros. Most recently, the well-known inves­tor CVC also inves­ted in the company.

Speci­fi­cally, a compre­hen­sive stra­tegy project was laun­ched to improve the under­stan­ding of market dyna­mics and key play­ers in various key regi­ons (14+) with the aim of asses­sing the oppor­tu­ni­ties for inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and chan­nel expan­sion. Combi­ned with a digi­tal and commer­cial compe­ti­tive bench­mar­king analy­sis, the OMMAX results helped the company derive key impli­ca­ti­ons for its go-to-market stra­tegy and formed the basis of a commer­cial fact­book for poten­tial buyers.

Dr. Stefan Sambol, Part­ner and Co-Foun­der at OMMAX, comm­ents: “We are impres­sed by the great digi­tal execu­tion of Sunday Natural’s stra­tegy and its ability to reac­ti­vate its loyal custo­mer base. ”

About Sunday Natural

Sunday Natu­ral is a leading D2C brand for premium nutri­tio­nal supple­ments that is charac­te­ri­zed by high quality and a wide range of products and focu­ses on sustaina­bi­lity and trans­pa­rency. The company pursues a multi-chan­nel approach with a focus on direct-to-consu­mer (D2C) sales via its website and the use of its network of thera­pists. Sunday Natu­ral was foun­ded in Berlin in 2013 and has quickly deve­lo­ped into one of the largest premium nutri­tio­nal supple­ment brands in Europe with more than 1,0,000 products in the areas of nutri­tio­nal supple­ments, vitamins, teas, super­foods and cosmetics.

The company sells its products to over one million loyal custo­mers per year via its D2C online plat­form Sunday.de, gene­ra­ting sales of around EUR 100 million in 2022. This strong custo­mer affi­nity and loyalty is a testa­ment to Sunday Natural’s commit­ment to quality and has resul­ted in the brand being truly loved by its commu­nity. www.sunday.de.

About Ommax — 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 world­wide 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. www.ommax.de

Consul­tant Sunday Natu­ral: Houli­han Lokey

Advi­sor CVC: Rothschild

News

Karls­ruhe — INERATEC, a pioneer in the deve­lo­p­ment and produc­tion of synthe­tic fuels, has raised €118 million in a finan­cing round. This will acce­le­rate the commer­cia­liza­tion of CO2-neutral e‑fuels. The Series B venture capi­tal finan­cing is led by US inves­tor Piva Capi­tal with addi­tio­nal inter­na­tio­nal parti­ci­pa­tion from HG Ventures, TDK Ventures, Copec WIND Ventures, RockCreek, Emer­ald and Samsung Ventures, as well as increased support from exis­ting inves­tors, inclu­ding major corpo­ra­ti­ons such as ENGIE New Ventures, Safran Corpo­rate Ventures and Honda.

“This finan­cing round is an important mile­stone for INERATEC and the tran­si­tion from fossil fuels to sustainable e‑fuels. With this capi­tal, we are in a posi­tion to bring about a para­digm shift in the energy sector. Our focus is clear: we want to use this invest­ment for the global scaling of e‑fuels. In order to take concrete steps towards the next era of mobi­lity, we are plan­ning to convert 1 GW of rene­wa­ble energy into 165,000 tons of sustainable e‑fuels by 2030,” says Dr. Tim Bölt­ken, CEO of INERATEC.

Rene­wa­ble alter­na­tive for fossil fuels

Over 4,000 million tons of fossil crude oil are proces­sed into fuels and chemi­cal products every year. Much of the demand comes from indus­tries that rely on the speci­fic proper­ties of these fossil products. In avia­tion, ship­ping and the chemi­cal indus­try, a sustainable trans­for­ma­tion to rene­wa­ble mole­cu­les is ther­e­fore a key chall­enge. Without excep­tion, these sectors are curr­ently depen­dent on fossil fuels and are urgen­tly looking for rene­wa­ble alter­na­ti­ves in order to achieve their climate targets. The demand for “drop-in” e‑fuels, i.e. synthe­tic fuels produ­ced from rene­wa­ble elec­tri­city, green hydro­gen and CO2, which require little or no adapt­a­tion to the exis­ting fuel infra­struc­ture, is expec­ted to triple by 2030 and increase by 19% each year until 2050.

A pionee­ring technology

The world is moving towards clea­ner energy solu­ti­ons and INERATEC is leading the trans­for­ma­tion in the field of climate-neutral fuels. INERATEC’s scalable, paten­ted tech­no­logy enables the effi­ci­ent produc­tion of e‑fuels. The process compri­ses two main steps: First, CO2 and hydro­gen are conver­ted into a synthe­sis gas. In the second step, the corre­spon­ding fuel frac­tions are produ­ced from synthe­sis gas in a further reac­tor. The e‑fuels meet the stan­dards inten­ded for indus­tries with high fossil fuel consump­tion such as avia­tion, ship­ping and the chemi­cal industry.

Since its foun­da­tion in 2016, INERATEC has built and opera­ted nume­rous pilot plants and works with over 30 custo­mers in the respec­tive appli­ca­tion areas. The company has also won seve­ral important awards, inclu­ding the German Founder’s Prize, the Next Economy Award and the EARTO Award. INERATEC was recently selec­ted as a top inno­va­tor in the field of sustainable avia­tion fuels by UpLink, the inno­va­tion plat­form of the World Econo­mic Forum.

Expan­sion of the global impact

The new capi­tal will be used to start series produc­tion of INERATEC’s Power-to‑X plants on an indus­trial scale and to drive forward the produc­tion of e‑fuels from recy­cled CO2 and rene­wa­ble ener­gies. In addi­tion, INERATEC has begun cons­truc­tion of its largest plant to date in Frank­furt and conti­nues to expand through inter­na­tio­nal projects, such as in the Nether­lands and Chile. This expan­sion will increase produc­tion by a factor of 1,500, with over 12,000,000 tons of CO2 being recy­cled annu­ally. In addi­tion, the tech­no­logy is to be used world­wide — where­ver CO2 and rene­wa­ble energy are available.

“INERATEC’s breakth­rough tech­no­logy is the most promi­sing e‑fuels solu­tion we have seen to date for the most diffi­cult to decar­bo­nize sectors such as avia­tion, ship­ping and chemi­cals. The company not only produ­ces e‑fuels. Its reac­tors are more effi­ci­ent, scalable and enable the indus­try to convert excess CO2, green elec­trons and hydro­gen to meet a wide range of needs. From fuels for cars, airplanes and ships to green chemi­cals for our daily needs. We believe that INERATEC has the best solu­tion to change the indus­try. In this way, we can achieve our common goal of moving away from fossil fuels,” explains Adzmel Adznan, foun­ding part­ner at Piva Capi­tal.

The inves­tor consor­tium for the Series B finan­cing round consists of:

Planet A Ventures, MPC, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, FO Holding, Safran Corpo­rate Ventures, Honda, ENGIE New Ventures, HG Ventures, TDK, Copec WIND Ventures, RockCreek, Emer­ald , Samsung Ventures, Piva Capital.

About INERATEC

INERATEC is a pioneer in the field of power-to-liquid appli­ca­ti­ons. The company supplies sustainable e‑fuels and chemi­cal products. In modu­lar chemi­cal plants for power-to‑X and gas-to-liquid appli­ca­ti­ons, hydro­gen is used to produce e‑kerosene, CO2-neutral gaso­line, clean diesel or synthe­tic waxes, metha­nol or SNG from rene­wa­ble elec­tri­city and green­house gases such as CO2. Foun­ded in 2016, the company has alre­ady imple­men­ted large-scale power-to-liquid plants at German loca­ti­ons in order to increase the avai­la­bi­lity of sustainable fuels and chemi­cals in various trans­port sectors such as avia­tion. Further infor­ma­tion can be found at www.ineratec.com.

About Piva Capital

Piva Capi­tal is a San Fran­cisco-based venture capi­tal firm that invests in visio­nary entre­pre­neurs who are solving the world’s criti­cal indus­trial chal­lenges with breakth­rough tech­no­lo­gies and inno­va­tive busi­ness models. www.Piva.vc

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

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.
The 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 sectors . www.htgf.de

 

News

Frank­furt a. M. — Dr. Barbara Sturm has sold a majo­rity stake in Barbara Sturm Mole­cu­lar Cosme­tics GmbH to the Spanish cosme­tics company Puig. Gibson, Dunn & Crut­cher LLP advi­sed Barbara Sturm on this transaction.

The Spanish cosme­tics giant Puig has acqui­red a substan­tial majo­rity stake in the Dr. Barbara Sturm brand. The price remains confi­den­tial, but is likely to be in the seven-figure range. “We are very proud to welcome a brand of the cali­ber of Dr. Barbara Sturm to our house for ‘Love­brands’,” CEO Marc Puig is quoted as saying. Her “Glow Drops” are a real best­sel­ler. The Düssel­dorf-based company, which will retain a mino­rity stake, will remain as the respon­si­ble product deve­lo­per and brand face.

The Gibson Dunn corpo­rate team, led by New York part­ner Andrew M. Herman and Munich part­ner Dr. Ferdi­nand From­hol­zer, included Munich part­ners Sonja Rutt­mann and Dr. Markus Nauheim, as well as Munich asso­cia­tes Dr. Marcus Geiss, Maxi­mi­lian Schnie­wind and Johan­nes Reul. Munich part­ner Kai Gesing advi­sed on IP and anti­trust issues, supported by Munich asso­cia­tes Chris­toph Jacob and Yannick Ober­acker on IP and Frank­furt asso­ciate Jan Voll­kam­mer on anti­trust law. In Frank­furt, coun­sel Alex­an­der Klein advi­sed on finan­cing aspects. London part­ner James Cox advi­sed on employ­ment law issues.

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 21 offices, the firm has a global presence in all major econo­mic regi­ons. Gibson Dunn’s 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, Riyadh, San Fran­cisco, Singa­pore and Washing­ton, D.C. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.gibsondunn.com.

News

Berlin — YPOG provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to the growth equity fund Planet First Part­ners on FINN’s €100 million Series C finan­cing round. Planet First led the round, with other exis­ting inves­tors parti­ci­pa­ting in the new finan­cing round. These include HV Capi­tal, Korelya Capi­tal, UVC Part­ners, White Star Capi­tal and Picus Capi­tal. This increa­ses the valua­tion of FINN to over US$600 million.

Foun­ded in 2019, the start-up FINN has deve­lo­ped a car subscrip­tion plat­form that aims to make mobi­lity flexi­ble and climate-neutral at the same time.

The Munich-based company intends to use the capi­tal raised to acce­le­rate its growth in the elec­tric car segment, with the aim of more than doubling the propor­tion of low-emis­sion vehic­les from the current 40% by 2028 and thus giving people the oppor­tu­nity to test elec­tric cars in ever­y­day life. To date, the start-up has more than 25,000 subscri­bers and recently gene­ra­ted annual sales of around €160 million.

YPOG Team:

Dr. Tim Schlös­ser (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Matthias Kres­ser (Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin
Tobias Lovett (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin Florian Bacher (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin Barbara Hasse (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin

About Planet First Partners

Planet First Part­ners is a growth equity plat­form that invests in and part­ners with disrup­tive entre­pre­neurs to grow tech­no­logy-enab­led busi­nesses that combine a purpose-driven mission, profi­ta­ble growth and a people-cente­red culture. The fund has coll­ec­ted equity invest­ments tota­ling €450 million. As an Article 9 fund, Planet First Part­ners applies a rigo­rous sustainable invest­ment metho­do­logy and is commit­ted to main­tai­ning the highest stan­dards and stric­test crite­ria at all times. Planet First Part­ners was foun­ded in 2020 and consists of a highly quali­fied and expe­ri­en­ced team of invest­ment and sustaina­bi­lity experts focu­sed on maxi­mi­zing and opti­mi­zing sustaina­bi­lity. The team is comple­men­ted by an advi­sory board made up of leading figu­res from busi­ness and poli­tics. www.planetfirst.partners

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

News

Munich — In a round led by Newion, a total of USD 7.5 million was raised, with inves­tors inclu­ding XAnge, Nauta, River­side Acce­le­ra­tion Capi­tal and Picea Capi­tal parti­ci­pa­ting along­side Newion. The successful invest­ment increa­ses airfo­cus’ total funding to USD 15 million and paves the way for global expan­sion in the billion-dollar market for product manage­ment soft­ware. Green­Gate Part­ners advi­sed Newion on this transaction.

airfo­cus has alre­ady made a name for itself as the world’s first modu­lar product manage­ment tool. The soft­ware helps compa­nies over­come key chal­lenges, inclu­ding road­map­ping, prio­ri­tiza­tion, custo­mer analy­ses and alignment with OKRs (Objec­ti­ves and Key Results). With over 800 custo­mers world­wide, airfo­cus is setting new stan­dards in the field of product manage­ment software.

Malte Scholz, co-foun­der and CEO of airfo­cus (photo, center © airfocus):
“This funding is of crucial importance. We not only deve­lop soft­ware, but also a stan­dar­di­zed product opera­ting system. Our AI-supported plat­form will change the way product mana­gers work. Decis­ion-making beco­mes more effi­ci­ent and effective.”

About airfo­cus

airfo­cus was foun­ded in Hamburg in 2017 and offers a unique, flexi­ble end-to-end product manage­ment plat­form. With a growing global presence and backed by major VCs, the company is commit­ted to empowe­ring teams to deve­lop better products faster. — airfocus.com

About XAnge

XAnge is a leading Euro­pean venture capi­tal firm certi­fied by Bcorp and based in Paris, Berlin and Munich. With assets under manage­ment of EUR 600 million, the company invests in early-stage Euro­pean inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies opera­ting in the digi­tal consu­mer, enter­prise and data, fintech and deept­ech sectors. Since its foun­da­tion in 2003, XAnge has supported more than 200 fast-growing compa­nies in their entre­pre­neu­rial deve­lo­p­ment. The team works with visio­nary foun­ders with strong values and inter­na­tio­nal ambi­ti­ons such as Ledger, Odoo, Lydia and Believe Digi­tal. xange.vc

About Nauta Capital

Nauta is a pan-Euro­pean venture capi­tal firm that invests in early-stage B2B soft­ware compa­nies and has offices in London and Barce­lona. With over half a billion in assets under manage­ment and a team of 20 employees, Nauta is one of the largest Euro­pean VCs with a B2B focus. As an indus­try agno­stic inves­tor, Nauta is parti­cu­larly inte­res­ted in B2B SaaS solu­ti­ons with strong network effects, verti­cally-focu­sed enter­prise tech­no­lo­gies that are trans­forming large indus­tries, and compa­nies that are using deep tech appli­ca­ti­ons to solve the chal­lenges of large enter­pri­ses. Nauta has led invest­ments in more than 80 compa­nies, inclu­ding Brand­watch, Lodgify, Mercaux, Holded, Onna, MishiPay, Land­bot, AppFol­low, ifeel and Cledara. — nautacapital.com

About River­side Acce­le­ra­tion Capital

River­side Acce­le­ra­tion Capi­tal (RAC) provi­des flexi­ble growth capi­tal for B2B soft­ware and tech­no­logy compa­nies in the expan­sion phase. RAC is part of The River­side Company, a global private invest­ment firm focu­sed on inves­t­ing in growing compa­nies valued up to $400 million. Since its foun­da­tion in 1988, River­side has made more than 980 invest­ments. The company’s inter­na­tio­nal private equity and struc­tu­red capi­tal port­fo­lios comprise more than 150 compa­nies. riverside.ac

About Picea Capital

Picea Capi­tal is a level-inde­pen­dent invest­ment company based in Hamburg that focu­ses prima­rily on digi­tal tech­no­logy companies.

About Newion
Newion is a venture capi­tal company based in Amster­dam with opera­ti­ons in the Bene­lux region, Germany and the Nordics. For more than 20 years, Newion has focu­sed exclu­si­vely on support­ing promi­sing B2B SaaS start-ups. The latest fund, Newion 4, was laun­ched in 2022 and is supported by the Euro­pean Union via the InvestEU Fund.

About Green­Gate Partners

With its corpo­rate team, Green­Gate Part­ners specia­li­zes in parti­cu­lar in the areas of M&A and venture capi­tal. Green­Gate Part­ners’ legal exper­tise in the venture capi­tal sector ranges from the foun­da­tion to the various finan­cing rounds to the exit. Green­Gate Part­ners regu­larly sets stan­dards in the German market and offers compre­hen­sive advi­sory services for dome­stic and foreign venture capi­tal funds, stra­te­gic inves­tors, busi­ness angels as well as foun­ders, start-ups and managers.

News

Munich — Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Bird & Bird has advi­sed Vecto­flow GmbH, the global market leader in 3D-prin­ted flow measu­re­ment systems, on its Series A invest­ment round and secu­red €4 million in financing.

The round was secu­red by new inves­tors, inclu­ding Bayern Kapi­tal Inno­va­ti­ons­fonds II, WN Invest GmbH, asto One Invest­ment GmbH, argo Vantage GmbH, Schwarz Holding GmbH, Dr. Rolf Pfeif­fer and exis­ting seed inves­tors AM Ventures and KfW Bankengruppe.

Vecto­flow will thus conti­nue its expan­sion into the series produc­tion of measu­ring devices for the aero­space and energy markets. By working with the new part­ners, the company aims to expand its global reach.

Vecto­flow was advi­sed by the follo­wing Bird & Bird lawy­ers: Asso­ciate Louisa Graf. LL.M. (lead), part­ner Stefan Münch, coun­sel Andrea Schlote (photo © Bird&Bird) and coun­sel­Mi­chaelGaßner (all corporate/M&A, Munich), part­ner Dr. Ralph Panzer, coun­sel Sandy Gerlach, asso­ciate Cara-Marlene Fuchs (all employ­ment law, Munich), asso­cia­te­Jo­na­thanHech­ler (IP, Munich) and part­ner Dr. Rolf Schmich (tax law, Frankfurt).

News

Munich — A team led by Alex­an­der Weber, Heuking-Part­nert, provi­ded legal advice to FarmIn­sect GmbH on its Series A finan­cing round.

The over­sub­scri­bed finan­cing round of eight million euros was led by the Oslo-based impact fund Sand­wa­ter and the growth fund mana­ged by Bayern Kapi­tal; the Stra­te­gic Impact Fund of the Minderoo Foun­da­tion (Austra­lia) and the EIC Funds of the Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Coun­cil also inves­ted. Other inves­tors previously invol­ved include High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, Unter­neh­mer­TUM Funding for Inno­va­tors and various busi­ness angels.

Foun­ded in 2020, FarmIn­sect GmbH is a Munich-based company specia­li­zing in insect bree­ding systems. It was part of the Food-Agro-Biotech (FAB) venture lab at the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich.

FarmIn­sect offers a complete modu­lar solu­tion for decen­tra­li­zed on-site produc­tion of insect larvae and has deve­lo­ped indus­try-leading insect bree­ding tech­ni­ques and gene­tic strains with impro­ved adap­ta­bi­lity to locally available larval feed. FarmInsect’s custo­mers should signi­fi­cantly reduce their feed costs, recy­cle orga­nic waste and gene­rate addi­tio­nal sources of income through ferti­li­zer, biogas and the sale of larvae.

Heuking has advi­sed FarmIn­sect GmbH since its foun­da­tion on various topics and in the area of venture capi­tal in seve­ral finan­cing rounds.

Advi­sor FarmIn­sect GmbH: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek

Alex­an­der Weber, LL.M. (lead), Roman Ettl-Steger, LL.M. (both venture capi­tal), both Munich; Dr. Henrik Lay (tax law/venture capi­tal), Hamburg; Peter M. Schäff­ler (tax law), Munich; Ariane Neubauer, Shimon Merkel, LL.M. (both venture capi­tal), both Berlin;
Domi­nik Eicke­meier, Svea Kunz (both IP/ data protection)
Kers­tin Deiters, LL.M., EMBA (Labor Law), all Cologne
Dr. Ruth Schnei­der (Anti­trust Law), Munich

News

Hano­ver — A Hano­ver-based Deloitte Legal team led by corporate/M&A part­ners Dr. Harald Stang and Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Habel has advi­sed HANNOVER Finanz on its invest­ment in PAUL Tech AG (PAUL), based in Mann­heim, as part of a growth finan­cing with a total volume of EUR 40 million.

PAUL will use the newly provi­ded funds in parti­cu­lar for invest­ments and further growth in the area of energy-saving tech­no­lo­gies & solu­ti­ons for large resi­den­tial buil­dings. With its core product PAUL Perfor­mance, PAUL has deve­lo­ped a system control­led by intel­li­gent soft­ware using AI that can reduce energy consump­tion and thus energy costs and CO2 taxes in buil­dings by up to 40 percent through perma­nent adap­tive hydrau­lic balan­cing in real time. This also makes it possi­ble to install heat pumps.

About HANNOVER Finanz

Foun­ded in 1979, HANNOVER Finanz has more than 40 years of expe­ri­ence as an equity part­ner for SMEs. The private equity firm based in Hano­ver and with an office in Vienna is one of the first venture capi­tal provi­ders for the D‑A-CH region in Germany and is an owner-mana­ged invest­ment company in its second gene­ra­tion. Well-known compa­nies such as Fiel­mann, Ross­mann and AIXTRON have reali­zed their growth with equity capi­tal from HANNOVER Finanz and taken advan­tage of its entre­pre­neu­rial support. Since its foun­ding, the equity part­ner for SMEs has comple­ted over 250 projects and inves­ted over two billion euros. Invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties are mainly growth finan­cing and succes­sion plan­ning for solid medium-sized compa­nies with annual sales of 20 million euros or more. In addi­tion to majo­rity share­hol­dings, the HANNOVER Finanz Group is one of the few invest­ment compa­nies in Germany to acquire mino­rity inte­rests. The port­fo­lio curr­ently includes 35 companies.

About PAUL Tech AG
PAUL Tech AG is the tech­no­logy leader and specia­list for the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the real estate indus­try. PAUL uses arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to make exis­ting buil­dings climate-friendly with mini­mal invest­ment and no loss of comfort for resi­dents. Inves­tors and opera­tors rely on PAUL to make their proper­ties fit for the future and compe­ti­tive. PAUL curr­ently supports over 150 compa­nies in the real estate indus­try with over one hundred thousand resi­den­tial units.

The Hano­ver-based private equity house HANNOVER Finanz has regu­larly relied on the exper­tise of the Hano­ver-based Deloitte Legal team for many years, as eviden­ced by nume­rous tran­sac­tions invol­ving PE inves­tors and medium-sized compa­nies. Follo­wing the invest­ment in First Climate AG in spring 2022, the Deloitte Legal team was once again able to support HANNOVER Finanz with an invest­ment in the rapidly growing market for inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons and tech­no­lo­gies to miti­gate climate change. In the PAUL tran­sac­tion, the Deloitte Legal team was entrus­ted with the legal due dili­gence, in parti­cu­lar in the areas of corpo­rate law, labor law, commer­cial, IP/IT and regu­la­tory law.

Advi­sor HANNOVER Finanz: 

In-house: Dr. Chris­tina Silber­ber­ger (Gene­ral Counsel/Partner; lead)
Deloitte Legal: Dr. Harald Stang, Foto (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Habel (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A), Johan­nes Passas (Part­ner, Commer­cial), Dr. Char­lotte Sander (Part­ner, Employ­ment Law), Gunnar Fehrin­ger (Coun­sel, Real Estate), Laura Vaske (Senior Asso­ciate, Commer­cial), Daniela Wasseram (Senior Asso­ciate, Employ­ment Law), Anna Beth­mann (Senior Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), all Hanover

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.

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fyb [at] fyb.de

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