ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Munich — oculai raises equity capi­tal of 2.5 million euros in a seed finan­cing round. With the fresh capi­tal, the cons­truc­tion-tech startup wants to invest in the further deve­lo­p­ment of the tech­no­logy and push its disse­mi­na­tion on cons­truc­tion sites.

The finan­cing round is led by High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, which has with oculai its 700. Invest­ment in the history of the seed inves­tor successfully comple­ted. In addi­tion, Bayern-Kapi­tal, one of the most expe­ri­en­ced high-tech inves­tors in the coun­try, is parti­ci­pa­ting with funds from the REACT part of the Bayern Kapi­tal EFRE inno­va­tion fund, and the French-based VC fund Axeleo Capi­tal via its Contech-Proptech fund, which focu­ses on start­ups in Europe. The round is supple­men­ted by the Leonard acce­le­ra­tor program and other well-known private inves­tors. These inves­tors include Arno Zinke, ex-foun­der and mana­ger of Auto­desk and Hexa­gon, Chris­toph Jentzsch, ex-foun­der and CEO of Slock.it and corpus.ventures, and Tobias Ortmaier, ex-foun­der and mana­ging direc­tor of Yuanda Robo­tics, voraus robo­tik and avatera.

oculai is an emer­ging digi­tiza­tion and AI solu­tion for cons­truc­tion compa­nies. For exam­ple, came­ras at high posi­ti­ons and previously unique deep-lear­ning models are used to auto­ma­ti­cally record cons­truc­tion proces­ses. This gives users access to func­tions such as an auto­ma­ted target/actual sche­dule, self-writing daily cons­truc­tion reports or process key figu­res. With oculai, cons­truc­tion projects become more trans­pa­rent, produc­tive and plan­nable, while cons­truc­tion manage­ment work proces­ses are auto­ma­ted. Curr­ently, the solu­tion is mainly used in shell cons­truc­tion and on initial infra­struc­ture projects.

oculai camera

“Espe­ci­ally in the current times, the trans­for­ma­tion of the cons­truc­tion indus­try towards intel­li­gent produc­tion systems is beco­ming more and more important. We also notice this in the response to our product. With the fresh tail­wind, we can leverage this momen­tum and take big steps now,” said Constan­tin Kauff­mann, co-foun­der and CEO of oculai

“oculai’s AI has the poten­tial to be a game-chan­ger for process plan­ning in the cons­truc­tion indus­try. At HTGF, we are proud that oculai is our 700th company. Seed invest­ment is. An anni­ver­sary that shows how active and diverse the start-up and inno­va­tion land­scape in Germany is. With our new fund gene­ra­tion HTGF IV, around 500 million euros are available for invest­ments in promi­sing start-ups and tech­no­lo­gies. The larger group of fund inves­tors enables us to offer more added value for the port­fo­lio compa­nies and invest signi­fi­cantly more per company. We are plea­sed to be able to make a rele­vant contri­bu­tion to solving many chal­lenges by funding highly inno­va­tive start­ups,” Dr. Alex von Fran­ken­berg, Mana­ging Direc­tor of HTGF

“No matter how large or complex a cons­truc­tion project may be — oculai offers the perfect over­view. The foun­ding team has deve­lo­ped a unique AI for shell cons­truc­tion that can enorm­ously increase the higher level of auto­ma­tion and digi­tiza­tion urgen­tly needed in the indus­try,” explains Monika Steger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapital

“The cons­truc­tion indus­try is one of the least digi­ti­zed indus­tries due to a harsh work envi­ron­ment and compli­ca­ted work­flows, which makes change manage­ment parti­cu­larly diffi­cult. Oculai achie­ves a return on invest­ment from day one with a holi­stic, turn­key solu­tion that enables cons­truc­tion mana­gers to stream­line their work­flow and produce useful data. This impro­ves the lear­ning curve from one project to the next,” explains Mathias Flattin, Part­ner & Mana­ging Direc­tor Axeleo Capital.

About oculai
oculai is a ConTech startup that uses came­ras and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to auto­ma­ti­cally record cons­truc­tion proces­ses and progress. The foun­ders Constan­tin Kauff­mann (CEO), Tim Sippl (CTO) and Yannik Mack (CFO/ COO) know each other from their studies at the Fried­rich Alex­an­der Univer­sity Erlan­gen-Nurem­berg. The idea for the startup sprang from rese­arch into camera-based recor­ding of manual indus­trial proces­ses. The startup formed in seve­ral foun­der programs, such as the Digi­tal Tech Academy, Unter­neh­mer­TUM, and Zoll­hof Incu­ba­tor, and was subse­quently supported by the EXIST-Grün­der­sti­pen­dium until oculai was offi­ci­ally foun­ded in July 2021. The company is now based in Munich and employs around 20 people. oculai’s product is an AI-powered soft­ware that reco­gni­zes and auto­ma­ti­cally docu­ments outdoor cons­truc­tion proces­ses from camera data. Users have access to an auto­ma­ted target/actual sche­dule, self-writing daily cons­truc­tion reports, produc­ti­vity metrics or walking routes, among other things, via a WebApp. Based on the auto­ma­ted docu­men­ta­tion and the coll­ec­ted data, there is a savings poten­tial of 7% of the shell cons­truc­tion costs and a time saving of 15% for site teams. https://www.oculai.de/

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, is the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria. It accom­pa­nies inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies in the Free State through various growth phases, from seed to later stage, with equity capi­tal in the amount of 0.25 to 25 million euros. Bayern Kapi­tal often fills gaps in the VC sector in proven consor­tium constel­la­ti­ons with private inves­tors (busi­ness angels, family offices and corpo­rate ventures). Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with a volume of around 700 million euros. Since its foun­da­tion in 1995 on the initia­tive of the state govern­ment, the wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern has so far inves­ted around 400 million euros of its own equity capi­tal in around 300 start-ups and scale-ups in sectors such as life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. The active port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses over 80 compa­nies. Examp­les of nume­rous ground­brea­king success stories that Bayern Kapi­tal has been invol­ved in at an early stage include EOS (today the world’s leading tech­no­logy provi­der in indus­trial 3D prin­ting of metals and plas­tics), Proglove, Fazua, SimS­cale, Scom­pler, egym, Parcel­lab, Cobrai­ner, Quan­tum Systems, Casavi, Riskme­thods, Tubu­lis, Cata­lym, Immu­nic, Sirion and many more. www.bayernkapital.de

About Axeleo Capital
Axeleo Capi­tal (AXC) is a venture capi­tal firm that supports EU start­ups from the (pre-)seed stage through specia­li­zed funds in proptech and B2Btech.
Axeleo Proptech I (AXP1) is a €40 million fund focu­sed on proptech and contech start­ups across Europe. Our proptech invest­ments include Bean­stock, BRXS, Bright Spaces, Check&Visit, Garantme, Myr.ai, Prello. Our B2BTech invest­ments include cyber secu­rity, fintech and enter­prise soft­ware compa­nies such as Alsid, Aplo, Cumul.io, Jenji, Joko, Trust­pair. https://www.axc.vc/

About Leonard
Leonard is the VINCI Group’s inno­va­tion and fore­sight plat­form. Leonard was crea­ted to envi­sion the future of the Group’s busi­nesses and is tasked with moni­to­ring emer­ging trends in VINCI’s areas of exper­tise and markets, iden­ti­fy­ing new growth oppor­tu­ni­ties and setting up incu­ba­tion and acce­le­ra­tor programs for employees as well as start-ups. To host these programs and foster exch­an­ges with all the people brea­king new ground in VINCI’s busi­ness lines, Leonard opened Leonard:Paris, a 4,500-square-meter labo­ra­tory in Paris. In 2020, Leonard formed a team to expand opera­ti­ons in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
https://leonard.vinci.com/de .

News

Berlin — VC La Fami­glia closed its Growth Fund in Decem­ber and its Seed Fund III at the end of Febru­ary with a volume of over € 250 million. The legal advice was provi­ded by YPOG.
La Fami­glia announ­ced it has raised more than €250 million for its third seed fund and its first growth fund. The funds are backed by renow­ned entre­pre­neurs and leading indus­tria­lists to invest in the next gene­ra­tion of forward-looking compa­nies. Inves­tors in the two funds also include renow­ned natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, parti­cu­larly from the USA. The VC has thus raised a total of more than €350 million since 2017.

La Fami­glia closed its first seed fund of €35 million in 2017, follo­wed by a second seed fund of €60 million in 2019. Now La Fami­glia is incre­asing its third seed fund to €165 million, with the goal of doubling invest­ments in emer­ging B2B giants in Europe and the US. In paral­lel, the VC laun­ches a growth fund with € 90 million.
As part of its third seed fund, La Fami­glia aims to make initial invest­ments of up to €5 million in start­ups deve­lo­ping inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies and scalable busi­ness models for various indus­tries. The Growth Fund focu­ses on co-invest­ments in Series B and above companies.

In parti­cu­lar, YPOG advi­sed La Fami­glia on the struc­tu­ring of the third seed fund and the growth fund to obtain the regis­tra­tion as EuVECA mana­ger and to imple­ment the increased flexi­bi­lity for two paral­lel blind pool funds. For advice on U.S. regu­la­tory issues, La Fami­glia and YPOG are again rely­ing on the assis­tance of Kimber­ley J. Kaplan-Gross and Shaun C. Barnes of Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP.

About La Famigila

La Fami­glia is a venture capi­ta­list that provi­des early and growth stage support to strong tech­no­logy start­ups that reinvent estab­lished indus­tries. The team invests in areas such as logi­stics and supply chain, infra­struc­ture and data, retail and commerce, fintech and insur­tech, or Indus­try 4.0. In doing so, it pursues a hori­zon­tal focus on the future of work as well as sustaina­bi­lity. Examp­les of promi­nent seed invest­ments include Deca­corn Deel, unicorns Perso­nio and Forto, and more recently tech­no­logy plat­forms such as Y42, Sweep and Buynomics.

Consul­tant La Fami­glia: YPOG
Dr. Fabian Euhus (Fund), Part­ner Anto­nia von Treu­en­feld (Fund), Associate

About YPOG
YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm, opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax, tran­sac­tions, IP/IT and nota­rial services. 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. Since its foun­da­tion in 2017, the firm has become one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in Germany. The firm and its part­ners are natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally ranked by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, and Cham­bers and Part­ners. Today, YPOG employs more than 70 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. http://www.ypog.law

News

Hamburg / Berlin / Oister­wijk — Lions­Home, toge­ther with its majo­rity share­hol­der Water­land Private Equity, is working at full speed on the further deve­lo­p­ment of a Euro­pean digi­tal publi­shing group: Follo­wing the successful inte­gra­tion of the product compa­ri­son plat­form Fashiola, Lions­Home has now acqui­red the Dutch opera­tor of deal & coupon portals Franke Media B.V..

Lions­Home GmbH from Berlin, which has been in exis­tence since 2014, has deve­lo­ped into a leading product compa­ri­son plat­form for Home & Living and is now one of the largest Euro­pean furnis­hing portals with over three million users in ten count­ries every month. In 2022, the majo­rity invest­ment by growth inves­tor Water­land marked the start of the deve­lo­p­ment of a leading Euro­pean commerce content group that will aggre­gate a wide range of digi­tal publi­shing models, e‑commerce & e‑service verti­cals, and geogra­phic markets under one roof. A first mile­stone in this stra­tegy was reached within a very short time in mid-2022 with the acqui­si­tion of Fashiola, which makes the online offe­rings of a large number of leading fashion brands compa­ra­ble for its users in more than 25 countries.

Franke Media, a leading opera­tor of deal & coupon portals, has now joined the group as its newest member, having built the most visi­ted discount websites in the Nether­lands and Belgium since its incep­tion in 2012. On Acties.nl and Deals.be, every month more than 1.5 million unique visi­tors find coupons and promo­ti­ons that come from part­ner­ships with major natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal brands such as bol.com, Amazon, ASOS, H&M, Nike and HEMA. The seller of the shares is foun­der Vince Franke, who will remain on board as CEO of Franke Media and will take a reverse stake in the Group as part of the transaction.

“At Water­land, we have always focu­sed on long-term and successful buy & build stra­te­gies, estab­li­shing tomorrow’s market leaders in exci­ting growth markets — Lions­Home is no excep­tion. The Group is ideally posi­tio­ned to become one of the leading part­ners for commerce content adver­ti­sing with broad coverage of verti­cal and geogra­phic e‑commerce markets as well as digi­tal publi­shing models. We look forward to working with Vince Franke and his team — they are very ambi­tious and excel­lently posi­tio­ned in terms of SEO exper­tise,” said Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs, Mana­ging Part­ner at Water­land (Photo © Waterland).

“The acqui­si­tion of Franke Media marks another important step towards our vision of support­ing users across all chan­nels in their purcha­sing decis­i­ons,” added Michael Röcker, CEO of Lions­Home and the Group. “By expan­ding our Deals & Coupons capa­bi­li­ties, we will be able to offer our part­ners even more attrac­tive adver­ti­sing oppor­tu­ni­ties in the future.”

“We are very exci­ted to be working with Lions­Home and Fashiola to build a leading Euro­pean digi­tal publi­shing group. Our goals align perfectly with those of Lions­Home and Water­land,” explains Vince Franke, foun­der and CEO of Franke Media. “Thanks to this part­ner­ship, we can acce­le­rate our inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion and help even more online shop­pers in Europe save on their online purchases.”

About Lions­Home

With around 100 million users a year, product compa­ri­son website opera­tor Lions­Home is one of Europe’s leading digi­tal publi­shing houses. Lions­Home offers an inno­va­tive online service to browse furni­ture and home access­ories as well as fashion from a variety of stores at a glance and compare offers. The company was foun­ded in 2014 by Chris­toph Köni­ger and Michael Röcker in Berlin and has since become one of the fastest growing digi­tal brands in the home & living sector. Lions­Home was named a Digital100 winner by Simi­lar­Web in 2022, making it one of the top ten fastest-growing digi­tal brands in the Home & Living segment. The add-on Fashiola was acqui­red in July 2022 and expan­ded the product port­fo­lio into the fashion segment.

About Franke Media B.V.

Franke Media, based in Oister­wijk, is one of the leading compa­nies in the Dutch affi­liate marke­ting world and opera­tes Acties.nl and Deals.be, the most visi­ted discount websites in the Nether­lands and Belgium. Across all plat­forms, more than 1.5 million users a month become aware of the wide range of discount and special offers on the web pages. The team ensu­res that visi­tors always find the most inte­res­t­ing and favorable discounts and special offers, ensu­ring satis­fied custo­mers and maxi­mum results for part­ners. Part­ner­ships exist with nume­rous major natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal brands, inclu­ding bol.com, Amazon, ASOS, H&M, Nike and HEMA, among others.

About Water­land

Water­land is an inde­pen­dent private equity invest­ment firm that helps compa­nies realize their growth plans. With substan­tial finan­cial support and indus­try exper­tise, Water­land enables its port­fo­lio compa­nies to achieve acce­le­ra­ted growth both orga­ni­cally and through acqui­si­ti­ons. Water­land has offices in the Nether­lands (Bussum), Belgium (Antwerp), France (Paris), Germany (Hamburg, Munich), Poland (Warsaw), the UK (London, Manches­ter), Ireland (Dublin), Denmark (Copen­ha­gen), Norway (Oslo), Spain (Barce­lona) and Switz­er­land (Zurich). Curr­ently, appro­xi­m­ately 14 billion euros in equity funds are under management.

Water­land has consis­t­ently outper­for­med with its invest­ments since its incep­tion in 1999. The firm ranks fourth globally in the HEC/Dow Jones Private Equity Perfor­mance Rankings (Janu­ary 2023) and seventh among global private equity firms in the Preqin Consis­tent Perfor­mers in Global Private Equity & Venture Capi­tal Report 2022.
www.waterland.de

 

News

Frankfurt/Miami — Cygna Labs, a leading compli­ance and cloud secu­rity soft­ware company, has ente­red into a binding agree­ment to acquire Vital­QIP, a global DDI soft­ware provi­der from Nokia Solu­ti­ons & Network Oy (“Nokia”). Cygna Labs is supported by the Frank­furt-based private equity firm VR Equi­typ­art­ner (VREP), which holds a mino­rity stake in the company. The acqui­si­tion includes the Vital­QIP soft­ware solu­tion, custo­mer base and Vital QIP’s inter­na­tio­nal team of experts.

Cygna Labs is a leading soft­ware company in the areas of networ­king, cloud as well as secu­rity and the third largest global DDI provi­der. Many Fortune 100 custo­mers use Cygna Labs’ DDI products and services and secu­rity and compli­ance solu­ti­ons to iden­tify and proac­tively miti­gate thre­ats to their data secu­rity in a timely manner, pass compli­ance audits, and increase the produc­ti­vity of their IT departments.

Going forward, Cygna Labs’ mana­ged service offe­rings will be expan­ded to include solu­ti­ons from Vital­QIP, which is one of the top five provi­ders of DDI soft­ware and has nume­rous deploy­ments with large enter­pri­ses. Vital­QIP will remain as an inde­pen­dent product line within Cygna Labs Group after the tran­sac­tion. As a result of the tran­sac­tion, Vital­QIP custo­mers will bene­fit from Cygna Labs’ exper­tise and inno­va­tions, and will conti­nue to be served by compre­hen­sive main­ten­ance and support services, as well as 24x7 world­wide service.

Alex­an­der Häcker, CEO of Cygna Labs Group, said, “Cygna Labs conti­nues to support large enter­pri­ses that rely on our DDI products and services. With this acqui­si­tion, we expand our offe­ring to include VitalQIP’s indus­try-proven open and scalable DDI solu­ti­ons, which we will offer along­side our exis­ting DDI solutions.”

“The acqui­si­tion of Nokia’s leading DDI soft­ware streng­thens our Intellec­tual Property offe­ring and makes Cygna Labs the global number two in the DDI market,” added Chris­tian Ehren­thal, CEO of Cygna Labs. “From a busi­ness perspec­tive, the acqui­si­tion expands our product port­fo­lio, adds more Fortune 100 compa­nies to our custo­mer base, and increa­ses oppor­tu­ni­ties for Cygna Labs to expand our global market presence.”

Chris­tian Futter­lieb, Mana­ging Direc­tor of VR Equi­typ­art­ner, comm­ents, “Follo­wing the acqui­si­ti­ons of the Diamond IP soft­ware solu­tion from British Tele­com and the DDI busi­ness unit of NCC Group last year, the Vital­QIP add-on marks the third important growth step for Cygna Labs within a very short time. We are very plea­sed to be able to accom­pany the company in this process.”

VR Equi­typ­art­ner at a glance

VR Equi­typ­art­ner is one of the leading equity finan­ciers in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land. The company supports medium-sized family busi­nesses in a goal-orien­ted manner and with deca­des of expe­ri­ence in the stra­te­gic solu­tion of complex finan­cing issues. Invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties include growth and expan­sion finan­cing, corpo­rate succes­sion or share­hol­der chan­ges. VR Equi­typ­art­ner offers majo­rity and mino­rity invest­ments as well as mezza­nine finan­cing. As a subsi­diary of DZ BANK, the central insti­tu­tion of the coope­ra­tive banks in Germany, VR Equi­typ­art­ner consis­t­ently puts the sustaina­bi­lity of corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment ahead of short-term exit thin­king. VR Equitypartner’s port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses around 60 commit­ments with an invest­ment volume of EUR 400 million. www.vrep.de.

News

Ebner Stolz Mönning Bachem leaves Nexia and beco­mes a member of the inter­na­tio­nal network RSM in Octo­ber. What will happen to the previous German RSM company has not yet been commu­ni­ca­ted. Ebner Stolz’s sales figu­res for the past fiscal year are impres­sive: It was able to gene­rate 15.2 percent more than in the previous year. The tax consul­ting busi­ness also grew significantly.

RSM increa­ses global reve­nue by 15% to more than $8 billion in 2022

RSM is one of the leading provi­ders of audi­ting, tax and consul­ting services for medium-sized compa­nies. released its global reve­nue figu­res for 2022 and announ­ced the launch of its 2030 global stra­tegy. RSM Inter­na­tio­nal repor­ted in Febru­ary 2023 that global sales in 2022 were more than $8 billion (€7.34 billion), up 15% from the previous year. — Global sales up more than 41% in three years; double-digit growth in all RSM regi­ons for the second year in a row. 10% increase in head­count to 57,000 RSM employees. RSM network targets 100% reve­nue growth by 2030,

Largest growth in consul­ting services

In 2022, global fees for RSM’s consul­ting services increased by 37%, inclu­ding IT consul­ting, which increased by 26%. Global sales from Risk Advi­sory also grew by 26%. RSM also saw strong global growth in Accoun­ting Services (11%), Tax (8%) and Audit (6%). — The number of employees world­wide also grew again. This has increased by 18% in the last two years alone to now 57,000 employees.

Global Stra­tegy 2030 marks a new era for RSM

With its Global Stra­tegy 2030, RSM aims to achieve 100% reve­nue growth by 2030. As part of the stra­tegy, RSM will also incre­asingly use auto­ma­tion, Big Data, machine lear­ning and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to meet the chan­ges in the new world of work and support compa­nies in the best possi­ble way.

About RSM in Germany

RSM GmbH is one of the ten largest medium-sized audi­ting and tax consul­ting firms in Germany, inde­pen­dent and part­ner-mana­ged. The more than 900 employees, inclu­ding around 250 audi­tors, tax advi­sors and attor­neys, provide audi­ting, tax, tran­sac­tion, corpo­rate and legal advice prima­rily to medium-sized compa­nies from 18 loca­ti­ons. RSM GmbH also advi­ses its custo­mers world­wide in the RSM network with more than 57,000 employees in around 120 countries.

News

Annwei­ler — The manu­fac­tu­rer of folding carton Buch­mann Karton GmbH sells to carton­board produ­cer Moritz J. Weig GmbH & Co KG. Buch­mann was advi­sed by Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek. Howe­ver, the take­over is still subject to regu­la­tory appr­oval. The produ­cers did not disc­lose the amount of the transaction.

Buch­mann looks back on a tradi­tion of about 120 years as an owner-mana­ged company and is active in the field of deve­lo­p­ment and produc­tion of folding cartons with more than 330 employees at the Annwei­ler site. Buch­mann gene­ra­ted sales of around EUR 190 million in 2022. At the begin­ning of March, a sales agree­ment was signed with the WEIG Group.

WEIG is also an owner-mana­ged group of compa­nies. WEIG’s acti­vi­ties cover the pack­a­ging, carton­board and recy­cling sectors. The WEIG Group includes compa­nies in Germany and South America. Appro­xi­m­ately 1500 employees gene­rate sales of over EUR 800 million p.a. for WEIG. The sale of the shares to Buch­mann took place within the frame­work of a struc­tu­red sales process.

A team led by M&A specia­lists Dr. Andreas Lenz (Colo­gne) and Dr. Rainer Hersch­lein (Stutt­gart) advi­sed the share­hol­ders of folding carton manu­fac­tu­rer Buch­mann Gesell­schaft mit beschränk­ter Haftung (Buch­mann) on its sale to the WEIG Group.

Advi­sors to Buch­mann Gesell­schaft mit beschränk­ter Haftung: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek 
Dr. Andreas Lenz, Colo­gne, Dr. Rainer Hersch­lein, LL.M., (Corpo­rate Law/M&A, joint lead), Stuttgart;
Dr. Johan-Michel Menke, LL.M., (Labor Law), Hamburg, Michael Neises (Finan­cing), Frankfurt,
Dr. Frank Baßler (Real Estate Law), Stutt­gart, Beatrice Stange, LL.M., (Compe­ti­tion Law), Düsseldorf;
Dr. Emanuel Teich­mann, Ramona Bauer-Schöll­kopf, LL.M., (both Corpo­rate Law/M&A), both Stuttgart,
Bastian Rieck, Dr. Vera Randel (both M&A, Corpo­rate Law), both Cologne;
Antje Münch, LL.M., (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Stuttgart,
Bettina Nehe­i­der (Public Law, Envi­ron­ment), Dr. Ruth Schnei­der (Commer­cial), both Munich;
Vero­nika Straub, Ivana Djepic (both Real Estate), both Stuttgart;
Chris­tian Staps, Michèle von Lewin­ski (both Banking & Finance), both Frankfurt;
Dr. Arietta von Stechow, Timo Trefzger (both Labor Law), both Hamburg;
Carina Bart (Labor Law), Stuttgart

The sellers were advi­sed on tax matters by lawy­ers and tax consul­tants Chris­tian Roth and Jens Otto von Bans­bach.

The WEIG Group was repre­sen­ted by a team from Graf von West­pha­len Frank­furt am Main, led by attor­ney Eric Messenzehl.

News

Düssel­dorf — The Frank­furt-based health­care PR agency 3K Agen­tur für Kommu­ni­ka­tion GmbH is selling to the British WPP Group. A Düssel­dorf-based Deloitte Legal team led by corporate/M&A part­ners Michael von Rüden and Thilo Hoff­mann (Düssel­dorf) advi­sed on the transaction.

Foun­ded in 1998, 3K Agen­tur für Kommu­ni­ka­tion GmbH is one of the leading health­care public rela­ti­ons agen­cies in Germany. It is known for its exper­tise in medi­cine, health­care, biophar­maceu­ti­cals and rela­ted scien­ces. Its clients include well-known global phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies, as well as consu­mer health brands and local biotech start-ups.

WPP is an inter­na­tio­nal commu­ni­ca­ti­ons, adver­ti­sing, public rela­ti­ons and tech­no­logy holding company head­quar­te­red in London. Through the tran­sac­tion, 3K Agen­tur für Kommu­ni­ka­tion GmbH will become part of the global network of Hill+Knowlton Stra­te­gies, a subsi­diary of WPP, which is an inter­na­tio­nal commu­ni­ca­ti­ons consul­tancy provi­ding services to local, multi­na­tio­nal and global clients.

For 3K Agen­tur für Kommu­ni­ka­tion GmbH, the tran­sac­tion promi­ses syner­gies with the global network of Hill+Knowlton Stra­te­gies and WPP. For its part, Hill+Knowlton Stra­te­gies’ acqui­si­tion of German health­care commu­ni­ca­ti­ons specia­list 3K offers a boost to its inter­na­tio­nal health­care capabilities.

Advi­sor 3K Agen­tur für Kommu­ni­ka­tion GmbH, owner Ruth Bastuck: Deloitte Legal
Led by corporate/M&A part­ners Michael von Rüden and Thilo Hoff­mann (Düssel­dorf)

Advi­sor WPP: DLA Piper
Daniel Osma­no­vic (Frank­furt) et al.

About Deloitte Legal

Deloitte Legal refers to the legal advice prac­ti­ces of the member compa­nies of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limi­ted, its affi­lia­tes or affi­lia­tes that provide legal services.
Deloitte refers to Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limi­ted (“DTTL”), its global network of member firms and its affi­lia­tes (coll­ec­tively, the “Deloitte Orga­niza­tion”). DTTL (also refer­red to as “Deloitte Global”) and each of its member firms and their affi­lia­tes are legally sepa­rate and inde­pen­dent enti­ties that cannot bind or obli­gate each other with respect to third parties. DTTL, each DTTL Member Company and Affi­lia­tes shall be liable only for their own acts and omis­si­ons and not for those of others. DTTL itself does not provide any services to clients. www.deloitte.com/de/UeberUns.

News

Munich/ Hamburg — Munich-based invest­ment holding Armira has bought into German start-up Factor Eleven. Its main share­hol­ders are giving up a majo­rity stake in the company. The company was foun­ded in 2014 by Alex­an­der Anhuth and is based in Hamburg. Previous main share­hol­ders and sellers of Factor Eleven are a family holding of the foun­der and CEO, Alex­an­der Anhuth, and a family holding of the entre­pre­neur and inves­tor Werner Dreesbach.

Factor Eleven says it is a leading tech­no­logy company that provi­des adver­ti­sers with a one-stop soft­ware solu­tion for their cross-chan­nel campaigns. Foun­ded in 2014 by Alex­an­der Anhuth, the company uses proprie­tary algo­rithms and deli­vers not only Brand Safety, but also metrics-based and trans­pa­rent billing. FACTOR ELEVEN is conti­nuously deve­lo­ping its own tech­no­logy stack to auto­mate and simplify the process from campaign plan­ning to billing. Campaigns can be plan­ned and booked by all adver­ti­sers in both mana­ged and self-service (soft­ware-as-a-service) mode. At the same time, the plat­form hand­les digi­tal campaigns for over one thousand compa­nies. Custo­mers and part­ners include well-known compa­nies from the corpo­rate, agency and SME sectors. The company curr­ently employs just under 100 people and is active on the Austrian and French markets in addi­tion to the German market. Other inter­na­tio­nal markets will follow.

The invest­ment holding company Armira invests prima­rily in tech­no­logy compa­nies. It offers closed-end alter­na­tive invest­ment funds that acquire equity inte­rests in medium-sized compa­nies in Germany and, where appro­priate, in Austria and Switz­er­land. The focus is on family busi­nesses and tech­no­logy. The focus is on the long-term deve­lo­p­ment of the companies.

Advi­sor Armira: Rödl & Partner

During the entire tran­sac­tion, Armira was advi­sed by a tran­sac­tion team from Rödl & Part­ner specia­li­zing in finan­cial issues. In addi­tion to conduc­ting a finan­cial due dili­gence, the team provi­ded ongo­ing advice on issues rele­vant to the purchase price in the share purchase agree­ment from the start of the project to signing. Part­ner Matthias Zahn was respon­si­ble for the over­all project manage­ment. Asso­ciate Part­ner Michal Wilc­zek was respon­si­ble for the execu­tion on this M&A deal. www.roedl.de.

Advi­sors to Armira Invest­ment Holding: White & Case (London)

Gareth Eagles (Finance), Marcus Booth (Private Equity), Dr. Matthias Kiese­wet­ter (M&A/Corporate; Hamburg), Emma Foster, Andreas Lischka (Frank­furt; both Finance), Phil­lip Vava­li­dis (Dubai), Hugo Schwarz Leite (both Private Equity), Markus Fischer (Finance; both Frank­furt), Moritz Müller-Butt­mann (M&A/Corporate; Hamburg); Asso­cia­tes: Oliver Trot­man, Jacob Heath (both Finance), Adnan Bekdur (all London), Thomas Jacques (both Private Equity), Tigran Saak­yan (both Dubai), Moritz Schnei­der, Dr. Nico Frehse, Thors­ten Eggert (all Corporate/M&A; all Hamburg)
Taxess (Frank­furt): Gerald Thomas (tax law) — known from the market

Advi­sor Factor Eleven: CMS Hasche Sigle (Munich)

Stefan-Ulrich Müller, Dr. Jessica Mohaupt-Schnei­der, Photo (© CMS) (both lead)
Dr. Jacob Siebert (all Corporate/Private Equity), Jörg Schr­ade (Tax Law), Dr. Markus Kaulartz (IT/Data Protec­tion), Stefan Lüft (IP), Dr. Bene­dikt Forsch­ner (Labor Law), Dr. André Frische­meier (Banking and Finance Law), Stefan Lehr (Anti­trust Law), Dr. Stefan Höß (Real Estate Law/Public Law), Dr. Chris­toph Küster (Corporate/Private Equity), Dr. Chris­toph Ceele (Labor Law); Asso­cia­tes: Tobias Kalski, Sebas­tian Hummel, Marie­louise Emmer, Matthias Unger, Dr. Chris­tian Seebur­ger (all Corporate/Private Equity), Eduard Kosavtsev (Tax Law), Dr. Felix Glocker, Katha­rina Hirzle (both IT/Data Protec­tion), Annika Linde­mann (IP), Sarah Schä­fer (Labor Law), Hatice Akyel (Banking and Finance Law)

 

News

Düssel­dorf — Main Capi­tal Part­ners (“Main”) reali­zes acqui­si­tion of pdv Finan­cial Soft­ware GmbH as well as van den Berg GmbH and van den Berg Service AG. In the future, the acqui­red compa­nies will operate under the umbrella of pdv Holding GmbH, which was foun­ded for this purpose and in which the manage­ment teams have inves­ted. The colla­bo­ra­tion between the two compa­nies marks a mile­stone in Main’s efforts to build a strong group in the banking soft­ware market.

Toge­ther with manage­ment, Main will support the group in its growth plans and with a selec­tive buy-and-build stra­tegy. The focus is on the further expan­sion of the banking soft­ware plat­form to include the core areas of trading, payment tran­sac­tions and supple­men­tary banking solu­ti­ons with a focus on recur­ring revenues.

pdv Finan­cial Soft­ware GmbH, head­quar­te­red in Hamburg, is the German market leader for capi­tal market soft­ware and offers end-to-end solu­ti­ons for the entire trading process chain. The solu­tion covers all major asset clas­ses and finan­cial instru­ments, both for buying and selling as well as for insti­tu­tio­nal and private trading. Key reasons for Main’s invest­ment include pdv’s cross-selling poten­tial within the broa­der banking soft­ware group, its attrac­tive finan­cial profile with sustained double-digit growth and high profi­ta­bi­lity, and its strong custo­mer base.

The van den Berg Group, which consists of van den Berg GmbH and van den Berg Service AG and is head­quar­te­red in Herzo­gen­rath, Germany, curr­ently offers payment soft­ware solu­ti­ons to its appro­xi­m­ately 100 custo­mers, who are prima­rily active in the banking sector. The company’s product port­fo­lio includes Payment Proces­sing and Manage­ment (PPM) with all elements requi­red for recei­ving, conver­ting, veri­fy­ing, correc­ting, recon­ci­ling and routing payment tran­sac­tions. In addi­tion, van den Berg offers further func­tions for SEPA Card Clea­ring for proces­sing card payments as well as an Instant Payments Gate­way. Estab­lished as a part­ner to banks for over 35 years and in use as a Payments-as-a-Service solu­tion for 15 years, van den Berg has built strong rela­ti­onships with its custo­mers and has succee­ded in buil­ding a long-stan­ding and loyal custo­mer base.

The products and services of pdv and van den Berg comple­ment each other to a large extent and thus promise a high synergy poten­tial through cross- and upsel­ling within the broa­der banking soft­ware group. The merger will further expand the alre­ady strong presence of both compa­nies in the banking soft­ware market.

The team led by Düssel­dorf-based Deloitte Legal lawy­ers Felix Fell­ei­sen and Max Lüer­ßen has advi­sed Main Capi­tal on a number of plat­form and add-on tran­sac­tions since 2015; more recently, Deloitte Legal has also repea­tedly acted for Main on the seller side, for exam­ple in the sale of finan­cial soft­ware provi­der b+m Group to German tech­no­logy inves­tor LEA Part­ners and the stra­te­gic sale of arte­gic to UNITED Marke­ting Tech­no­lo­gies by DuMont.

Advi­sor Main Capi­tal Part­ners: Deloitte Legal

Max Lüer­ßen (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf, Lead), Felix Fell­ei­sen (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf, Co-Lead); Frauke Heudt­lass (Part­ner, Labor Law, Düssel­dorf), Niko Jako­vou, LL.M. (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), Felix Skala, LL.M. (Part­ner, Anti­trust Law, Hamburg); Dr. Fleur Johanna Prop, LL.M. (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Diet­mar Althaus (Coun­sel, Commercial/IT, Colo­gne), Stefan Weste (Coun­sel, Labor Law, Berlin); Nicole Deneke, Nicole Rurik (Asso­cia­tes, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), Leonie Onkel­bach (Asso­ciate, Labor Law, Düsseldorf).

Deloitte Finan­cial Advi­sory: Jan Verleys­donk (Part­ner), Mathias Keller (Part­ner), Sven Hausen (Direc­tor); Vilma Vranici (Mana­ger), Janis Fabio Baltha­sar (Mana­ger), Pauline Tubben (Consul­tant, all Deloitte Finan­cial Advi­sory, Düsseldorf)

News

Bonn/ Berlin — The DeepT­ech & Climate Fund (DTCF) has successfully closed its first invest­ment in a Series A finan­cing. Toge­ther with HZG Group, Onsight Ventures and the exis­ting inves­tor SquareOne, the DTCF provi­des xolo GmbH with 8 million euros. With this funding, xolos aims to trans­form the 3D prin­ting indus­try through their revo­lu­tio­nary new process called “Xolo­gra­phy”. The focus of xolo is on opti­cal appli­ca­ti­ons, bioprin­ting and the dental and acou­stics industries.

Xolo­gra­phy is a volu­metric prin­ting process that prints quickly and produ­ces very smooth surfaces. It also opera­tes with mate­ri­als that previously could not be used for 3D prin­ting. This addres­ses three of the major chal­lenges facing the 3D prin­ting indus­try. The aim is to help Xolo­gra­phy tech­no­logy achieve a breakth­rough and ther­eby open up comple­tely new fields of appli­ca­tion for 3D prin­ting. For exam­ple, in medi­cal tech­no­logy for the repro­duc­tion of organs or in the opti­cal indus­try for the produc­tion of high-precis­ion lenses.

Objects arise virtually from nothing

The prin­ting process was deve­lo­ped at the Berlin-Adlers­hof Tech­no­logy Park by xolo foun­ders Prof. Dr. Martin Regehly, Prof. Dr. Stefan Hecht and Dirk Radzinski. Xolo­gra­phy sounds like science fiction, because objects are crea­ted virtually from nothing. The three foun­ders are putting Xolo­gra­phy to work in the Xube 3D prin­ter. Unlike conven­tio­nal 3D prin­ting proces­ses, which work layer by layer, Xolo­gra­phy prints from the full volume.

For this purpose, a cuvette contai­ning liquid resin moves conti­nuously through a so-called light section into which a light projec­tion is focu­sed. By enri­ching the liquid resin with photo-active special chemi­cals deve­lo­ped by xolo, the so-called photo­in­itia­tors, the end product with smooth surfaces is crea­ted within a very short time. Read more in the scien­ti­fic jour­nal “Nature”, in which the rese­ar­chers descri­bed their method: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020‑3029‑7.

Our inves­tors under­stand the importance of the para­digm shift

xolo co-foun­der and CEO Dirk Radzinski: “Xolo­gra­phy repres­ents a funda­men­tal change in the 3D prin­ting indus­try. From hard­ware to mate­ri­als, ever­y­thing is being rethought. Our inves­tors under­stand the importance of this para­digm shift and support us with their finan­cial strength, exper­tise and network to make it a success.”

Frank Cars­ten Herzog, Mana­ging Part­ner of the HZG Group, adds: “Xolo­gra­phy signi­fi­cantly impro­ves the reso­lu­tion and volume gene­ra­tion rate of previous proces­ses. This means that in the future, the process will be able to produce high volu­mes of detailed objects in a short time — the econo­mic poten­tial is enormous.”

The DTCF focu­ses its invest­ments on the capi­tal-inten­sive growth phase of compa­nies. The goal is to deve­lop the tech­no­logy cham­pi­ons of the future. With its first invest­ment, the DeepT­ech & Climate fund aims to help xolo’s revo­lu­tio­nary 3D prin­ting tech­no­logy make the tran­si­tion to indus­trial-scale use. Co-Mana­ging Direc­tor Tobias Faupel (photo © DTCF): “xolo has all the prere­qui­si­tes to become a future market leader in the field of 3D prin­ting. We are plea­sed to accom­pany this deve­lo­p­ment toge­ther with HZG, Onsight Ventures and SquareOne.”

Consul­tant Xolo: Vogel Heerma Waitz 

Florian Kozok and Sinje Clausen

News

Bonn — High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) closes its fourth fund gene­ra­tion with a total volume of 493.8 million euros. This makes HTGF IV HTGF’s largest fund to date. The seed inves­tor, which invests in tech­no­logy start­ups in the digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces and chemi­cals sectors, has backed more than 690 start­ups since it was foun­ded. The volume of the third fund gene­ra­tion of 319.5 million euros was excee­ded by more than 50 percent in the fourth fund generation.

HTGF has also once again been able to signi­fi­cantly increase the number of private inves­tors compared to fund gene­ra­tion three: 45 private inves­tors are parti­ci­pa­ting in HTGF IV along­side the German Fede­ral Minis­try of Econo­mics and Climate Protec­tion (BMWK) and KfW Capi­tal. The majo­rity of the private inves­tors are market-leading SMEs or hidden cham­pi­ons. Nume­rous large compa­nies and family offices are also among the investors.

The repre­sen­ta­tive of private inves­tors in the new fund is Alexa Gorman (photo © SAP.io). Gorman leads all SAP SE startup acti­vi­ties world­wide as senior vice presi­dent of SAP.iO; she is conside­red a proven expert in corpo­rate venture capi­tal and will serve as vice chair of the Inves­tor Advi­sory Board.

Initial invest­ments have alre­ady been made, inclu­ding in Reflex Aero­space (custom and high-perfor­mance satel­li­tes), Phia­lo­gics (biolo­gics that balance the immune response in acute and chro­nic inflamm­a­tion), and Visio­Lab (AI-based check-out solutions).

With the new gene­ra­tion of funds, HTGF can invest even more flexi­bly and quickly, while simpli­fy­ing the invest­ment crite­ria. Start-ups need only be less than three years old and must be head­quar­te­red in Germany or have a German perma­nent estab­lish­ment if the company is based in another Euro­pean country.

In addi­tion, the fund can provide more capi­tal per start-up in the future: Up to one million euros is possi­ble in the seed round. HTGF can thus invest a total of up to four million euros in a start-up across all finan­cing rounds.

“We are proud to have signi­fi­cantly expan­ded the number of private inves­tors at HTGF IV despite an envi­ron­ment that has been extre­mely diffi­cult in some cases. In addi­tion to the very good econo­mic perfor­mance of the first three funds, the diverse added values for private inves­tors are decisive. The inves­tor base of HTGF IV reflects the strengths of the German economy: In addi­tion to mostly hidden cham­pi­ons, selec­ted large corpo­ra­ti­ons, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and, for the first time, five family offices are inves­tors in HTGF IV,” says Dr. Alex von Fran­ken­berg, Mana­ging Direc­tor of HTGF.

“The very successful fund­rai­sing conti­nues to enable us to finance start-ups with pionee­ring inno­va­tions in large numbers. At the same time, we are able to deploy more capi­tal per invest­ment thanks to our fund inves­tors. This is a signi­fi­cant change in this market phase,” Guido Schlit­zer, Mana­ging Direc­tor of HTGF

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported almost 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. More than €4.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 2,000 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 160 companies.

Fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, and 45 compa­nies from a wide range of industries.
www.htgf.de

News

Berlin — A Berlin team of Deloitte Legal led by Dr. Julia Peter­sen (Part­ner) advi­sed capi­ton V GmbH & Co Betei­li­gungs KG on the sale of Raith GmbH and AEMtec GmbH and their subsi­dia­ries to the newly estab­lished “capi­ton Quan­tum” fund.

Raith and AEMtec are leading compa­nies in the field of indus­trial tech­no­logy. Under capiton’s owner­ship, both compa­nies have focu­sed on capa­city expan­sion, inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and impro­ving their tech­no­logy offe­ring in recent years. Toge­ther with the respec­tive manage­ment teams, who will remain on board after the tran­sac­tion, a stra­tegy of orga­nic growth and addi­tio­nal acqui­si­ti­ons will conti­nue to be pursued.

Chris­toph Karbenk, Mana­ging Part­ner at capi­ton (Photo © Capi­ton): “On behalf of the entire capi­ton team, I would like to thank the group of inves­tors who supported us in this tran­sac­tion, as well as the manage­ment teams who have done an outstan­ding job to date. We are very exci­ted to conti­nue this successful part­ner­ship and take both compa­nies to the next level. The trans- action gene­ra­tes strong returns for our exis­ting capi­ton V LPs, who have been left free to either gene­rate liqui­dity or parti­ci­pate in the next chap­ter of both companies.”

In the context of the tran­sac­tion, the Deloitte Legal team was respon­si­ble in parti­cu­lar for the prepa­ra­tion of a compre­hen­sive legal fact­book as well as the execu­tion of the multi­na­tio­nal legal due dili­gence regar­ding the compa­nies of the Raith and AEMtec Group. Under the leader­ship of Deloitte Legal, legal advi­sors from China, the USA and the Nether­lands were invol­ved in the due dili­gence. The finan­cial due dili­gence was perfor­med by Deloitte Finan­cial Advisory.

Advi­sor Capi­ton: Deloitte Legal
Dr. Julia Peter­sen (lead), Dr. Moritz Erkel, Anna Reshe­tina-Kork­hova, Dr. Klaus Pilz (all Corpo­rate M&A, Berlin), Stefan Weste (Labor Law, Berlin).
Deloitte Finan­cial Advisory:
Kars­ten Holl­asch, Roland Basler, Caro­lin Kopy­ciok, Nastas­sja Nier­ling, Tim Geil­ker (all Finan­cial Advi­sory, Düssel­dorf; hand­ling Raith Finan­cial Due Dili­gence); Jens Schulze-Velling­hau­sen, Dirk Uhl, Chris­tof Schrei­ber, Alex­an­der Schmidt, Fabian Hansen, Fedor Ivanov (all Finan­cial Advi­sory, Hamburg; hand­ling AEMtec Finan­cial Due Diligence).

Other advi­sors: UBS Invest­ment Bank, Stephen­son Harwood LLP, P+P Pöllath, BMH Bräu­ti­gam, Ashurst LLP, Ernst & Young, Houli­han Lokey and Roland Berger

News

Frank­furt a.M. — McDer­mott Will & Emery is advi­sing Invest­corp Tech­no­logy Part­ners on the acqui­si­tion of Dutch soft­ware manu­fac­tu­rer NetRom Holding B.V. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in Q1 2023.

McDer­mott consis­t­ently advi­ses Invest­corp Tech­no­logy Part­ners on tran­sac­tions in the tech­no­logy sector. For exam­ple, the acqui­si­tion of cyber­se­cu­rity company Avira for around 165 million euros and its sale for around 360 million dollars to Norton­Li­feL­ock Inc. and on the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity inte­rest in the Content­serv Group.

Invest­corp Tech­no­logy Part­ners focu­ses on inves­t­ing in fast-growing, foun­der-led compa­nies in Europe. The tech­no­logy team is conside­red a market leader in inves­t­ing in lower middle market compa­nies with a focus on soft­ware, data/analytics, cyber­se­cu­rity and fintech/payment. Since 2001, Invest­corp has raised more than $1.5 billion to invest in tech­no­logy companies.

Advi­sors to Invest­corp Tech­no­logy Part­ners: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frankfurt

Dr. Michael Cziesla (Photo © McDer­mott Will & Emery), Norman Wasse, LL.M. (both Corporate/M&A, lead), Dr. Heiko Kermer, Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel; both Tax Law); Asso­ciate: Dr. Marion von Grön­heim (Corporate/M&A)
Orange Clover (Nether­lands)
Mușat și Asociații (Roma­nia)

 

News

Berlin — Raue is expan­ding its corpo­rate and tran­sac­tional team with the addi­tion of Dr. Nadine Hartung (photo © Raue) as Equity Part­ner on March 1, 2023. Dr. Nadine Hartung specia­li­zes in corpo­rate law and M&A advice in the health­care sector and was previously a part­ner at McDer­mott Will & Emery in Munich.

Dr. Nadine Hartung advi­ses natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors as well as health­care provi­ders on corpo­rate law, M&A tran­sac­tions, contract draf­ting and corpo­rate gover­nance and compli­ance issues. Her clients include private equity and venture capi­tal funds, medi­cal care centers (MVZ), opera­tors of hospi­tals and nursing homes, as well as phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies and medi­cal device manu­fac­tu­r­ers. It is recom­men­ded by Legal 500, Best Lawy­ers and Handelsblatt.

Dr. Nadine Hartung studied and recei­ved her docto­rate in Marburg. From 2010 to 2016, she worked at Henge­ler Muel­ler in Berlin and Frank­furt am Main before joining McDer­mott Will & Emery LLP in 2016. In 2013/2014, she spent a second­ment in the M&A team of Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York.

Dr. Hartung explains the reasons for her move to Raue: “Raue offers nume­rous syner­gies to my advi­sory prac­tice, espe­ci­ally in corpo­rate law and VC advi­sory as well as in health­care law and digi­tal economy. I look forward to working with my colle­agues at Raue to further expand tran­sac­tional advice focu­sed on the health­care sector in particular.”

Raue Mana­ging Part­ner Dr. Wolf­ram Hertel: “We are very plea­sed that Dr. Hartung has joined us. With her, we have found an expe­ri­en­ced part­ner perso­na­lity who has deve­lo­ped an indus­try-focu­sed advi­sory offe­ring — this fits perfectly with our own stra­te­gic approach. We conti­nue to focus on growth in advi­sing regu­la­ted indus­tries and technologies.”

Prof. Dr. Andreas Nelle, Part­ner at Raue in the Corpo­rate and M&A prac­tice, says of Dr. Hartung’s arri­val: “Dr. Hartung is an excel­lent addi­tion to our private equity / venture capi­tal advi­sory prac­tice. With her, we will further increase our exper­tise in advi­sing tran­sac­tions, in parti­cu­lar also for natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors in the health­care industry.”

Dr. Katha­rina Wodarz, part­ner at Raue in the health­care sector adds: “Dr. Nadine Hartung is an almost ideal addi­tion for us. She has known the health­care sector for many years and is fami­liar with its complex regu­la­tion. This allows for seam­less colla­bo­ra­tion with our strong regu­la­tory team when advi­sing on new busi­ness models and transactions.”

With the addi­tion of Dr. Nadine Hartung, Raue’s Corporate/M&A, PE/VC prac­tice compri­ses a total of 14 profes­sio­nals (six equity part­ners, one coun­sel, one senior asso­ciate, one of coun­sel and five associates).

About RAUE

Raue is an inter­na­tio­nally active law firm based in Berlin. She provi­des compre­hen­sive advice to natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies and public enti­ties on invest­ment projects, tran­sac­tions, regu­la­tory issues and conten­tious dispu­tes. www.raue.com.

News

Landshut/ Nurem­berg — Bayern Kapi­tal, one of the most expe­ri­en­ced and active inves­tors in the German high-tech finan­cing land­scape, and the seed fund BORN2GROW, which specia­li­zes in high-growth start-ups in pionee­ring tech­no­lo­gies, are jointly inves­t­ing in trap­lin­ked. The Nurem­berg-based start-up deve­lops perma­nent moni­to­ring systems and networked traps for the control and moni­to­ring of rats, mice, insects and other pests. Seve­ral busi­ness angels are also invol­ved in the invest­ment, which totals EUR 2.3 million.

trap­lin­ked GmbH was foun­ded in 2019 by Tim Kirch­hof in Nurem­berg and produ­ces remo­tely moni­to­red auto­ma­tic pest traps as well as accom­pany­ing soft­ware that covers all the office work of a pest control­ler, from infe­sta­tion and treat­ment docu­men­ta­tion to deploy­ment route plan­ning and moni­to­ring to invoi­cing. The idea for the start-up matu­red while the foun­der was a student trai­nee at a pest control company. Here Kirch­hof reco­gni­zed the enorm­ous poten­tial for auto­ma­ting work proces­ses, which lay parti­cu­larly in the daily mono­to­nous work with trap boxes in which no catches were recorded.

With the combi­na­tion of wire­less commu­ni­ca­tion and sensor tech­no­logy, trap­lin­ked has since contri­bu­ted signi­fi­cantly to the digi­tiza­tion of the pest control indus­try. The JERRY and TOM smart sensor modu­les moni­tor and docu­ment the condi­tion of trap boxes with real-time noti­fi­ca­ti­ons across multi­ple sites, making impact traps a time- and cost-effec­tive control method for pests of all kinds. This can signi­fi­cantly reduce food loss, the spread of dise­ase, and the use of contro­ver­sial poison baits ridd­led with draw­backs and risks.

So far, trap­lin­ked has sold more than 55,000 sensor modu­les across Europe. The new finan­cial resour­ces will be used to drive forward the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion stra­tegy and to expand the hard­ware — parti­cu­larly in the areas of connec­ti­vity and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence for auto­ma­tic data analy­sis. Another focus is on mone­tiz­ing the in-house trap­lin­ked software.

Daniel Peli­kan, CEO of trap­lin­ked, comm­ents: “The hard­ware was our market entry. We have imple­men­ted this very successfully. With the fresh capi­tal, we now put the focus on soft­ware. Our goal is to gene­rate around 1,000,000 ARR by 2024.”

Manuel Böhrin­ger (Photo © Manuel Böhrin­ger), invest­ment mana­ger of BORN2GROW adds: “The market poten­tial in pest control is huge. We are convin­ced to revo­lu­tio­nize the market for digi­tal pest control toge­ther with the strong foun­ding team of traplinked.”

“Limi­ting pest effects is beco­ming incre­asingly important and at the same time more diffi­cult in the context of global warm­ing,” comm­ents Monika Steger, mana­ging direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal. “By elimi­na­ting poison bait and other toxics, trap­lin­ked is taking a sustainable approach to working at the cutting edge here, which is why we’re happy to support the company with our investment.”

About trap­lin­ked Gmbh

trap­lin­ked deve­lops digi­tal solu­ti­ons for pest control. Networked beat traps and the trap­lin­ked app save pest control opera­tors time and enable them to provide outstan­ding service to their custo­mers in all indus­tries. The goal: to make stri­ker traps a time- and cost-effi­ci­ent control method. Curr­ently, the use of traps is asso­cia­ted with high person­nel costs, as they must be checked daily. This is where traplinked’s digi­tal solu­tion comes in: A combi­na­tion of wire­less commu­ni­ca­tion and sensor tech­no­logy moni­tors and docu­ments pest infe­sta­ti­ons, even across multi­ple loca­ti­ons. www.traplinked.com

About BORN2GROW

BORN2GROW (B2G) is a Heil­bronn-based and inter­na­tio­nally active seed fund that focu­ses on invest­ments in high-growth start­ups in forward-looking tech­no­lo­gies such as Life Scien­ces, Clean­Tech, Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence & Machine Lear­ning, IoT, Hard­ware & Robo­tics, and Soft­ware. B2G was foun­ded in 2013 and supports its port­fo­lio compa­nies with capi­tal, know-how and its exten­sive network. Since its incep­tion, the fund has actively supported more than 25 port­fo­lio compa­nies. B2G works toge­ther with other VC funds and busi­ness angels. B2G is a subsi­diary of ZFHN Zukunfts­fonds Heil­bronn, a family office that focu­ses on networ­king acti­vi­ties and invest­ments in the Heil­bronn-Fran­ken region. In this context, the coope­ra­tion between natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal start-ups and medium-sized compa­nies from the region is inten­si­fied. www.born2grow.de

About Bayern Kapital

Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, is the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria. It accom­pa­nies inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies in the Free State through various growth phases, from seed to later stage, with equity capi­tal in the amount of 0.25 to 25 million euros. Bayern Kapi­tal often fills gaps in the VC sector in proven consor­tium constel­la­ti­ons with private inves­tors (busi­ness angels, family offices and corpo­rate ventures).

Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with a volume of around 700 million euros. Since its foun­da­tion in 1995 on the initia­tive of the state govern­ment, the wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern has so far inves­ted around 400 million euros of its own equity capi­tal in around 300 start-ups and scale-ups in sectors such as life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. The active port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses over 80 companies.

Examp­les of nume­rous ground­brea­king success stories that Bayern Kapi­tal has been invol­ved in early on include EOS (today the world’s leading tech­no­logy provi­der in indus­trial 3D prin­ting of metals and plas­tics), Proglove, Fazua, SimS­cale, Scom­pler, egym, Parcel­lab, Cobrai­ner, Quan­tum Systems, Casavi, Theva, Riskme­thods, Tubu­lis, Cata­lym, Immu­nic, Sirion and many more.
www.bayernkapital.de

 

News

Berlin — The Berlin-based company Selfapy, which offers people with mental illnesses effec­tive help in the form of digi­tal health appli­ca­ti­ons, has gained a strong part­ner in Medice Arznei­mit­tel as an inves­tor. The tran­sac­tion was supported by the invest­ment bank Bryan, Garnier & Co. On Decem­ber 23, 2022, a finan­cing round of 7 million euros was nota­ri­zed in Berlin. Leading the pack was Medice Arznei­mit­tel, a family-owned phar­maceu­ti­cal company focu­sed on the treat­ment of ADHD. All exis­ting inves­tors were also invol­ved, inclu­ding the health­care inves­tor SHS, Think.Health Ventures, IBB Ventures and HTGF.

7 million for further growth in Germany and Europe

“The funding round is an important mile­stone and a confir­ma­tion of confi­dence in the success of Selfapy,” Nora Blum, Co-CEO and Foun­der of Selfapy. The capi­tal provi­ded is to be used for the deve­lo­p­ment of further digi­tal health appli­ca­ti­ons for various mental disor­ders and for growth in the German market. More doctors and psycho­the­ra­pists can now be infor­med by Selfapy about the bene­fits of DiGA and prescribe Selfapy’s therapy cour­ses to their mentally ill patients.

A further part of the capi­tal is to be used for market entry in other Euro­pean countries:

“We see great poten­tial for digi­tal thera­pies in the area of mental illness, both in Germany and inter­na­tio­nally. With five comple­ted RCT studies and a broad user base in Germany, we are well on our way to expand our offe­ring to other indi­ca­ti­ons and into other markets,” Adham Kassab, Co-CEO of Selfapy

“Selfapy’s strong perfor­mance over the past few years speaks for itself. Digi­tal health appli­ca­ti­ons will conti­nue to gain importance in the coming years. We conti­nue to see a lot of growth poten­tial here and look forward to accom­pany­ing Selfapy on this jour­ney,” Dr. Richard Ammer, CEO of Medice. — Today, the MEDICE Group is one of the most successful owner-mana­ged family compa­nies in the German phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­try, with more than 1,000 employees and annual sales of over 300 million EURO in around 50 markets worldwide.

New digi­tal health apps for people with mental illnesses
Since 2021, Selfapy’s perma­nently listed online cour­ses for people with depres­sion and anxiety disor­ders have alre­ady been reim­bur­sed by all health insu­r­ers. The back­ground to this is the certi­fi­ca­tion of the therapy cour­ses as digi­tal health appli­ca­ti­ons (DiGA), which are perma­nently listed in the direc­tory of the Fede­ral Minis­try for Drugs and Medi­cal Devices (BfArM). The on the
Selfapy online cour­ses based on cogni­tive beha­vi­oral therapy methods signi­fi­cantly reduce the symptoms of people with depres­sion and gene­ra­li­zed anxiety disor­der: the effec­ti­ve­ness has been proven in rando­mi­zed control­led trials. Just a few weeks ago, Selfapy was able to offer two more online cour­ses for people with binge-eating disor­der and bulimia
Nervosa to its port­fo­lio, making it the first DiGA provi­der for eating disor­ders. But the total of four certi­fied online cour­ses is not to be the end of the story: The capi­tal raised will be used to deve­lop further digi­tal health appli­ca­ti­ons and to conduct addi­tio­nal clini­cal studies. www.selfapy.com

 

News

Munich — For the first time, Siemens AG has issued a crypto secu­rity under the Elec­tro­nic Secu­ri­ties Act in the amount of €60 million in a decen­tra­li­zed manner on a public block­chain. Hauck Aufhäu­ser Lampe acted as regis­trar and paying agent in the tran­sac­tion. Deka­Bank, DZ Bank and Union Invest­ment inves­ted in the bearer bond. GSK Stock­mann advi­sed Siemens AG on the legal struc­tu­ring and issu­ance of the crypto secu­ri­ties bond under the German Elec­tro­nic Secu­ri­ties Act (eWpG). This is the first issu­ance of a crypto secu­rity by a DAX-40 company in the millions.

New oppor­tu­ni­ties for elec­tro­nic securities

The eWpG, which has been in force since June 2021, has made it possi­ble for the first time in Germany to issue elec­tro­nic secu­ri­ties in fully digi­tal form, i.e. without a physi­cal global certi­fi­cate. The distinc­tive feature of crypto secu­ri­ties is that they are kept in a block­chain-based regis­try. To date, 20 such secu­ri­ties have been issued. With Siemens AG, one of Germany’s largest compa­nies is now taking advan­tage of this oppor­tu­nity on a substan­tial scale for the first time.

The parties have thus set a mile­stone in the deve­lo­p­ment of digi­tal secu­ri­ties in Germany in terms of the form and amount of the issue. The paper was regis­tered in a decen­tra­li­zed regis­try on a public block­chain in accordance with the legal frame­work for elec­tro­nic secu­ri­ties. The private keys are secu­red by Hauck Aufhäu­ser Lampe Privat­bank AG’s in-house crypto custo­dian, Hauck Aufhäu­ser Digi­tal Cust­ody (HADC). This struc­ture meant that sett­le­ment via a central secu­ri­ties depo­si­tory or a market maker was not neces­sary. The parties could thus deal directly with each other bila­te­rally and settle the paper through the register.

GSK Stock­mann and a team led by Frank­furt part­ner Dr. Tobias Rieth­mül­ler advi­sed Siemens AG on the capi­tal markets and banking regu­la­tory aspects of the issue. Among other things, the advice rela­ted to support in the draf­ting and nego­tia­tion of the requi­red contrac­tual docu­ments (bond terms and condi­ti­ons, issu­ance agree­ment, crypto secu­ri­ties regis­tra­tion agree­ment, paying agent agree­ment) as well as compli­ance under the eWpG.

GSK Stock­mann was able to draw on expe­ri­ence in the project, among other things, from advi­sing on one of the first ever block­chain secu­ri­ties tran­sac­tions in Germany, which also invol­ved Siemens AG in 2019. Most recently, GSK Stock­mann advi­sed Deut­sche Finance Group on the issu­ance of an elec­tro­nic secu­rity in Novem­ber 2022, also led by Dr. Tobias Riethmüller.

Advi­sors to Siemens AG: GSK Stockmann
Dr. Tobias Rieth­mül­ler (Lead Part­ner, Banking and Capi­tal Markets), Dr. Timo Patrick Bernau (Banking and Finan­cial Regu­la­tory Law); Asso­cia­tes: Patrick Wambold (Banking and Capi­tal Markets, Digi­tal Finan­cing Plat­forms), Dr. Martin Frey­tag (Banking and Finan­cial Regu­la­tory Law)

Heuking advi­sed Hauck Aufhäu­ser Lampe Privat­bank AG on the first crypto secu­ri­ties issue of Siemens AG, led by Frank­furt part­ner Dr. Dr. Johan­nes Blassl. Also advi­sing on various aspects of the tran­sac­tion were part­ner Dr. Anne de Boer, part­ners Dr. Thors­ten Kuthe and Dr. Chris­toph Grin­gel, and asso­cia­tes Linda Karl, Michèle von Lewin­ski and Lena Wagner.

The compa­nies invol­ved have thus set a mile­stone in the deve­lo­p­ment of digi­tal secu­ri­ties in Germany in terms of the form and amount of the issue. The paper was regis­tered in a decen­tra­li­zed regis­try on a public block­chain, in accordance with the legal frame­work for elec­tro­nic secu­ri­ties. The private keys were secu­red by Hauck Aufhäu­ser Lampe Privat­bank AG’s in-house crypto custo­dian, Hauck Aufhäu­ser Digi­tal Cust­ody (HADC).

As part of the tran­sac­tion, various contracts had to be drawn up. In parti­cu­lar, new regu­la­ti­ons such as the new Regu­la­tion on Requi­re­ments for Elec­tro­nic Secu­ri­ties Regis­tries (eWpRV) require crypto secu­ri­ties regis­trars to adhere to high regu­la­tory stan­dards for such tran­sac­tions. For Dr. Dr. Johan­nes Blassl, who has been advi­sing Hauck Aufhäu­ser Lampe on various projects for quite some time, this is his first tran­sac­tion as a Part­ner at Heuking. The crypto and compli­ance expert had only joined Heuking in mid-January.

Advi­sors to Hauck Aufhäu­ser Lampe: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek

Dr. Dr. Johan­nes Blassl (lead), Frank­furt; Dr. Anne de Boer, LL.M., Stutt­gart; Dr. Thors­ten Kuthe, Colo­gne; Dr. Chris­toph Grin­gel, Michèle von Lewin­ski, Linda Karl, Lena Wagner, (all Capi­tal Markets), all Frankfurt.

News

Stutt­gart — Keen­sight Capi­tal acqui­res Onven­tis, a leading provi­der of cloud procu­re­ment solu­ti­ons for SMEs in the DACH region, Bene­lux and Scan­di­na­via Part­ners. The seller is Main Capi­tal Part­ners, which had inves­ted in Onven­tis in 2019. Keen­sight was advi­sed by DLA Piper on this transaction.

Keen­sight will support Onven­tis as it conti­nues to evolve into an inter­na­tio­nal SaaS cham­pion in the midmar­ket. The current manage­ment team will remain with the company and invest toge­ther with Keen­sight Capital.

Onven­tis, head­quar­te­red in Stutt­gart, Germany, has been provi­ding cloud solu­ti­ons for the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion of purcha­sing and finance proces­ses since 2000. World­wide, more than 1,000 compa­nies in the Onven­tis network handle an annual procu­re­ment volume of over 10 billion euros with more than 50,000 suppliers.

During Main Capi­tal Part­ners’ invest­ment period, Onven­tis evol­ved from a company focu­sed on the DACH region to a leading pan-Euro­pean spend manage­ment soft­ware provi­der with local offices in the Nether­lands, Sweden and Austria. During this period, the company became an attrac­tive Rule-of-40 company with a strong focus on recur­ring reve­nue growth and an increase in total reve­nue of more than 2.0x.

Keen­sight Capi­tal is one of the leading Euro­pean growth buyout firms. For more than 20 years, the company has been making long-term invest­ments in profi­ta­ble compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and sales of between 10 and 400 million euros.

The DLA Piper team was led by Part­ner Lars Jessen (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) with Part­ners Sebas­tian Decker (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg), Dr. Konrad Rohde, Of Coun­sel Martin Hein­sius (both Tax, Frank­furt), Senior Asso­cia­tes Anne-Kath­rin Hoppe, Frie­de­rike Rickers (both Corporate/M&A, Hamburg), Sven Bisch­off (Tax) and Asso­ciate Daniel Osma­no­vic (Corporate/M&A, both Frank­furt) in the core team. The team in Germany included more the partners.

In addi­tion, an inter­na­tio­nal team from DLA Piper’s offices in Sweden, the Nether­lands and Austria acted in an advi­sory capacity.

Paul Hastings, Paris, advi­sed on the French law aspects and struc­tu­ring of the tran­sac­tion with Olivier Deren, Allard de Waal, Vincent Naci­n­o­vic and Alban Castarède.

About Main Capi­tal Partners

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading soft­ware inves­tor in the Bene­lux, DACH region and the Nordic count­ries. Main has nearly 20 years of expe­ri­ence streng­thening soft­ware compa­nies and works closely with the manage­ment teams of its port­fo­lio compa­nies as a stra­te­gic part­ner to realize sustainable growth and build excel­lent soft­ware groups. Main employs 60 people and has offices in The Hague, Stock­holm, Düssel­dorf, Antwerp and the USA (Boston). As of Octo­ber 2021, Main has over €2.2 billion in assets under manage­ment. Main has inves­ted in more than 150 soft­ware compa­nies to date. These compa­nies have crea­ted jobs for about 9000 employees.

About DLA Piper

DLA Piper is one of the world’s leading commer­cial law firms, with offices in more than 40 count­ries in Africa, Asia, Austra­lia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. In Germany, DLA Piper is repre­sen­ted by more than 250 lawy­ers at its offices in Frank­furt, Hamburg, Colo­gne and Munich. In certain juris­dic­tions, this infor­ma­tion may be conside­red attor­ney adver­ti­sing. www.dlapiper.com

News

Düssel­dorf — The IPO of United Internet’s subsi­diary IONOS on the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange took place on Febru­ary 8. Last year, United Inter­net made public its plans to float the cloud and web hosting company on the stock exch­ange follo­wing strong growth in recent years, in order to further expand its posi­tio­ning as a key provi­der of digi­tiza­tion solu­ti­ons for the self-employed and small and medium-sized enterprises.

In 2021, IONOS repor­ted sales of EUR 1.06 billion, which accoun­ted for just under 20 percent of United Internet’s total sales. The adjus­ted EBITDA margin was 32.2 percent.

McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed IONOS Group in the context of its IPO on the struc­tu­ring of the compen­sa­tion system for the Manage­ment Board and the revi­sion of the contrac­tual compen­sa­tion arran­ge­ments for top manage­ment. The shares of IONOS are listed in the Prime Stan­dard of the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange. It is the first major IPO in Europe in months.

IONOS is a leading Euro­pean provi­der of hosting services, cloud services and cloud infra­struc­ture from the United Inter­net AG Group. With the IPO, the company intends to further acce­le­rate its growth course.

United Inter­net is a leading Euro­pean inter­net service provi­der and tele­coms group.

Advi­sors to IONOS: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Düsseldorf
Dr. Thomas Gennert (lead), Volker Teigel­köt­ter; Asso­ciate: Julian Jäger (all labor law)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery

McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,200 lawy­ers in more than 20 offices in Europe, North America and Asia. Our lawy­ers cover the entire spec­trum of commer­cial and corpo­rate law with their advice. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP. https://www.mwe.com/de/

News

Dort­mund — Dort­mund-based start-up sovity has secu­red seven-figure seed funding to increase the effi­ci­ency and inno­va­tive capa­city of compa­nies through quick and easy access to data spaces. With the High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), one of Europe’s leading seed inves­tors, and the Fraun­ho­fer Tech­no­lo­gie-Trans­fer Fonds (FTTF), which has supported sovity since its begin­nings, two important compa­n­ions are on board. The new capi­tal will be used for the further deve­lo­p­ment of the product and the expan­sion of the market presence.

“We are very plea­sed that we were able to attract another well-known inves­tor in addi­tion to FTTF: HTGF also shares our vision of the market and the mission of our product around Data Space tech­no­logy.”, Sebas­tian Kleff, CEO and Co-Foun­der of sovity

“The market for Data Spaces is growing: compa­nies are now actively looking for solu­ti­ons that enable them to share data with part­ners as easily as possi­ble and without major tech­ni­cal hurd­les,” Dr. Sebas­tian Opriel, CTO and Co-Foun­der of sovity.

In Data Spaces, compa­nies can exch­ange and use data to measure the carbon foot­print of products, for exam­ple, or to gain trans­pa­rency about supplier requi­re­ments and capa­ci­ties. Data Spaces imple­ment prin­ci­ples of data sove­reig­nty — compa­nies retain full control over their data at all times. With sovity’s soft­ware — theCon­nec­tor-as-a-Service — compa­nies are offe­red the right solu­tion for this. This allows compa­nies to be connec­ted to a Date Spaces within ten minu­tes. Inde­pen­dent imple­men­ta­tion would take appro­xi­m­ately six to eight months.

Since its foun­ding in 2021, sovity has built a strong team of tech and busi­ness experts and curr­ently employs more than ten people. The team will use the funding to focus on further deve­lo­p­ment of the product. In addi­tion, the sales and marke­ting depart­ment is to be streng­the­ned in order to expand the market presence and acquire new custo­mers. On its website, sovity offers inte­res­ted compa­nies access to a trial version of its software.

“Sovity is very clear in their vision to make Data Spaces acces­si­ble to all busi­nesses. We see tech­no­logy as a rele­vant lever to enable compa­nies to exch­ange data with each other in order to opti­mize proces­ses and improve products and services,” Johan­nes Dier­kes, Invest­ment Mana­ger at HTGF.

“Sovity enables the exch­ange of data while provi­ding full data control to data holders. Since its incep­tion, the team has made excel­lent tech­ni­cal progress and won important custo­mers as well as renow­ned part­ners,” said Tobias Schwind, Mana­ging Part­ner at FTTF.

Last but not least, exis­ting part­ner­ships with Data Spaces initia­ti­ves, such as Catena‑X, Mobi­lity Data Space and Gaia‑X, as well as with the Inter­na­tio­nal Data Spaces Asso­cia­tion (IDSA), are to be further expan­ded. In addi­tion to these initia­ti­ves, sovity is alre­ady working with a large number of indus­trial compa­nies on pilot or tech­no­logy projects.

About sovity

Foun­ded in Octo­ber 2021 as a spin-off of the Fraun­ho­fer Insti­tute for Soft­ware and Systems Engi­nee­ring ISST in Dort­mund, sovity offers data sove­reig­nty as a service. The start-up provi­des compa­nies with the tech­no­logy for Data Spaces based on stan­dards, inclu­ding Inter­na­tio­nal Data Spaces (IDS), Gaia‑X or Eclipse Foun­da­tion. Thus, sovity provi­des compa­nies with the easiest and fastest access to Data Spaces. Compa­nies exch­ange a wide range of infor­ma­tion via Data Spaces in order to opti­mize proces­ses or products and to deve­lop new busi­ness models. The mana­ging direc­tors of sovity, Sebas­tian Kleff (Co-Foun­der, CEO) and Dr. Sebas­tian Opriel (Co-Foun­der, CTO), have seve­ral years of exper­tise in the field of data exch­ange as well as corre­spon­ding use cases, e.g. from Fraun­ho­fer rese­arch and IDS, as well as seve­ral years of expe­ri­ence in manage­ment consul­ting at BCG Platinion.

About FTTF — Fraun­ho­fer Tech­no­logy Trans­fer Fund (FTTF) GmbH

The FTTF finan­ces start-ups that use Fraun­ho­fer tech­no­logy. As a strong entre­pre­neu­rial part­ner, up to 250 TEUR will be inves­ted in the pre-seed phase and up to 5 MEUR in further finan­cing rounds. In addi­tion, the fund provi­des support with exten­sive start-up expe­ri­ence and a broad inves­tor network. The fund has a volume of 60 MEUR, alre­ady more than 30 port­fo­lio compa­nies and is mainly finan­ced by the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the Euro­pean Invest­ment Fund (EIF). www.fttf.eu

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported more than 690 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of the fourth fund, HTGF has over 1.3 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. More than €4.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in 2,000 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 160 compa­nies. Fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft, and more than 40 compa­nies from a wide range of industries.

News

Munich — Eraneos Group has acqui­red DCP. DCP is a consul­ting firm specia­li­zed in finan­cial service provi­ders with head­quar­ters in Düssel­dorf. The spec­trum of services ranges from busi­ness area alignment and the manage­ment of IT imple­men­ta­ti­ons to reor­ga­niza­tion and process opti­miza­tion to the imple­men­ta­tion of new regu­la­tory requi­re­ments. Eraneos Group was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by the law firm Gütt Olk Feldhaus.

Eraneos Group is an inde­pen­dent inter­na­tio­nal manage­ment and tech­no­logy consul­tancy with offices in Switz­er­land, Germany, the Nether­lands, Spain, Luxem­bourg and Asia. It is the result of the merger of Ginkgo Manage­ment Consul­ting, Quint Group and AWK Group announ­ced in 2021. Origi­nally purely Swiss, Eraneos has become a leading inter­na­tio­nal digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion consul­ting group in recent years through mergers with Talos, Ginkgo and Quint. In 2021, the Group achie­ved sales of almost 200 million euros.

Legal advi­sors Eraneos Group: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Dr. Heiner Feld­haus (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Lead), Dr. Tilmann Gütt (Part­ner, Banking/Finance), Thomas Becker (Of Coun­sel, IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), David Ziegel­mayer (Of Coun­sel, IP/Competition/Litigation), Matthias Uelner (Senior Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Ricarda Theis (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Chris­to­pher Krappitz (Asso­ciate, Banking/Finance)

Pusch Wahlig Work­place Law, Munich: Ingo Sappa (Part­ner, Employ­ment Law)

Kind & Drews, Düssel­dorf: Dr. Ernesto Drews (Part­ner, Tax Law)

About Gütt Olk Feldhaus

Gütt Olk Feld­haus is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm based in Munich. We provide compre­hen­sive advice on commer­cial and corpo­rate law. Our focus is on corpo­rate law, M&A, private equity and finan­cing. In these specia­list areas we also take on the litigation.

News

Amster­dam / Munich — Andra Tech Group, a leading group of compa­nies focu­sed on the manu­fac­tu­ring of precis­ion mecha­ni­cal compon­ents, successfully makes its second acqui­si­tion under the aegis of Equis­tone: With the majo­rity acqui­si­tion of DKH Metaal­be­werk­ing B.V. (“DKH”), a specia­li­zed manu­fac­tu­rer of complex metal­lic parts and compon­ents, the Dutch group further expands its presence in its home market. The group takes over DKH from its foun­der and CEO Fran­cois van Hirtum, who has deve­lo­ped the company into an estab­lished part­ner for a deman­ding custo­mer base from various high-tech industries.

Head­quar­te­red in the Nether­lands, Andra Tech Group (form­erly Kusters Beheer) has grown into a leading group for the manu­fac­ture of high-tech precis­ion compon­ents and modu­les since its foun­ding in 1973. Follo­wing the acqui­si­tion of metal specia­list DKH, the Group now grows to a total of seven compa­nies. As a result, the Andra Tech Group employs around 500 highly quali­fied employees across the group, who use their many years of expe­ri­ence to serve an inter­na­tio­nal custo­mer base — with a parti­cu­lar focus on the semi­con­duc­tor market as well as the aero­space, trans­port, pack­a­ging, food and medi­cal indus­tries. In addi­tion to the deve­lo­p­ment of high-tech proto­ty­pes and produc­tion of small to medium-sized series of precis­ion compon­ents, the Group combi­nes the highest level of exper­tise in the proces­sing of complex metals as well as synthe­tic and compo­site mate­ri­als with state-of-the-art tech­no­lo­gies (inclu­ding in the areas of 3D metal prin­ting and clean room assem­bly systems).

Based in Uden, the Nether­lands, DKH has grown since its foun­ding in 1999 to become a specia­list in the manu­fac­ture of complex, precis­ion mecha­ni­cal parts and compon­ents with a focus on CNC milling and turning. With solu­ti­ons for small to medium-sized product series, the company acts as a relia­ble part­ner for its custo­mers from diverse indus­tries — inclu­ding the manu­fac­tu­ring and food proces­sing indus­tries as well as the trans­por­ta­tion sector. The company curr­ently employs around 30 expe­ri­en­ced, highly quali­fied employees.

With the acqui­si­tion of DKH, Andra Tech Group successfully reali­zes its second acqui­si­tion within a short period of time. This is inten­ded on the one hand to further expand the Group’s growth and presence in its home market, and on the other hand to posi­tion DKH at the same time to best meet incre­asing custo­mer demand for its products.

“Toge­ther with the team, we have deve­lo­ped DKH into an important part­ner for the produc­tion of custo­mi­zed products in the Nether­lands. Now, through the merger with Andra Tech Group, we want to take the company’s previous success and deve­lo­p­ment to a new level,” explains Fran­cois van Hirtum, foun­der and CEO of DKH.

Geert Ketel­a­ars, CEO of Andra Tech Group, adds: “We are plea­sed to welcome DKH and its employees as a new member of our group. Toge­ther, we intend to conti­nue the impres­sive growth achie­ved under the leader­ship of Fran­cois van Hirtum.”

“With DKH, the Andra Tech Group gains another strong part­ner, which is excel­lently posi­tio­ned in its market. With its high quality stan­dards and compre­hen­sive tech­ni­cal know-how, DKH, now the seventh member, under­lines the strong tech­ni­cal capa­bi­li­ties of the group and once again increa­ses the attrac­ti­ve­ness towards the alre­ady broad custo­mer base,” explains Hubert van Wolfs­win­kel, Part­ner in Equistone’s Amster­dam office.

Respon­si­ble for the tran­sac­tion on the part of Equis­tone are Hubert van Wolfs­win­kel, Dr. Marc Arens (photo © Equis­tone), Phil­ipp Gauss and Josh Aalbers.

Equis­tone was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by PwC (Finan­cial & Tax) and Vesper (Legal).

About Equis­tone Part­ners Europe

Equis­tone Part­ners Europe is one of the most active Euro­pean equity inves­tors with a team of more than 40 invest­ment specia­lists in seven offices in Germany, Switz­er­land, the Nether­lands, France and the UK. The Equis­tone funds invest prima­rily in estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies with a good market posi­tion, above-average growth poten­tial and an enter­prise value of between EUR 50 and 500 million. Since incep­tion, equity has been inves­ted in more than 170 tran­sac­tions. The port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses around 50 compa­nies across Europe, inclu­ding around 20 active holdings in Germany, Switz­er­land, the Nether­lands and Belgium. Equis­tone is curr­ently inves­t­ing from its sixth fund, which closed in March 2018 with €2.8 billion. In addi­tion, the “Equis­tone Reinvest­ment Fund” was recently laun­ched, from which it is possi­ble to reinvest in mino­rity posi­ti­ons follo­wing sales of port­fo­lio compa­nies from the main funds. www.equistonepe.com

About Andra Tech Group https://werkenbijandratech.nl/home

About DKH Metaal­be­werk­ing https://www.dkhmetaal.nl/

News

Munich — The Gimv port­fo­lio company KÖBERL Group with Fink Gebäu­de­tech­nik GmbH & Co KG conso­li­da­tes the main loca­tion Munich in the pipe clea­ning and sewage tech­no­logy by acqui­ring the estab­lished specia­list compa­nies Rohr­rei­ni­gungs — Service RRS GmbH and THG Abwas­ser­tech­nik GmbH. The mana­ging part­ner, Andreas Stau­ber, remains on board and takes a stake in the KÖBERL Group. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the transaction.

The aim of the KÖBERL Group is to build up a leading full-service provi­der in buil­ding tech­no­logy and faci­lity manage­ment in Germany. Rohr­rei­ni­gungs — Service RRS GmbH (herein­af­ter also “RRS”) and THG Abwas­ser­tech­nik GmbH (herein­af­ter also “THG”) expand this attrac­tive busi­ness divi­sion of Fink Gebäu­de­tech­nik. This will make the Group a leading provi­der in this segment in the grea­ter Munich area as well. The specia­li­zed compa­nies are known for their custo­mer proxi­mity as well as tech­ni­cal compe­tence, avai­la­bi­lity paired with the most modern tech­ni­cal equip­ment. This merger not only increa­ses the recur­ring reve­nue of the KÖBERL Group, but also repres­ents an ideal stra­te­gic addition.

Andreas Stau­ber explains the merger: “Both RRS and THG have enjoyed an excel­lent repu­ta­tion in the grea­ter Munich area for seve­ral deca­des. I am ther­e­fore very plea­sed to have found a strong part­ner for the future of both compa­nies in the KÖBERL Group, which not only values today’s strong market posi­tion but also intends to conti­nue growing toge­ther. In parti­cu­lar, I am looking forward with great anti­ci­pa­tion to the syner­gies with Fink Gebäu­de­tech­nik that are still to be lever­a­ged. Within the frame­work of a very inten­sive process, the entre­pre­neu­rial approach of the KÖBERL Group, with Gimv as an expe­ri­en­ced and finan­ci­ally strong invest­ment company in the back­ground, was ulti­m­ately decisive.”

Armin and Karl Köberl, mana­ging part­ners of the KÖBERL Group, comment: “With RRS as well as THG we welcome two more members to the KÖBERL Group. Both compa­nies belong to the most renow­ned compa­nies in the field of pipe clea­ning and sewer reha­bi­li­ta­tion in the Munich area and comple­ment our port­fo­lio in the field of buil­ding services but also buil­ding manage­ment. This enables us to respond even better to the wishes and requi­re­ments of our custo­mers and part­ners. We are very much looking forward to an exci­ting and inte­res­t­ing coope­ra­tion that will further increase the Group’s potential.”

“With RRS and THG, we are plea­sed about excel­lently fitting new addi­ti­ons to the group and are proud that the part­ner­ship approach of the KÖBERL Group with Mr. Köberl has convin­ced”, says Maja Marko­vic (photo © GIMV), part­ner of Gimv and advi­sory board member of the KÖBERL Group. “The merger is another important stra­te­gic step for the Group towards beco­ming a leading full-service provider.”

About the KÖBERL Group

The agile group of compa­nies is a growing tech­ni­cally-savvy full-service provi­der of buil­ding tech­no­logy and faci­lity manage­ment services for resi­den­tial and commer­cial proper­ties as well as indus­trial custo­mers in Germany with around 650 employees. In addi­tion to tech­ni­cal buil­ding equip­ment for heating, air condi­tio­ning, venti­la­tion and refri­ge­ra­tion, the Group focu­ses on tech­ni­cal buil­ding manage­ment and inte­gra­ted faci­lity manage­ment. https://koeberl.group/.

About pipe clea­ning service RRS GmbH and THG Abwas­ser­tech­nik GmbH

RRS and THG have been provi­ding pipe and drain clea­ning and sewer reha­bi­li­ta­tion services prima­rily to private house­holds, muni­ci­pa­li­ties and indus­trial compa­nies for over 50 years. Both compa­nies are among the longest-serving compa­nies in this segment in the grea­ter Munich area. For years, nume­rous orders in the field of pipe clea­ning and sewer reha­bi­li­ta­tion have been hand­led by an expe­ri­en­ced and well-coor­di­na­ted team of about 30 employees. www.rrs-abwassertechnik.de and www.thg-abwassertechnik.de.

About GIMV

For over 40 years, Gimv has been iden­ti­fy­ing entre­pre­neu­rial and inno­va­tive compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and, as a Euro­pean invest­ment company, support­ing them on their way to market leader­ship. Listed on Euron­ext Brussels, Gimv curr­ently has a port­fo­lio of around EUR 1.5 billion in invest­ments in more than 60 holdings, which toge­ther realize sales of more than EUR 3.1 billion and employ 19,000 people. www.gimv.com.

News

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) reports a very successful start to the new finan­cial year 2022/2023. Having recently focu­sed in parti­cu­lar on adding attrac­tive compa­nies to its invest­ment port­fo­lio and rapidly expan­ding its market posi­tion through acqui­si­ti­ons, DBAG agreed three dispo­sals in the first quar­ter of 2022/2023 and a fourth in Febru­ary 2023. “It is parti­cu­larly plea­sing that these dispo­sals relate to the two growth sectors of broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons and IT services and soft­ware, as well as an invest­ment from Italy,” comm­ents Tors­ten Grede, DBAG Board Spokes­man (photo 1st from left). “This means that the stra­te­gic decis­i­ons of broa­de­ning our sector focus and expan­ding geogra­phi­cally into Italy are now bearing fruit. Even in the current chal­len­ging capi­tal market envi­ron­ment, tran­sac­tions are taking place. This is eviden­ced by both our recent study published in coope­ra­tion with FINANCE and our successful dispo­sals,” Grede continued.

By selling its invest­ment in Cloudf­light in a chal­len­ging market, DBAG was able to realize more than four times the capi­tal inves­ted. The sale of the invest­ment in Heytex marks the successful conclu­sion of DBAG Fund V. DBAG Fund V is thus one of the most successful funds of its vintage for private equity invest­ments in Europe. In addi­tion, the dispo­sal of the invest­ment in Pmflex also marked the first dispo­sal in Italy and was comple­ted in Janu­ary 2023. DBAG was thus able to realize more than twice the capi­tal inves­ted after a holding period of just over two years. Finally, the sale of the stake in BTV Multi­me­dia was agreed in Febru­ary, reali­zing around three times the capi­tal invested.

The good start to the fiscal year is supported by posi­tive capi­tal market influen­ces. This affec­ted the entire breadth of our port­fo­lio, i.e. both busi­ness models with an indus­trial focus and busi­ness models in growth sectors. The chan­geo­ver to the 2023 budgets, which is custo­mary in the first quar­ter, also resul­ted in a posi­tive contri­bu­tion to earnings. Due to the value reco­very period, this also alre­ady takes into account the dispo­sal of BTV Multi­me­dia. In total, the net asset value increa­ses to 620.8 million euros. This is seven percent more than at the begin­ning of the fiscal year.

The Fund Consul­ting segment deve­lo­ped accor­ding to plan and gene­ra­ted earnings before taxes of 3.5 million euros (prior-year quar­ter: 3.7 million euros). Profit before tax in the Private Equity Invest­ments segment reached 38.4 million euros (prior-year quar­ter: ‑11.9 million euros). Over­all, DBAG closes the first three months of finan­cial year 2022/2023 with conso­li­da­ted net income of 41.6 million euros (prior-year quar­ter: ‑8.2 million euros).

Results for a single quar­ter cannot be extra­po­la­ted to the full fiscal year. Due to DBAG’s busi­ness model, the results of indi­vi­dual peri­ods, even directly conse­cu­tive ones, may differ significantly.

The company’s key perfor­mance indi­ca­tors in the first quar­ter of 2022/2023 are within the corri­dor of the fore­cast published at the begin­ning of Decem­ber 2022; it is ther­e­fore unch­an­ged. In its fore­cast, DBAG assu­mes that the valua­tion condi­ti­ons on the capi­tal markets at the end of the current finan­cial year will not differ signi­fi­cantly from those at the time the fore­cast was prepared.

About Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG

Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG), listed on the stock exch­ange since 1985, is one of Germany’s most renow­ned private equity compa­nies. As an inves­tor and fund advi­sor, DBAG’s invest­ment focus has tradi­tio­nally been on medium-sized compa­nies with a focus on well-posi­tio­ned compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial, prima­rily in the DACH region. The indus­try focus is on manu­fac­tu­ring compa­nies, indus­trial service provi­ders and Indus­try­Tech compa­nies — i.e. compa­nies whose products enable auto­ma­tion, robo­tics and digi­tiza­tion — as well as compa­nies from the broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services, soft­ware and health­care sectors. Since 2020, DBAG has also been repre­sen­ted in Italy with its own office in Milan. Assets mana­ged or advi­sed by the DBAG Group amount to appro­xi­m­ately 2.6 billion euros.

News

Schaan, Liech­ten­stein — FMA Holding AG (“FMA Group”) announ­ces the acqui­si­tion of NOX Systems AG (“NOX”), a leading deve­lo­per and manu­fac­tu­rer in the field of secu­rity tech­no­logy, with a focus on intru­sion detec­tion and access control systems, head­quar­te­red in Vaduz, Liech­ten­stein. The FMA Group thus under­lines its strong growth with another stra­te­gic acqui­si­tion. NOX brings to the group not only outstan­ding deve­lo­p­ment exper­tise in the field of safety systems, but also a new mecha­tro­nic product and a strong custo­mer base. The company’s foun­der, Sven Sauter, will remain with the company in his current role as Mana­ging Director.

NOX products are widely used to support access control, intru­sion detec­tion systems and video surveil­lance. Further­more, the products have a special repu­ta­tion, espe­ci­ally with larger inter­na­tio­nal custo­mers, due to the flexi­bi­lity, indi­vi­dua­lity and holi­stic offer. NOX is able to meet all the secu­rity needs of these custo­mers. Custo­mers include, for exam­ple, banks, muse­ums and other buil­dings that have parti­cu­larly high secu­rity requirements.

“We are deligh­ted about this promi­sing merger,” says NOX Mana­ging Direc­tor Sven Sauter. “We have had trus­ting and valuable discus­sions over time, which have convin­ced me that we have found the right further deve­lo­p­ment for NOX. This step is a posi­tive sign for our employees, custo­mers, suppli­ers and other busi­ness part­ners. We are convin­ced to streng­then our growth with the FMA Group as a strong part­ner. I look forward to actively shaping this path as Mana­ging Director.”

Through the acqui­si­tion of NOX, the FMA Group expands its busi­ness model with a strong product port­fo­lio in the field of safety tech­no­logy. As a result, the FMA Group grows to three compa­nies with a total of four produc­tion sites and appro­xi­m­ately 120 employees, thus streng­thening its posi­tion as a mecha­tro­nics group in the DACH region. NOX will remain as an opera­ting unit under the manage­ment of Sven Sauter.

“The busi­ness model is comple­men­tary to FMA and allows a stra­te­gic further deve­lo­p­ment from “manu­fac­tu­ring service provi­der of mecha­tro­nic assem­blies” to “mecha­tro­nics group with own and third-party products” with a versa­tile engi­nee­ring know-how”, says mana­ging direc­tor of FMA, Erich Trink­ler. “By being geogra­phi­cally close, we hope to mutually bene­fit from this busi­ness combi­na­tion and increase mutual growth.”

About NOX Systems AG

NOX Systems AG was foun­ded in 2001 by Sven Sauter. In a very short time, the company succee­ded in beco­ming a sought-after specia­list for secu­rity systems in the Euro­pean market. The products convince with inno­va­tive spirit and almost unli­mi­ted possi­bi­li­ties. Custo­mer wishes and speci­fic requi­re­ments are always incor­po­ra­ted into the deve­lo­p­ment process, resul­ting in a modu­lar product range that offers maxi­mum perfor­mance and relia­bi­lity, while being precis­ely tail­o­red to the respec­tive custo­mer requi­re­ments. The company is head­quar­te­red in Vaduz, Liech­ten­stein. For more infor­ma­tion, visit: www.noxsystems.com

About FMA Mecha­tro­nic Solu­ti­ons AG

Foun­ded in 1955 and head­quar­te­red in Schaan, Liech­ten­stein, the company star­ted with the produc­tion and distri­bu­tion of simple mecha­ni­cal parts. Since the take­over by Stefan Dürr in the 1990s, FMA has deve­lo­ped into a renow­ned mecha­tro­nics service provi­der. As such, FMA supplies custo­mers in the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try, water manage­ment, medi­cal tech­no­logy and the alumi­num indus­try, among others. Since 2019, FMA has been majo­rity-owned by the multi-family holding company Liberta Part­ners. For more infor­ma­tion, visit: www.fma.li

About Liberta Partners

Liberta Part­ners was foun­ded in 2016 and is a multi-family holding company based in Munich. Liberta Part­ners invests in compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries with clear opera­tio­nal and stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial, espe­ci­ally in succes­sion situa­tions and corpo­rate spin-offs. These are actively deve­lo­ped as part of the long-term “100% Core & Care” concept and bene­fit from Liberta Part­ners’ inno­va­tive entre­pre­neu­rial under­stan­ding. Liberta Part­ners’ team curr­ently consists of 20 employees working in M&A, corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment and legal, as well as an active indus­try advi­sory board. www.liberta-partners.com

News

Munich — Private equity inves­tor Altor has acqui­red a majo­rity stake of 80% in Kommu­nal­kre­dit Austria AG on behalf of Altor Funds. Altor will part­ner with the bank’s exis­ting owners and manage­ment. — Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Clif­ford Chance advi­sed Altor on behalf of Altor Funds on the signing of the agree­ment to acquire a majo­rity stake of 80% in Kommu­nal­kre­dit Austria AG.

Altor will support Kommu­nal­kre­dit with addi­tio­nal capi­tal to conti­nue its growth trajec­tory and become the leading sustainable infra­struc­ture plat­form in Europe. The exis­ting long-term share­hol­ders, Inter­ri­tus, Trinity Invest­ment Manage­ment and the Austrian Asso­cia­tion of Muni­ci­pa­li­ties, will remain mino­rity shareholders.

Kommu­nal­kre­dit was foun­ded in 1958 and is a provi­der of finan­cing solu­ti­ons for infra­struc­ture and energy projects throug­hout Europe. Head­quar­te­red in Austria and with a team of 350 full-time employees, Kommu­nal­kre­dit has become a leading specia­list infra­struc­ture bank, finan­cing some 200 projects over the past seven years with a focus on green trans­for­ma­tion and rene­wa­ble energy. With total assets of EUR 4.4 billion, Kommu­nal­kre­dit is expec­ted to gene­rate net inte­rest income of around EUR 120 million in 2022, repre­sen­ting an impres­sive annual growth rate of over 50% in recent years.

Altor Equity Part­ners is a private equity firm focu­sed on lever­a­ged buyouts and growth capi­tal invest­ments in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and the DACH region. Since their incep­tion, Altor funds have recei­ved a total of more than 10 billion euros in commit­ments. The funds are inves­ted in more than 85 mid-sized, predo­mi­nantly Nordic compa­nies, with the aim of crea­ting value through growth initia­ti­ves and opera­tio­nal improvements.

Paal Weberg (photo © Altor), Co-Mana­ging Part­ner at Altor: “Kommu­nal­kre­dit has a unique posi­tion as a finan­cing part­ner for some of the most promi­nent green trans­for­ma­tion projects and we believe that toge­ther we can build the Euro­pean cham­pion in sustainable infra­struc­ture finan­cing. Altor will support Kommu­nal­kre­dit with capi­tal and resour­ces to streng­then its capa­bi­li­ties. In doing so, we can build on our expe­ri­ence inves­t­ing in other leading finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons and Green Tran­si­tion Champions.”

Kommu­nal­kre­dit and Altor are united in their vision to promote the tran­si­tion to a green and sustainable future. Both insti­tu­ti­ons have alre­ady gained exten­sive expe­ri­ence in finan­cing the tran­si­tion to a sustainable economy through their invest­ments and invol­vement in sustainable infra­struc­ture and energy projects across Europe.

The Clif­ford Chance team advi­sing Altor on this tran­sac­tion was led by part­ners Dr. Thomas Krecek (Frank­furt) and Dr. Mark Aschen­bren­ner (Munich, both Corporate/Private Equity). Clif­ford Chance worked closely with Wolf Theiss (Lead Part­ners: Andrea Grit­sch and Florian Kusznier) on all Austrian legal matters.

About Clif­ford Chance

Clif­ford Chance, one of the world’s leading law firms, is present for its clients with around 3,400 legal advi­sors in all major busi­ness centers around the world. In Germany, Clif­ford Chance is repre­sen­ted by around 300 lawy­ers, audi­tors, tax advi­sors and soli­ci­tors in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt am Main and Munich.

News

Landshut/Munich — Munich-based tech company Enmacc, opera­tor of the largest digi­tal OTC energy trading plat­form for gas and elec­tri­city in Europe, has announ­ced the second and final closing of a Series B finan­cing round — three months after the first closing with a volume in the eight-digit euro range. Now Bayern Kapi­tal, one of the most expe­ri­en­ced and active growth inves­tors in the German high-tech finan­cing land­scape, is also joining Enmacc’s circle of inves­tors with funds from the Bava­rian Growth Fund. Lead inves­tor is Alan­tra with the Climate Energy Tran­si­tion Fund and previous inves­tors such as 10x Group are also incre­asing their commitment.

Enmacc GmbH was foun­ded in Munich in 2016 and has since estab­lished itself as an alter­na­tive to tradi­tio­nal brokers and exch­an­ges for Euro­pean whole­sale energy trading with its digi­tal OTC (over the coun­ter) energy trading plat­form. As the Euro­pean market leader, the Munich-based energy company specia­li­zes in over-the-coun­ter futures trading in gas, elec­tri­city and green power certi­fi­ca­tes. The plat­form is based on the world’s leading RFQ tech­no­logy, which enables energy trad­ers, port­fo­lio and risk mana­gers to share their trading inte­rest within seconds and thus receive imme­dia­tely compa­ra­ble offers from multi­ple trading part­ners. In doing so, Enmacc elimi­na­tes inef­fi­ci­ent and time-consum­ing market condi­ti­ons such as trading via tele­phone and e‑mail, and contri­bu­tes signi­fi­cantly to impro­ving trad­ers’ liqui­dity — espe­ci­ally when tradi­tio­nal order books of exch­an­ges and brokers show only few price quotes.

Jens Hart­mann, CEO of Enmacc, explains: “We are very plea­sed to have the trust and support of Bayern Kapi­tal as a long-term part­ner. The funding will allow us to expand our reach and improve our plat­form so that we are even better equip­ped for the rapidly evol­ving energy market and the need for decarbonization.”

“Enmacc has estab­lished itself as one of the leading compa­nies within the energy indus­try in just a few years with its inno­va­tive approach to digi­tiz­ing the energy market,” commen­ted Monika Steger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal. “We see Enmacc as an important player in shaping the future of the indus­try and are proud to support the company as it conti­nues on its journey.”

Bastien Gambini (photo © Alan­tra), Mana­ging Part­ner at Alan­tra: “Enmacc has done an impres­sive job of digi­tally trans­forming gas and elec­tri­city trading, quickly gaining a large custo­mer base in a conser­va­tive market. We believe that the unique combi­na­tion of supe­rior tech­no­logy and indus­try exper­tise will make Enmacc successful across a broad spec­trum of energy and envi­ron­men­tal commo­dity trading. With its plat­form, the company is posi­tio­ning itself as a global market leader in energy trading and a pioneer for an acce­le­ra­ted energy transition.”

About Enmacc
Enmacc is the largest OTC energy trading plat­form in Europe. Deve­lo­ped by trad­ers for trad­ers, Enmacc digi­ti­zes the energy trading process — the digi­tal market­place enables members to trade faster, more compre­hen­si­vely and with grea­ter control. Enmacc is trus­ted by over 450 custo­mers and hosts a growing network of nearly 2000 trad­ers from various insti­tu­ti­ons — inclu­ding utili­ties, indus­trial compa­nies, energy trading houses and muni­ci­pal utilities.

In addi­tion to elec­tri­city and gas, envi­ron­men­tal goods such as guaran­tees of origin and emis­sion certi­fi­ca­tes will also be traded on the plat­form in the coming months. Enmacc was foun­ded in Munich in 2016 and has since evol­ved into a leading B2B tech­no­logy company with a diverse and growing team. www.enmacc.com

About Alan­tra

Alan­tra is an inter­na­tio­nal finan­cial services company with over 555 employees from 35 count­ries in 25 offices. We are a global company. We do not have a head office. Each market in which we operate is as important as the other. Each employee is as valuable as the other. And that means that each customer’s needs are as important as the next.

About Bayern Kapital
Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, is the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria. It accom­pa­nies inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies in the Free State through various growth phases, from seed to later stage, with equity capi­tal in the amount of 0.25 to 25 million euros. Bayern Kapi­tal often fills gaps in the VC sector in proven consor­tium constel­la­ti­ons with private inves­tors (busi­ness angels, family offices and corpo­rate ventures).

Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with a volume of around 700 million euros. Since its foun­da­tion in 1995 on the initia­tive of the state govern­ment, the wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern has so far inves­ted around 400 million euros of its own equity capi­tal in around 300 start-ups and scale-ups in sectors such as life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable compa­nies. The active port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses over 80 companies.

 

News

Munich — Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s largest center for inno­va­tion and start-ups, is laun­ching CIRCULAR REPUBLIC, a unique combi­na­tion of forces in the field of Circu­lar Economy. True sustaina­bi­lity and thus climate neutra­lity can only be achie­ved if we succeed in massi­vely redu­cing resource consump­tion and rethin­king estab­lished proces­ses. This enorm­ous chall­enge offers both compa­nies and start-ups immense busi­ness poten­tial and a wide range of oppor­tu­ni­ties for inno­va­tive busi­ness models. They can be crucial in making Europe more resi­li­ent by making it less depen­dent on global supply chains in the long term.

Climate and energy crisis, popu­la­tion growth, species extinc­tion, fragile supply chains and incre­asing resource scar­city: Circu­lar Economy is a key to solving exis­ten­tial crises. In line with the vision of a sustainable and people-cente­red future for Germany and Europe, Unter­neh­mer­TUM aims to create a central plat­form for the bund­ling and active shaping of such ideas in Munich. Circu­lar economy is unders­tood as a rege­ne­ra­tive econo­mic system in which resour­ces are kept in cycles and whose goal is to decou­ple value crea­tion from resource consump­tion.

Circu­la­rity works best in the ecosys­tem

CIRCULAR REPUBLIC supports compa­nies and start-ups in further deve­lo­ping their inno­va­tions and ideas for the Circu­lar Economy in line with market requi­re­ments and trans­forming them into concrete busi­ness models. In addi­tion, the initia­tive networks compa­nies and start-ups with rele­vant play­ers from science, busi­ness and the venture capi­tal indus­try. In this context, the inno­va­tion ecosys­tem of Unter­neh­mer­TUM plays a crucial role: The initia­tive speci­fi­cally offers access to the latest rese­arch findings from the field of Circu­lar Economy at Tech­ni­sche Univer­si­tät München and itself provi­des advice on entre­pre­neu­rial issues and chal­lenges. A central service also consists of directly networ­king compa­nies and start-ups in so-called “multi-stake­hol­der projects” and acting as a joint plat­form for the exch­ange of know­ledge and expe­ri­ence. Ideally, the projects deve­lo­ped will then find their way into concrete application.

The initia­tive was laun­ched with foun­ding part­ner BMW AG. The first part­ner compa­nies include SAP, PreZero and Tengel­mann.

Inter­di­sci­pli­nary foun­ding trio

To be able to fully address the field of Circu­lar Economy, you need diverse perspec­ti­ves and a team with very diffe­rent back­grounds. The foun­ding team of the initia­tive includes Dr. Susanne Kadner, Dr. Matthias Ball­weg and Niclas Mauß (Photo © CIRCULAR REPUBLIC). Kadner previously initia­ted and led the Circu­lar Economy Initia­tive Germany. Before joining CIRCULAR REPUBLIC, Ball­weg was respon­si­ble for SYSTEMIQ’s global Circu­lar Economy acti­vi­ties and Mauß initia­ted and estab­lished Germany’s largest Circu­lar Economy rese­arch network at the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich.

Multi-stake­hol­der approach

The first “multi-stake­hol­der project” will focus on the textile indus­try — one of the least circu­lar sectors of all. Start-ups alre­ady offer nume­rous partial solu­ti­ons here — such as recy­cling tech­no­lo­gies — but there is a lack of a cross-indus­try solu­tion that is now being jointly deve­lo­ped. Another project will subse­quently revolve around the recy­cling of batte­ries. The findings deve­lo­ped in the initia­tive — for exam­ple, on the start-up land­scape in the Circu­lar Economy sector — will also be shared with the public. A speci­ally initia­ted festi­val will take place in Munich from Novem­ber 15–18, 2023, and aims to bring toge­ther outstan­ding play­ers in the circu­lar economy.

Dr. Matthias Ball­weg, Co-Foun­der and Direc­tor of CIRCULAR REPUBLIC, says: “The global deve­lo­p­ments around climate, lack of resour­ces or supply shorta­ges, as well as the accom­pany­ing regu­la­tory conse­quen­ces show: In the 30s of this century, there will no longer be a successful busi­ness model based on the explo­ita­tion of primary raw mate­ri­als. The Circu­lar Economy will be the key to solving the climate crisis and at the same time the driving force for inno­va­tion and prospe­rity in Europe. The large number of start­ups working on the topic of the Circu­lar Economy — we have iden­ti­fied almost 400 of them in Germany alone — is another indi­ca­tor that this is where the future lies.“
https://www.unternehmertum.de//circular-republic


CIRCULAR REPUBLIC

The Circu­lar Economy is the basis for a prospe­rous, resi­li­ent and sustainable economy. As part of Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s largest center for inno­va­tion and startup, CIRCULAR REPUBLIC empowers compa­nies and start­ups to realize circu­lar economy inno­va­tions and deve­lop new busi­ness models. As a plat­form, the initia­tive networks rele­vant actors and thus aims to set system-chan­ging impul­ses along the entire value chain.

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