ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Landshut/Augsburg — In the course of selling the entire company, Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH also sells its shares in the IT start-up qbilon. The Augs­burg-based company offers a plat­form for the auto­ma­tic capture, analy­sis and opti­miza­tion of hybrid IT land­scapes. The buyer is Nurem­berg-based Paess­ler AG, an expe­ri­en­ced specia­list in IT moni­to­ring. As one of the most expe­ri­en­ced tech inves­tors in Germany, Bayern Kapi­tal had inves­ted in qbilon toge­ther with other inves­tors only a year ago and has since supported the company in its growth.

qbilon GmbH was foun­ded in 2019 by four compu­ter science PhD students as part of an EXIST rese­arch trans­fer project at the Univer­sity of Augs­burg and will conti­nue to be head­quar­te­red in Augs­burg after the sale. With its moni­to­ring plat­form, qbilon enables the inte­gra­tion of a variety of data sources, inclu­ding cloud plat­forms such as AWS or Azure, IT moni­to­ring and manage­ment solu­ti­ons such as Paess­ler PRTG or Dyna­trace, and virtua­liza­tion tools such as vSphere. Custo­mers can also import gene­ric data such as CSV or JSON to easily inte­grate older infor­ma­tion. For compa­nies, this means full trans­pa­rency of their entire IT envi­ron­ment and more resi­li­ence in their IT opera­ti­ons, with the choice between cloud and on-premi­ses solu­ti­ons. Hybrid IT land­scapes are captu­red auto­ma­ti­cally and live data allows indi­vi­dual data analy­sis for effi­ci­ent opti­miza­tion while mini­mi­zing fail­ure risks. qbilon’s custo­mers include major compa­nies in the auto­mo­tive, utili­ties and manu­fac­tu­ring indus­tries, such as KTR Systems, among others.

“We provide compa­nies with compre­hen­sive know­ledge about their IT land­scapes — complete, auto­ma­tic and easy to under­stand, resul­ting in signi­fi­cantly less work, lower costs and increased secu­rity,” says Dr. Mela­nie Langer­meier, co-CEO and co-foun­der of qbilon. “The decis­ion to join Paess­ler Group makes a lot of sense, as our IT visi­bi­lity tools and the network insights and intel­li­gence Paess­ler provi­des to its custo­mers are a great fit. We look forward to provi­ding our joint custo­mers with a compre­hen­sive know­ledge of their IT land­scapes to increase effi­ci­ency and save resour­ces.” Other foun­ders of qbilon are Dr. Simon Lohmül­ler, Dr. Thomas Dries­sen and Dr. Julian Kienberger.

500,000 users in 170 countries

Paess­ler AG was foun­ded in 1997 and offers IT moni­to­ring solu­ti­ons for compa­nies in all indus­tries — from small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses to large corpo­ra­ti­ons. Paess­ler products help users to opti­mize their IT, OT and IoT infra­struc­tures and ther­eby reduce their energy consump­tion and emis­si­ons. The main product is the Paess­ler PRTG moni­to­ring solu­tion, which is used by more than 500,000 users in around 170 count­ries world­wide. The company curr­ently employs 350 people from over 25 countries.

“Today marks an exci­ting mile­stone in our history and future,” says Helmut Binder, CEO of Paess­ler. “Our passion is to give our custo­mers the visi­bi­lity they need into their IT land­scape to opti­mize their resour­ces. qbilon is an excel­lent fit with our corpo­rate culture and our goals. Both compa­nies will bene­fit from mutual syner­gies in the areas of deve­lo­p­ment and tech­no­logy, sales and marke­ting, and opera­ti­ons. We will work closely toge­ther to expand our offe­rings to exis­ting and new custo­mers, and I am exci­ted about the oppor­tu­ni­ties that will arise from this colla­bo­ra­tion. I am very happy to welcome the qbilon team to the Paess­ler family.”

Bayern Kapi­tal parti­ci­pa­ted in 2022

Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH had parti­ci­pa­ted in a seed finan­cing round for qbilon in June 2022. The funds came from the Bava­rian Capi­tal Inno­va­tion Fund (EFRE), which is also supported by EU funds. Other inves­tors were the Bava­rian family offices Vetos GmbH and DI Betei­li­gungs GmbH. “Alre­ady in the first talks, the team of qbilon had convin­ced us. The coope­ra­tion with the foun­ders and the private inves­tors was very posi­tive,” explains Monika Steger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal. “The projects carried out and the custo­mers acqui­red were promi­sing. They have shown that there is a great need for IT moni­to­ring on the market. The merger with the Nurem­berg-based company Paess­ler will allow addi­tio­nal markets to be opened up and the successful path to be continued.”

About qbilon

qbilon was foun­ded in 2019 by four former PhD students of the Univer­sity of Augs­burg. During their work with large enter­pri­ses, they found that compa­nies struggle with buil­ding a meaningful data­base for criti­cal IT decis­i­ons. Based on their rese­arch findings, they deve­lo­ped an inno­va­tive approach to meet this chall­enge. qbilon’s soft­ware solu­tion finally brings light to orga­ni­cally grown, hybrid IT land­scapes. The auto­ma­tic coll­ec­tion and linking of exis­ting data enables IT decis­ion-makers to stream­line and opti­mize their IT land­scape to end up with IT that perfectly fits their needs. In times when digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion and expo­nen­tial IT growth are key issues in large compa­nies, qbilon wants to do its part to keep IT effi­ci­ent and mana­geable. Since IT staff are often over­worked, our soft­ware effec­tively reli­e­ves IT staff of tedious manual docu­men­ta­tion work — paving the way to an IT land­scape that is always up-to-date and consistent.
www.qbilon.io

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.
www.bayernkapital.de

News

Berlin — BMH BRÄUTIGAM compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed the share­hol­ders of Viso­tec GmbH on the sale to Heidel­berg Engi­nee­ring. For over 30 years, Heidel­berg Engi­nee­ring has colla­bo­ra­ted with scien­tists, physi­ci­ans and indus­try part­ners to deve­lop inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons for ophthal­mo­logy that enable physi­ci­ans to improve pati­ent care. Heidel­berg Engineering’s growing product port­fo­lio includes confo­cal micro­scopy, laser scan­ning, opti­cal cohe­rence tomo­gra­phy (OCT), real-time image proces­sing and analy­sis, multi­mo­dal image data manage­ment solu­ti­ons (PACS), elec­tro­nic pati­ent data manage­ment, and data mining.

Viso­tec GmbH is deve­lo­ping simple and afforda­ble OCT diagno­stics for impro­ved and perso­na­li­zed treat­ment of pati­ents with age-rela­ted macu­lar dege­ne­ra­tion (AMD). The inno­va­tive solu­tion enables auto­ma­tic exami­na­tion of the retina with a compact and easy-to-use device. This allows the pati­ent to regu­larly check for dise­ase acti­vity and, if neces­sary, see an ophthal­mo­lo­gist in time for treatment.

The merger enables Viso­tec to combine its exper­tise in state-of-the-art full-field OCT tech­no­logy for remote diagno­sis with Heidel­berg Engineering’s global reach and indus­try leader­ship. Visotec’s proprie­tary OCT tech­no­logy can be inte­gra­ted into the secure data exch­ange envi­ron­ment of the HEIDELBERG EYE EXPLORER plat­form and offers enorm­ous poten­tial in the field of outpa­ti­ent care.

BMH BRÄUTIGAM regu­larly advi­ses on tran­sac­tions in the tech­no­logy sector and has parti­cu­lar exper­tise and indus­try know­ledge in the tech­no­logy sector.

Advi­sor to the share­hol­ders of Viso­tec GmbH: BMH BRÄUTIGAM
Till Wans­le­ben (Photo © BMH), Bastian Rein­schmidt, Maxi­mi­lian Frink, Arthur Buch­holz (all Corpo­rate / M&A), Dr. Jan Böhle (IP), Dr. Sebas­tian Krieg (Tax)

www.bmh-partner.com

News

Munich/ Berlin — Berlin-based 3B Phar­maceu­ti­cals GmbH has signed an exclu­sive license agree­ment with Novar­tis Inno­va­tive Thera­pies AG as licen­see. Under the agree­ment, Novar­tis recei­ves world­wide deve­lo­p­ment and commer­cia­liza­tion rights for diagno­stic and thera­peu­tic appli­ca­ti­ons of parts of 3BP’s FAP targe­ting peptide radio­li­gand tech­no­logy. The tech­no­logy targets fibro­blast acti­va­tion protein (FAP), a promi­sing ther­ano­stic target due to its expres­sion in a variety of cancers. In 3BP’s radio­li­gand tech­no­logy, the peptide is combi­ned with a radio­ac­tive isotope that, depen­ding on the type of isotope, enables either imaging or thera­peu­tic applications.

Under the agree­ment, 3BP will receive an initial payment of $40 million and up to $425 million in deve­lo­p­ment, regu­la­tory and commer­cial mile­stone payments, in addi­tion to tiered royal­ties on net sales.

About 3BP

3B Phar­maceu­ti­cals rese­ar­ches and deve­lops targe­ted radio­phar­maceu­ti­cals that provide targe­ted and
perso­na­li­zed approach to the treat­ment of cancer. Our pepti­des and pepti­do­mime­tics represent
excel­lent tumor-speci­fic targets and are linked via chela­tion to thera­peu­tic and diagnostic
radio­iso­to­pes coupled via a chela­ting agent. As a leader in peptide disco­very and opti­miza­tion, 3BP has built a tech­no­logy plat­form that spans from hit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to early clini­cal deve­lo­p­ment. www.3b-pharma.com

3BP is a long-stan­ding client of Ellen Berg­mann. The mandate has been in place since the company was foun­ded in 2008. Ellen Berg­mann has parti­cu­lar exper­tise in advi­sing biotech and phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies on complex licen­sing and deve­lo­p­ment agree­ments, espe­ci­ally in the field of radio­phar­maceu­ti­cals. She has successfully advi­sed 3BP on previous licen­sing and deve­lo­p­ment agree­ments, e.g. the prede­ces­sor agree­ment to the current deal with Novar­tis between 3BP and the US company Clovis Onco­logy Inc. and in the licen­sing and rese­arch agree­ment between 3BP and the Swiss phar­maceu­ti­cal company Debio­ph­arm Inter­na­tio­nal SA.

Advi­sor 3B Phar­maceu­ti­cals: Green­Gate Part­ners Rechts­an­walts­ge­sell­schaft mbH

Ellen Berg­mann, LL.M. (Lawyer, Partner)

About Green­Gate Partners
Green­Gate Part­ners is a tech­no­logy law firm with parti­cu­lar exper­tise around tran­sac­tions and venture capi­tal. From our offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers offer their clients first-class advice at eye level.

News

Munich — The Munich-based auto­mo­tive start-up 4.screen has closed a Series A finan­cing round of 21 million euros. The round is led by lead inves­tors Conti­nen­tal Corpo­rate Venture Capi­tal and S4S Ventures and.

4.screen is a plat­form for real-time inter­ac­tion with drivers. The Munich-based start-up was foun­ded in 2020 by three former BMW experts for digi­tal products. 4.screen enables compa­nies to inter­act with drivers directly through their navi­ga­tion screens, lever­aging ground­brea­king in-car tech­no­logy. By using vehicle sensor data such as loca­tion, engine type, car brand, and fuel level or charge status, the 4.Screen plat­form provi­des drivers with contex­tual infor­ma­tion about nearby busi­nesses and places such as parking lots, restau­rants, or stores. In the process, plat­form custo­mers bene­fit from compre­hen­sive and target-group-speci­fic targe­ting opti­ons that cannot be reached by alter­na­tive in-car channels.

4.screen is alre­ady working successfully with seve­ral car manu­fac­tu­r­ers in Europe, inclu­ding Audi, Skoda and Merce­des-Benz. The plat­form alre­ady has seve­ral million active users. The company counts over 60 global consu­mer brands among its custo­mers, inclu­ding Shell and McDo­nalds, for exam­ple. With the funding, the start-up is now aiming for further expan­sion in the EU and North America over the course of the year.

Advi­sor Conti­nen­tal VC as lead inves­tor: POELLATH

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

News

Allen­dorf — The mega deal of the year: heating manu­fac­tu­rer Viess­mann sells its air condi­tio­ning divi­sion, inclu­ding the lucra­tive heat pumps, to US compe­ti­tor Carrier Global for 12 billion euros.

Germany’s future hope in the heat pump busi­ness moves to America. What are the goals of the inter­na­tio­nally opera­ting company? What was once a family busi­ness in Connec­ti­cut is now a global player in the heating equip­ment busi­ness. Carrier Global is said to have appro­xi­m­ately 52,000 employees around the world, compared to 14,500 at Viess­mann in Hesse. Much larger, he said, is the U.S. company based in Palm Beach. World­wide acqui­si­ti­ons from Asia to Europe confirm the giant’s expan­sion efforts.

Advi­sor VIESSMANN Group: Henge­ler Muel­ler

Cororate/ M&A: Dr. Matthias Hent­zen, Thomas Meurer (both part­ners, both lead, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Jan Häller (asso­ciate, Frank­furt), Dr. Johan­nes Fütte­rer, Julia Redbrake, Bene­dikt Mertens (all asso­cia­tes, Düsseldorf),
IP/IT: Dr. Wolf­gang Kellen­ter (Part­ner), Dr. Matthias Roth­kopf, Dr. Astrid Harm­sen, Dr. Andrea Schlaffge, (all Coun­sel), Johan­nes Jäkle (Asso­ciate, all Düsseldorf),
Tax Law: Dr. Matthias Schei­fele (Part­ner, Munich), Dr. Sebas­tian Adam (Frank­furt), Dr. Isabella Zimmerl (Munich, both Associates),
Labor Law: Dr. Chris­tian Hoefs (Part­ner), Dr. Andreas Kaletsch (Asso­ciate, both Frankfurt),
Anti­trust: Dr. Thors­ten Mäger (Part­ner), Dr. Anja Balitzki (Coun­sel), Sara Junge­welter (Asso­ciate, all Düsseldorf),
Public Commer­cial Law: Dr. Vera Jung­kind (Part­ner), Dr. Moritz Rade­ma­cher (Coun­sel), Dr. Sandra Plötz (Asso­ciate, all Düsseldorf),
FDI: Jan Schül­ting (Asso­ciate, Düsseldorf),
Compli­ance: Dr. Constan­tin Lauter­wein (Part­ner), Dr. Melena Krause (Asso­ciate, both Berlin),
Capi­tal Markets: Dr. Dirk Busch (Part­ner), Caspar Haar­mann (Coun­sel, both Düsseldorf),
Finan­cing: Dr. Daniel Weiß (Part­ner), Nükhet Tanri­kulu (Asso­ciate, both Frankfurt),
US Law: Davis Polk.

Advi­sor Carrier: Linklaters

Link­la­ters’ cross-prac­tice inter­na­tio­nal team was led by Corpo­rate Part­ners Derek Tong in London and Dr. Timo Engel­hardt in Munich. The tran­sac­tion is the largest in the German M&A market so far this year.

The expan­ded team includes experts from all prac­tice groups, inclu­ding Matthew Devey (Part­ner, Employ­ment Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Julia Schön­bohm (Part­ner, IP/Dispute Reso­lu­tion, Frank­furt), Dr. Chris­tian Hunde­sha­gen (Part­ner, Tax Law, Frank­furt), Anna Mitchell (Part­ner, Anti­trust & Invest­ment Control, London), Chris­toph Barth (Part­ner, Anti­trust & Invest­ment Control, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Julia Grot­haus for ESG (Part­ner, Dispute Reso­lu­tion, Frank­furt), Dr. Rupert Belling­hau­sen (Part­ner, Dispute Reso­lu­tion, Frank­furt), Dr. Daniel Pauly, Michael Leicht (both Part­ners, TMT, Frank­furt) and Wolf­ram Krüger (Part­ner, Real Estate, Frankfurt).

Link­la­ters regu­larly advi­ses Carrier, most recently on the sale of Chubb in 2020 and the outright acqui­si­tion of Toshiba Carrier Corpo­ra­tion from Toshiba.

News

Munich — Climate tech start-up Reverion raises €8.5 million to acce­le­rate produc­tion of its flexi­ble power plants. UVC Part­ners, Green Gene­ra­tion Fund, Extan­tia Capi­tal, Doral Energy-Tech Ventures and biome­thane trader Land­wärme GmbH are among the inves­tors.

The fresh capi­tal will be used to expand produc­tion of 100 kilo­watt and 500 kilo­watt biogas power plants. In addi­tion, Reverion will receive €12 million in rese­arch funding, which will be used for further deve­lo­p­ment of the equip­ment. The start-up is a spin-off of the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich (TUM) and parti­ci­pa­ted in the XPRENEURS incu­ba­tion program of Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s largest center for inno­va­tion and start-ups.

With Reverion’s new tech­no­logy, biogas plant opera­tors can increase their reve­nue by up to 400 percent from the same amount of biomass. The company’s upco­ming Series A finan­cing aims to further increase produc­tion and posi­tion itself for market demand for giga­watt-scale rene­wa­ble capa­city.

100 percent more effi­ci­ency and no harmful CO2 emis­si­ons

Reverion plans to replace as many conven­tio­nal power plants as possi­ble world­wide with its tech­no­logy. The first target market is exis­ting biogas plants. Today, these are powered by gas engi­nes that achieve only a very low effi­ci­ency of 40 percent at most, offer limi­ted storage opti­ons, and emit milli­ons of tons of CO2 annu­ally. Reverion’s modu­lar power plants, on the other hand, double the effi­ci­ency of elec­tri­city gene­ra­tion from 40 to 80 percent compared to conven­tio­nal tech­no­logy. Since the small power plants can also run “back­wards” (rever­si­bly), a rene­wa­ble natu­ral gas substi­tute or green hydro­gen can be gene­ra­ted and stored from a tempo­rary surplus of wind and solar power to make the grid more flexi­ble. Another advan­tage is that Reverion’s modern power plants can be opera­ted CO2-nega­tively when using biogas.

The paten­ted carbon-nega­tive fuel cell tech­no­logy has alre­ady found nume­rous custo­mers today. “We alre­ady have pre-orders of over 60 million euros that we want to fulfill,” explains Felix Fischer, co-foun­der and COO. “Our goal is to break even by ente­ring volume produc­tion and rapidly scaling the number of units ship­ped.“

EU Commis­sion targets acce­le­rate Reverion’s market entry

Rapid action is also requi­red to ensure that Germany can achieve the EU Commission’s targets for the energy tran­si­tion (Net Zero Act) in the fore­seeable future. Reverion can make an important contri­bu­tion to achie­ving these goals. “Our tech­no­logy addres­ses four of the eight curr­ently stated goals: Impro­ving energy storage, expan­ding elec­tro­ly­sis proces­ses and fuel cells, incre­asing the use of biogas and biome­thane, and carbon storage. We are ther­e­fore confi­dent that a rapid and compre­hen­sive market entry will give Germany and the EU a compe­ti­tive edge in highly flexi­ble and carbon-nega­tive energy supply,” explains Stephan Herr­mann, co-foun­der and CEO.

Estab­lished indus­tries must coope­rate

Access to capi­tal is para­mount when ente­ring mass produc­tion, and close colla­bo­ra­tion with estab­lished indus­try is criti­cal to success. This is exactly where UVC Part­ners can assist as an expe­ri­en­ced hard­ware inves­tor. “We looked at various start-ups in this field. The foun­ding team of Reverion convin­ced us because they have deve­lo­ped an outstan­ding tech­no­logy over the last years and successfully tested it in a pilot plant. With our large network toge­ther with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, we can bring part­ners, suppli­ers and exper­tise to the table to further scale the tech­no­logy,” explains Johan­nes von Borries, Mana­ging Direc­tor at UVC Partners.

About UVC Partners

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

About Reverion

Reverion GmbH is a spin-off of the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich. The start-up is deve­lo­ping the tech­no­logy, which was successfully vali­da­ted as part of a rese­arch project, to commer­cial matu­rity and is marke­ting it as a plant manu­fac­tu­rer. The contai­ner-based plants can replace conven­tio­nal gas engi­nes with their low effi­ci­en­cies and can also be opera­ted with hydro­gen in addi­tion to biogas. In addi­tion, plants produce pure CO2 as a bypro­duct of elec­tri­city gene­ra­tion, so they can operate CO2-nega­tively. In parti­cu­lar, howe­ver, they are rever­si­ble, so that surplus rene­wa­ble elec­tri­city from wind and photo­vol­taics can also be conver­ted into hydro­gen or methane as a substi­tute for natu­ral gas in the same plants. The tech­no­logy ther­e­fore combi­nes all the essen­tial core elements — increased effi­ci­ency, CO2-nega­tive opera­tion and large-scale seaso­nal energy storage — that are still needed for successful imple­men­ta­tion of the energy tran­si­tion, in a single plant. www.reverion.com

News

Hamburg, Germany — YPOG advi­sed LI.FI Service GmbH on the $17.5 million Series A funding round led by Coin­Fund and Super­scrypt. The Berlin-based startup enables banks, fintechs and hedge funds to auto­ma­ti­cally exch­ange crypto assets between multi­ple blockchains.

Bloc­ce­le­rate, L1 Digi­tal, Circle, Factor, Perri­don, Theta Capi­tal, Three Point Capi­tal, Abra and nearly 20 angel inves­tors also parti­ci­pa­ted in the funding round.
The capi­tal from this funding round will be used to acce­le­rate the deve­lo­p­ment of the LI.FI- offe­ring across addi­tio­nal block­chains, decen­tra­li­zed exch­an­ges (DEXs) and cross-chain bridges. Further, it also aims to expand sales, busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment, marke­ting and other services, as well as streng­then the connec­tion between tradi­tio­nal finance and DeFi in a meaningful way to inte­grate these insti­tu­ti­ons into the finan­cial markets of the future.

A YPOG team led by Stefan Rich­ter and Ferdi­nand Cadmus provi­ded compre­hen­sive tax and legal advice to the start-up during the finan­cing round, which included an equity invest­ment as well as a token investment.

About LI.FI

LI.FI is a multi-chain liqui­dity and data portal that provi­des access to nearly 20 block­chains, enab­ling the move­ment of assets and exch­ange of data by brin­ging toge­ther infra­struc­ture solu­ti­ons such as cross-chain bridges, rele­vant data sources and decen­tra­li­zed exch­an­ges, enab­ling seam­less compa­ti­bi­lity for plat­forms and users. Based in Berlin, LI.FI was foun­ded by a team of DeFi experts and has quickly become the leading liqui­dity aggre­ga­tor in the block­chain space. www.li.fi.com

Consul­tant LI.FI: YPOG

Stefan Rich­ter (Co-Lead) (Tax, Fintech/DLT), Part­ner, Hamburg
Ferdi­nand Cadmus (Co-Lead) (Tran­sac­tions, Fintech/DLT), Senior Asso­ciate, Hamburg Dr. Frede­rik Gärt­ner (Tran­sac­tions, Fintech/DLT), Part­ner, Berlin
Daniel Resas (Tran­sac­tion, Fintech/DLT), Special Coun­sel, Hamburg/Berlin
Andreas Lange (Tax, Fintech/DLT), Senior Asso­ciate, Hamburg

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Funds, Tax and Tran­sac­tions. The YPOG team advi­ses a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. YPOG is one of the leading addres­ses for

News

Boston/ Munich — Charles­bank Capi­tal Part­ners acqui­res Maltego Tech­no­lo­gies GmbH through the Charles­bank Tech­no­logy Oppor­tu­ni­ties Fund from the invest­ment company Maxburg Betei­li­gun­gen III GmbH & Co KG, which was advi­sed by Maxburg Capi­tal Part­ners. Kirk­land & Ellis advi­sed Charles­bank on this transaction.

Maltego’s soft­ware is used by compa­nies world­wide, inclu­ding half of the DOW 30 compa­nies, for data visua­liza­tion and link analy­sis purpo­ses. Foun­ded in 2008, the company has more than 100 employees and is head­quar­te­red in Munich.

Charles­bank Capi­tal Part­ners, based in Boston and New York, is a middle-market private invest­ment firm that has raised more than $15 billion in capi­tal since its incep­tion. Charles­bank focu­ses on manage­ment-led buyouts and growth capi­tal finan­cings and also enga­ges in credit and tech­no­logy investments.

Maxburg Capi­tal Part­ners is an invest­ment manage­ment company focu­sed on the German-spea­king region. Foun­ded by three part­ners with many years of expe­ri­ence as entre­pre­neurs and inves­tors in public and private equity, Maxburg focu­ses on long-term corpo­rate invest­ments with the aim of achie­ving lasting and sustainable value growth. — Based on seve­ral funds and a total fund volume of € 600 million, Maxburg has an excep­tio­nally flexi­ble invest­ment mandate: We actively invest across the entire range of capi­tal struc­tures — from equity to near-equity finan­cing opti­ons such as mezza­nine and mezza­nine-like forms of invest­ment. www.maxburg.com

Advi­sors to Charles­bank Capi­tal Part­ners: Kirk­land & Ellis, Munich

Dr. Hendrik Braun (Private Equity/M&A, Lead Part­ner); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Thomas Horn­ber­ger, Julia Jung (both Private Equity/M&A)
Kirk­land & Ellis, Boston: Larissa Cespe­des-Yaffar (M&A), Dave Gusella (Private Equity/M&A)
Kirk­land & Ellis, New York: Michael Movso­vich, P.C. (Private Equity/M&A)

About Kirk­land

Kirk­land & Ellis is one of the leading firms for high-cali­ber legal services, with more than 3,000 lawy­ers in 18 cities in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The Munich team advi­ses with a focus on private equity, M&A, corpo­rate law, capi­tal markets, restruc­tu­ring, finan­cing and tax law. www.kirkland.com.

News

Colo­gne — Oppen­hoff advi­sed the BMV Group on its realignment and acqui­si­tion of the von den Hoff Group. The von den Hoff compa­nies will be taken over by a newly foun­ded subsi­diary, BMV Holding GmbH & Co. KG.

BMV Betei­li­gungs- und Besitz­ge­sell­schaft GmbH & Co. KG, head­quar­te­red in Hamburg, is an asso­cia­tion of medium-sized specia­list buil­ding mate­ri­als trading compa­nies. It main­ta­ins and estab­lishes part­ner­ship alli­ances with natio­nal and regio­nal suppli­ers. The share­hol­ders of the BMV Group are active throug­hout Germany.

The von den Hoff Group opera­tes specialty buil­ding mate­ri­als stores with loca­ti­ons in Düren, Aachen, Erft­stadt, Bonn and Sankt Augus­tin. It includes the roofing supplies Helmut von den Hoff GmbH & Co KG, H. von den Hoff GmbH & Co KG and J. Karl Voll­mar GmbH & Co. In addi­tion, a share in the alumi­num and steel profile system special whole­sa­ler HOBA Alu-Produkte Vertriebs GmbH belongs to the acqui­red group of companies.

By acqui­ring the compa­nies, which had previously been family-owned, the BMV Group was able to obtain a co-share­hol­der from its own circle and thus streng­then the diver­sity in the medium-sized buil­ding mate­ri­als trade.

“The tran­sac­tion is a novelty in the German Mittel­stand, as it is the first time that an alli­ance company acqui­res a member of its own. With this acqui­si­tion, Mittel­stand is secu­ring the diver­sity and contin­ued exis­tence of medium-sized buil­ders’ merchants,” says Dr. Phil­ipp Hein­richs, Junior Part­ner in the Corpo­rate Law / M&A depart­ment at Oppenhoff.

The Oppen­hoff team led by Dr. Phil­ipp Hein­richs (Corporate/M&A) included Marvin Roch­ner, Julia Höyng (both Real Estate), Dr. Daniel Dohrn, Renée Cherelle Eckruth (both Anti­trust), Marc Krischer and Hanjo Prond­zinski (both Tax). The exter­nal advi­sor was Ulrich Wald­schmidt (Dr. Gehre-Treu­hand GmbH).

About Oppen­hoff

The full-service law firm Oppen­hoff finds indus­try-speci­fic solu­ti­ons for groups, large owner-mana­ged compa­nies and finan­cial inves­tors. More than 100 attor­neys advise on all major areas of busi­ness and tax law.

News

Düssel­dorf — The share­hol­ders of m.Doc GmbH have sold 51% of the company to CompuGroup Medi­cal SE & Co. KGaA. ARQIS advi­sed m.Doc GmbH on this transaction.

m.Doc deve­lops pati­ent portals and other digi­tal appli­ca­ti­ons for clinics, reha­bi­li­ta­tion and care faci­li­ties. Foun­ded in 2016, the company has loca­ti­ons in Colo­gne and Lisbon and employs around 110 people. m.Doc’s focus is on digi­tiz­ing ever­y­day hospi­tal life, inte­gra­ting pati­ents into admi­nis­tra­tive and medi­cal proces­ses before, during and after inpa­ti­ent treat­ment, and provi­ding far-reaching relief and support for medi­cal staff. The tech­ni­cal basis for m.Doc’s appli­ca­ti­ons is the Smart Health plat­form, which combi­nes m.Doc’s modu­lar pati­ent portal with services such as video consul­ta­ti­ons, appoint­ment bookings, medi­ca­tion plans, treat­ment records and much more. The inter­ope­ra­bi­lity of the m.Doc plat­form with all common hospi­tal infor­ma­tion systems will be further advan­ced for the bene­fit of custo­mers and partners.

CompuGroup Medi­cal will further deve­lop m.Doc’s pati­ent portal and inte­grate it into its systems. In addi­tion, CompuGroup Medi­cal will expand the CLICKDOC solu­tion for appoint­ment bookings and video consul­ta­ti­ons and leverage syner­gies for messen­ger solu­ti­ons. The tran­sac­tion is an important mile­stone on the way to a fully digi­tal inpa­ti­ent and outpa­ti­ent pati­ent jour­ney and opti­mi­zes refer­rals from office-based physi­ci­ans to hospitals.

The ARQIS team around Jörn-Chris­tian Schulze has many years of expe­ri­ence in accom­pany­ing tran­sac­tions in the health­care and tech­no­logy sector. ARQIS was recom­men­ded by one of the share­hol­ders as advi­sor for the transaction.

Advi­sors to m.Doc GmbH: ARQIS (Düssel­dorf)
Dr. Jörn-Chris­tian Schulze, Foto (Lead; M&A), Thomas Chwa­lek (M&A); Coun­sel: Jens Knip­ping (Tax); Asso­cia­tes: Laura Ally Rizzi, Katrin Ludwig, Seve­rin Stef­fens (all M&A), Jasmin Grünen (Tax); Legal Specia­list: Qing Xia (M&A)

  • m.doc GmbH: Dr. Sabine Scholz, Head of Legal Department-
  • Flick Gocke Schaum­burg (Bonn): Dr. Phil­ipp Rulf (M&A), Dr. Thomas Belz (Tax)
  • Honert (Munich): Dr. Thomas Gräd­ler, LL.M. (taxes)
  • WMCF (Finan­cial Consul­ting, Munich): Ulf Böni­cke, Gerrit Hauck, Gian­marco Luso, Iuliana Bitca
News

Munich — Early­bird Venture Capi­tal has led a €3.2 million seed funding round for Berlin-based food tech startup Nosh.bio. In addi­tion to lead inves­tor Early­bird Venture Capi­tal, the Ameri­can fund Clear Current Capi­tal, Grey Silo Ventures and Good Seed Ventures parti­ci­pa­ted in the round. With the fresh capi­tal, Nosh.bio will conti­nue to commer­cia­lize its first product, deve­lop R&D proces­ses and expand produc­tion capacity.

Nosh.bio was foun­ded in 2022 by Tim Fron­zek, form­erly co-foun­der of rebuy.com, and Felipe Lino, former Novo­zy­mes rese­ar­cher and global R&D mana­ger at AB-InBev, with the goal of helping shape the food indus­try of tomor­row. The company uses natu­ral, fermen­ted myco­pro­tein to bring highly func­tional, healthy and clean-label ingre­di­ents to market at the same price as animal-based ingre­di­ents. Nosh.bio ingre­di­ents have binding, gelling and textu­ri­zing proper­ties and are expec­ted to replace chemi­cal addi­ti­ves in the future, enab­ling, for exam­ple, the produc­tion of meat substi­tute products with a single ingredient.

BMH BRÄUTIGAM conti­nuously advi­ses Early­bird on invest­ments (most recently on the finan­cing round of Green­lyte) and was able to further streng­then and expand the client relationship.

Advi­sor Early­bird: BMH BRÄUTIGAM

Bastian Rein­schmidt, Dr. Jan Böhle, Lisa-Marie Sarucco (all Venture Capital)

Advi­sor nosh.bio: Osborne Clarke

News

Munich, Germany — Ariceum Thera­peu­tics (Ariceum) successfully closes a Series A expan­sion finan­cing, raising an addi­tio­nal EUR 22.75 million for Ariceum on top of the EUR 25 million Series A finan­cing announ­ced in June 2022.

With this, Ariceum, a priva­tely held biotech­no­logy company based in Berlin, Germany, aims to advance its clini­cal pipe­line of next-gene­ra­tion radio­phar­maceu­ti­cals and further expand the company, with a focus on its proprie­tary peptide deri­va­tive sato­reo­tide, as well as a pipe­line of other projects. New inves­tors Andera Part­ners and Early­bird Venture Capi­tal join exis­ting inves­tor Pureos Bioven­tures in expan­sion financing.

Olivier Litzka from Andera Part­ners and Chris­toph Mass­ner from Early­bird Venture Capi­tal become addi­tio­nal members of Ariceum’s advi­sory board.

Baker McKen­zie advi­sed Ariceum Thera­peu­tics on all legal aspects rela­ted to the finan­cing. “Toge­ther with our client and our team of specia­li­zed corporate/M&A and life scien­ces lawy­ers, we have succee­ded in secu­ring further finan­cing for Ariceum, paving the way for the deve­lo­p­ment of thera­pies for pati­ents suffe­ring from certain diffi­cult-to-treat cancers,” commen­ted Julia Braun, LL.M., the lead part­ner on the transaction.

Legal advi­sor Ariceum Thera­peu­tics: Baker McKenzie

Lead: Julia Braun (Corporate/M&A, Part­ner, Munich)
Erik Kuhn (Asso­ciate, Munich), Anna Dzik (Asso­ciate, Munich)

About Baker McKenzie

Complex busi­ness chal­lenges require a holi­stic response across diffe­rent markets, sectors and juris­dic­tions. Baker McKenzie’s solu­ti­ons for clients are accom­pa­nied by seam­less advice, under­pin­ned by in-depth prac­tice and indus­try know­ledge as well as excel­lent local market insights. In more than 70 offices world­wide, we work with our clients to provide solu­ti­ons for a connec­ted world.

News

Düssel­dorf — The Deloitte Legal team advi­sed Düssel­dorf-based RP Digi­tal GmbH, a subsi­diary of Rhei­ni­sche Post Medi­en­gruppe, on its 49 percent stake in best it AG.

Berlin-based best it AG digi­ti­zes busi­ness models and sales proces­ses of brands, manu­fac­tu­r­ers and retail­ers in both the B2B and B2C sectors in a sustainable and value-adding manner. It specia­li­zes in the deve­lo­p­ment and distri­bu­tion of soft­ware and licen­ses, as well as in consul­ting for compa­nies in the field of e‑commerce. In doing so, best it AG covers the entire value chain from e‑commerce, custo­mer enga­ge­ment, data & content manage­ment (PIM & CMS), UX & design to online marketing.

RP Digi­tal GmbH, the central digi­tal unit of Rhei­ni­sche Post Medi­en­gruppe, is expan­ding its digi­tal agency busi­ness with this tran­sac­tion to include the e‑commerce compo­nent. In the future, it will provide its regio­nal market part­ners with a digi­tal, scalable plat­form and deve­lop it further to offer the best custo­mer expe­ri­ence in the media busi­ness, dyna­mi­cally expand digi­tal custo­mer rela­ti­onships (end custo­mers and adver­ti­sers), and mone­tize them optimally.

Deloitte Legal provi­ded compre­hen­sive tran­sac­tional legal advice to RP Digi­tal GmbH. Rhei­ni­sche Post Medi­en­gruppe regu­larly relies on the support of Deloitte Legal for its M&A transactions.

Advi­sors RP Digi­tal GmbH: Deloitte Legal Germany
Dr. Michael von Rüden (Part­ner, Lead, Corporate/M&A), Thilo Hoff­mann (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A), Maxi­mi­lian Giep­mann (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A, all Düsseldorf)
Deloitte Legal Austria: Dr. Stefan Zischka (Part­ner), Chris­tina Feis­trit­zer (Asso­ciate, both Labor Law, both Vienna)

About Deloitte

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

News

Munich/ Martins­ried, Germany — Tubu­lis and Bris­tol Myers Squibb have ente­red into a stra­te­gic license agree­ment for the deve­lo­p­ment of diffe­ren­tia­ted anti­body-drug conju­ga­tes (ADCs). Under the terms of the license agree­ment, Bris­tol Myers Squibb will receive exclu­sive rights to Tubu­lis’ proprie­tary conju­ga­tion plat­forms for the deve­lo­p­ment of a select number of highly diffe­ren­tia­ted ADCs for the treat­ment of solid tumors. The agree­ment includes an upfront payment of $22.75 million to Tubu­lis and poten­tial mile­stone payments in excess of $1 billion for deve­lo­p­ment, regu­la­tory appr­oval and commer­cia­liza­tion, as well as royal­ties on the resul­ting marke­ted products.

Tubu­lis, based in Martins­ried, Germany, and Bris­tol Myers Squibb (BMS) intend to use the stra­te­gic part­ner­ship to further advance the deve­lo­p­ment of anti­body-drug conju­ga­tes (ADC). BMS will gain access to Tubu­lis’ proprie­tary P5 conju­ga­tion and Tubu­te­can plat­forms to deve­lop versa­tile and custo­mizable ADCs for cancer treatment.

The Tubu­lis P5 and Tubu­te­can plat­forms enable the produc­tion of ultra-stable ADCs with the poten­tial to actively reduce unwan­ted target-inde­pen­dent toxi­ci­ties. At the same time, they are opti­mi­zed for targe­ted deli­very of potent topoisomerase‑1 inhi­bi­tors. Follo­wing Bris­tol Myers Squibb’s selec­tion of the target, Tubu­lis will provide the company with its linker payloads to gene­rate a uniquely matched ADC for each antibody.

Bris­tol Myers Squibb will assume sole respon­si­bi­lity for the deve­lo­p­ment, manu­fac­tu­ring and commer­cia­liza­tion of the resul­ting ADC candidates.

Almost exactly a year ago, m4 Award winner Tubu­lis had announ­ced a major success, successfully closing a Series B finan­cing of €60 million.

“This stra­te­gic agree­ment with Bris­tol Myers Squibb is an important vali­da­tion of the poten­tial of our approach to deve­lo­ping next-gene­ra­tion ADC-based thera­peu­tics and our state-of-the-art ADC conju­ga­tion tech­no­lo­gies that enable advan­ced ADC design to treat tumors with high unmet medi­cal need,” said Domi­nik Schu­ma­cher, M.D., CEO and co-foun­der of Tubu­lis. He sees the colla­bo­ra­tion with BMS as a signi­fi­cant step “in chan­ging onco­logy treat­ment para­digms and achie­ving better outco­mes for cancer patients.”

“ADCs play a promi­sing role in cancer therapy, and Tubu­lis’ diffe­ren­tia­ted tech­no­lo­gies offer oppor­tu­ni­ties to over­come current chal­lenges in deve­lo­ping safe and effec­tive ADC thera­peu­tics,” said Dr. Emma Lees, senior vice presi­dent, rese­arch and early deve­lo­p­ment and head of the Thema­tic Rese­arch Center for Mecha­nisms of Cancer Resis­tance at Bris­tol Myers Squibb.

News

Munich — The publicly traded Cana­dian company Constel­la­tion Soft­ware, Inc. acqui­red all shares in Peak­work AG in Düssel­dorf. Previous owners of Peak­work were company foun­der Ralf Usbeck and other members of the manage­ment team as majo­rity share­hol­ders as well as the private equity fund Brock­haus and TUI Betei­li­gungs GmbH. Finan­cial details of the acqui­si­tion were not disclosed.

Foun­ded in 2009, German company Peak­work deve­lops distri­bu­tion systems used by airlines, tour opera­tors and online travel agen­cies. Its product enables travel suppli­ers to access these services for sale to custo­mers. Peak­work, with appro­xi­m­ately 150 employees, will become part of Vela Soft­ware, one of Constel­la­tion Software’s six busi­ness units. The company will operate inde­pendently and stres­sed that there will be no inter­rup­tion of services.

Toronto-based Constel­la­tion is a publicly traded, global conglo­me­rate of soft­ware compa­nies in a variety of industries.

POELLATH provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to the sellers in the context of the tran­sac­tion as lead coun­sel for the seller side with the follo­wing team:

Phil­ipp von Braun­schweig (photo), LL.M. (Ford­ham) (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Munich)
Dr. Nico Fischer (Part­ner, Tax Law, Munich)
Daniel Wied­mann, LL.M. (NYU) (Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Anti­trust Law, Frankfurt)
Dr. Andreas Reuther (Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Employ­ment Law, Munich)
Chris­tine Funk, LL.M. (Coun­sel, IT, Frankfurt)
Dr. Matthias Meier (Senior Asso­ciate, M&A/Corporate, Munich)
David Lübke­meier, LL.M. (UCL) (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A, Munich)
Andreas Gesell (Asso­ciate, Tax Law, Munich)

POELLATH had alre­ady advi­sed inves­tor Brock­haus on its entry in 2017 and now recei­ved the trust of all sellers as lead coun­sel for the transaction.

Advi­sors to Constel­la­tion Soft­ware, Inc.: Taylor Wessing Hamburg
Dr. Jan Riebeling

Advi­sor TUI: Mayer Brown Düsseldorf
Dr. Jan Streer

As well as Mareike Acker­mann (in-house) involved.

News

Munich — We have Alpina Part­ners GmbH (“Alpina Part­ners”) has made a rele­vant invest­ment in FINA­plus GmbH (“FINA­plus”). Alpina Part­ners was advi­sed by OMMAX on this tran­sac­tion. FINA­plus is a soft­ware plat­form for asset manage­ment, consis­ting of PS plus Port­fo­lio Soft­ware + Consul­ting GmbH (“PSplus”) and Fina­Soft GmbH (“Fina­Soft”). The current manage­ment team will retain a signi­fi­cant stake in the company and support the next phase of FINA­plus’ growth.

The DACH wealth manage­ment soft­ware market is highly attrac­tive and is esti­ma­ted to grow at ~11% CAGR (2022F-26F). Posi­tive funda­men­tal drivers of the market include increased digi­tiza­tion ambi­ti­ons follo­wing the COVID-19 pande­mic and gene­ral indus­try trends.

To prepare for the invest­ment, OMMAX supported Alpina Part­ners through commer­cial and tech­ni­cal due dili­gence and exami­ned FINA­plus’ busi­ness model, market dyna­mics, compe­ti­tive land­scape, custo­mer perfor­mance and asses­sed management’s busi­ness plan to derive actionable commer­cial and digi­tal value crea­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties. A tech­ni­cal stra­tegy and IT archi­tec­ture review were also conducted.

Florian Ewald, Part­ner at OMMAX: “FINA­plus has a strong, modern product offe­ring that serves many long-stan­ding custo­mer rela­ti­onships while having the poten­tial to successfully gain addi­tio­nal market share. We congra­tu­late Alpina Part­ners on being named to FINA­plus, a well-estab­lished company in the asset manage­ment soft­ware space.”

www.ommax.de

 

News

Berlin — Berlin-based deep-tech start-up Qdrant Solu­ti­ons GmbH has raised EUR 7.5 million in a seed finan­cing round that was seve­ral times over­sub­scri­bed. The round was led by Unusual Ventures. Green­Gate Part­ners compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed Qdrant Solu­ti­ons GmbH on the finan­cing round.

Qdrant Solu­ti­ons GmbH offers solu­ti­ons in the areas of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Data Science, Machine Lear­ning, Big Data, Cloud Compu­ting and gene­ral soft­ware deve­lo­p­ment. Qdrant is a vector data­base and vectora simi­la­rity search engine. It is provi­ded as an API service that allows sear­ching for the nearest high-dimen­sio­nal vectors. With Qdrant, embed­dings or neural network enco­ders can be turned into full-fled­ged appli­ca­ti­ons for matching, sear­ching, recom­men­ding, etc.

The Berlin-based start-up, which was foun­ded at the end of 2021, had recei­ved EUR 2 million in pre-seed finan­cing from Euro­pean funds 42CAP and IBB Ventures at the begin­ning of last year. Just under 1.5 years after its foun­da­tion, the company has now been able to complete this extre­mely successful seed round. The round was over­sub­scri­bed seve­ral times, which is a great achie­ve­ment of the foun­ders and the employees of the company in the current market environment.

Green­Gate Part­ners compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed Qdrant Solu­ti­ons GmbH on the finan­cing round.

Advi­sor Qdrant Solu­ti­ons GmbH: Green­Gate Part­ners Rechts­an­walts­ge­sell­schaft mbH
Marc René Spitz, LL.M. (USC) (Lead; Part­ner, Corpo­rate) Dr. Leonie Singer, LL.M. (Asso­ciate, Corpo­rate) Constan­tin Forst­ner (Asso­ciate, Corporate)
Alex­an­der Tribess (Part­ner, IT & Data Protection)
Dr. Alex­an­der Raif (Part­ner, Labor Law)

Advi­sor to the main inves­tor Unusual Ventures: Good­win Proc­ter LLP Frankfurt
Dr. Gregor Klenk (Part­ner)
Chris­toph Hempel (Asso­ciate)

About Green­Gate Partners

Green­Gate Part­ners is a tech­no­logy law firm with parti­cu­lar exper­tise around venture capi­tal and tran­sac­tions. From our offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers offer their clients first-class advice at eye level.
The scope of consul­ting in the venture capi­tal area is compre­hen­sive and ranges from the foun­da­tion to the indi­vi­dual finan­cing rounds to the exit. Clients include dome­stic and foreign venture capi­tal funds, stra­te­gic inves­tors, busi­ness angels as well as foun­ders, start-ups or managers.

News

Berlin — Hygraph has successfully closed a $30 million Series B invest­ment round led by One Peak to acce­le­rate the next gene­ra­tion of content manage­ment for the Composable Archi­tec­tures era.

Exis­ting inves­tors Open Ocean, One Peak, SquareOne and new busi­ness angel Boris Loks­hin (co-foun­der and CEO of Spry­ker Systems) also parti­ci­pa­ted in this new round, brin­ging our total funding to $43.7 million.

Foun­ded in 2017, Berlin-based startup Hygraph is an enter­prise content manage­ment plat­form that makes it possi­ble to deve­lop tomorrow’s connec­ted digi­tal events quickly and at scale. Demand for networked digi­tal services is growing, but deve­lo­ping ever­y­thing indi­vi­du­ally is costly. Today, orga­niza­ti­ons not only need to distri­bute content across multi­ple devices, but also access and deli­ver content from a variety of discon­nec­ted sources.

Hygraph’s fede­ra­ted content plat­form repres­ents the next gene­ra­tion of content manage­ment, enab­ling a many-to-many rela­ti­onship between diffe­rent content sources and devices. Hygraph is head­quar­te­red in Berlin and employs 66 people from all over the world, spread over 5 conti­nents, 18 count­ries and 26 natio­na­li­ties. With the fresh capi­tal, Hygraph plans to conti­nue its inno­va­tion and expand its market presence, with a focus on North America.

“Just as Head­less CMS has trans­for­med content distri­bu­tion, Hygraph is trans­forming the inte­gra­tion of content and data to enable the crea­tion of new digi­tal services and busi­ness models in the content economy. Our new finan­cing round enables us to further scale our busi­ness. We want to do for content manage­ment what Mule­Soft has done for inte­gra­tion,” said Michael Luka­szc­zyk, CEO and co-foun­der of Hygraph.

Consul­tant Hygraph: Vogel Heerma Waitz

Dr. Simon Pfef­ferle (photo), Dr. Lorenz Frey, Dr. Jan Heerma and Maxi­mi­lian Göbel from the law firm Vogel Heerma Waitz advi­sed Hygraph on a series B finan­cing round with a total volume of USD 30 million. The finan­cing round was led by One Peak. Open Ocean, Peak, SquareOne and Boris Lokschin also participated.

About Vogel Heerma Waitz

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

News

Munich, Germany — MOVE, an Israel-based vaca­tion booking plat­form, today announ­ced that it has successfully raised €7 million in the first closing of its funding round. The invest­ment by inves­tors from Israel and promi­nent Munich-based family offices is expec­ted to acce­le­rate MOVE’s expan­sion into the Euro­pean market, follo­wing the company’s remar­kable success in the Israeli market. The invest­ment was broke­red by ennea capi­tal partners.

Laun­ched in Febru­ary 2022, MOVE’s ground­brea­king plat­form offers perso­na­li­zed, machine-cura­ted vaca­tion packa­ges that allow users to effort­lessly and quickly book custo­mizable leisure travel. In its first year of opera­tion, the company achie­ved €4 million in annual recur­ring reve­nue and €42 million in sales, proving the effec­ti­ve­ness of its tech­no­logy and busi­ness model.

Erez Bousso, CEO of MOVE, said, “We are thril­led with the confi­dence our inves­tors have placed in our vision and tech­no­logy. Their support will enable us to revo­lu­tio­nize the Euro­pean vaca­tion travel market and conti­nue to deli­ver outstan­ding value to our customers.”

With 300,000 monthly active users in Decem­ber 2022 and a 9/10 user refer­ral rate, MOVE plans to capture a signi­fi­cant share of the €350 billion addressa­ble market in Europe. The company’s manage­ment team consists of expe­ri­en­ced execu­ti­ves with proven track records at leading compa­nies such as lastminute.com, CWT and Expedia.

Günter Ehwei­ner, repre­sen­ta­tive of Roland Berger, one of the inves­tors, commen­ted, “MOVE’s plat­form is a game-chan­ger in the vaca­tion travel indus­try, offe­ring unmat­ched speed, conve­ni­ence and perso­na­liza­tion for custo­mers. We are exci­ted to invest in a company that is alre­ady show­ing impres­sive growth and has the poten­tial to change the way people book their vacations.”

MOVE’s plat­form connects depar­ture airports with city breaks and sun & beach vaca­tion desti­na­ti­ons, offe­ring custo­mers a 7 percent price advan­tage. The company’s omni-chan­nel marke­ting stra­tegy has resul­ted in market-leading Unit Econo­mics, with conver­sion rates two times higher and bookings five times faster than tradi­tio­nal platforms.

With an ambi­tious goal of achie­ving sales of more than €55 million by 2025, the company plans to use the funds raised to expand its presence in Europe, streng­then part­ner­ships with leading media houses and further deve­lop its state-of-the-art technology.

About MOVE
MOVE is a state-of-the-art vaca­tion booking plat­form that offers perso­na­li­zed, machine-cura­ted vaca­tion packa­ges. With a mission to revo­lu­tio­nize the travel indus­try, MOVE combi­nes tech­no­logy and conve­ni­ence to provide a seam­less expe­ri­ence for custo­mers seeking unique, custo­mizable leisure travel. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.wearemove.io.

About ennea capi­tal partners
ennea is a leading M&A, invest­ment and advi­sory firm focu­sed on the Euro­pean travel indus­try. We are the part­ner of choice for foun­ders and inves­tors to acce­le­rate their ambi­ti­ons in buil­ding, scaling and selling market-leading companies.
www.ennea.vc

News

Berlin — Miss Sophie sells to Wilde­Group. Miss Sophie has writ­ten an impres­sive success story in 8 years, estab­li­shing itself as a direct-to-consu­mer pioneer in the beauty market. Sophie Kühn (photo, © Miss Sophie) foun­ded the company in Berlin in 2014, without inves­tors (“boot­strap­ped”) she scaled the company to an eight-figure turno­ver and counts almost one million custo­mers. Miss Sophie ranks first among the fastest growing online compa­nies in the beauty sector in Germany (Digi­tal 100 by similarweb).

During her semes­ter abroad in France, the busi­ness student came up with the idea for the nail foils. Since nail polish quickly peeled off her nails on the beach, she looked for an alter­na­tive — and found it. Sophie star­ted her busi­ness in her 1‑room apart­ment and packed the first orders there. In the early days of e‑commerce, the brand made a name for itself in the beauty world through nume­rous TV features. Influen­cer marke­ting paired with perfor­mance marke­ting allo­wed the company to grow sustainably.

The Miss Sophie product range consists of over 400 items: a variety of nail foils, access­ories for appli­ca­tion and removal, and care products. The beauty products are sold via the company’s own online store and via major beauty plat­forms such as Douglas, Flaconi, QVC, West­wing and Amazon. The nail foils are vegan and animal-free. The long shelf life of 14 days and easy appli­ca­tion make the nail foils so popu­lar with consumers.

Wilde­Group has been active in the cosme­tics indus­try for over 30 years, specia­li­zing in high-quality beauty products, services and trai­ning. Thanks to WildeGroup’s long expe­ri­ence in the nail sector through its LCN as well as ales­san­dro brands and its opera­tio­nal resour­ces, Miss Sophie will be able to expand in its current markets, enter new markets, further deve­lop its B2B busi­ness and work on expan­ding its product range.

By part­ne­ring with Wilde­Group, foun­der Sophie Kühn is taking on a pionee­ring role. Because while the number of female foun­ders in Germany will rise to 20.3% in 2022 (source: Statista), only 4% of all exits in Europe are “women-led”, i.e. have at least one female foun­ding member (source: Deal­room; refers to exits with company valua­tion >$20m).

News

Gelsenkirchen/ Frank­furt and Munich — Smal­ler Mid-Cap Fund I (TSM I), advi­sed by Triton, has signed an agree­ment to sell Norres Bagger­man Group (“Norres Bagger­man”), a market-leading manu­fac­tu­rer of plas­tic hoses for indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons in Europe, to Nalka DACH Invest­ments SA SICAF-RAIF (“Nalka”). Gibson, Dunn & Crut­cher LLP advi­sed Triton on this tran­sac­tion. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the tran­sac­tion or the purchase price.

Norres Bagger­man is one of the Euro­pean leaders in the manu­fac­ture and tech­ni­cal instal­la­tion of indus­trial hose systems. The company employs around 400 people and has six produc­tion sites and 15 sales offices in Europe, the USA and Asia.

Triton acqui­red Norres Bagger­man in 2018 with the goal of deve­lo­ping the company into a Euro­pean market leader. To this end, growth was to be acce­le­ra­ted, inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion step­ped up and the company deve­lo­ped into a systems provi­der. As part of the Triton port­fo­lio, NORRES has successfully comple­ted three acqui­si­ti­ons, increased its orga­nic growth to appro­xi­m­ately 10%, and increased sales by more than 170% to well over €100 million. The company has also intro­du­ced a clearly defi­ned frame­work to further deve­lop its ESG standards.

Andi Klein, Mana­ging Part­ner and Head of TSM I: “We thank Ralf Dahmer, his manage­ment team and all employees of Norres Bagger­man for the great coope­ra­tion and their important contri­bu­tion to the deve­lo­p­ment of the company into a pan-Euro­pean market leader in its sector despite often uncer­tain times. We are convin­ced that NORRES is well posi­tio­ned for the future and that Nalka is the right part­ner to conti­nue the company’s success story.”

Since its foun­ding in 1997, Triton has laun­ched ten funds and focu­ses on invest­ments in medium-sized compa­nies head­quar­te­red in Europe in the indus­trial, services, consu­mer goods and health­care sectors. The current compa­nies in the Triton port­fo­lio gene­rate total sales of around 18 billion euros and employ over 105,000 people.

Advi­sor Triton: Gibson Dunn 

Led by Frank­furt part­ner Dr. Wilhelm Rein­hardt and Munich asso­ciate Dr. Dennis Seif­arth, the team included coun­sel Dr. Aliresa Fatemi and Anne­kat­rin Pels­ter and asso­cia­tes Dr. Mattias Prange and Lena Pirner (all Frank­furt) and Maxi­mi­lian Schnie­wind (Munich). The team also included part­ners Dr. Hans Martin Schmid (Tax, Munich) and Dr. Mark Zimmer (Labor Law, Munich), coun­sel Alex­an­der Klein (Finance, Frank­furt), and asso­cia­tes Jan Voll­kam­mer (Anti­trust, Frank­furt) and Yannick Ober­acker (Data Privacy/IP, Munich).

About Gibson Dunn

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

News

Berlin — metr raised over six million euros, the company offers data-driven solu­ti­ons for a sustainable and digi­tal real estate indus­try. With the WIKA Group, the BraWo Group and Muji­nzo Labs GmbH, metr was able to gain three new inves­tors. In addi­tion, exis­ting inves­tors, such as Next Big Thing AG and early busi­ness angels, have increased their holdings.

A team led by Ariane Neubauer, Part­ner at Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek’s Berlin office, advi­sed metr Buil­ding Manage­ment Systems GmbH on its Series A finan­cing round.

“On the one hand, we will use the money from the Series A finan­cing round for further product deve­lo­p­ment and invest­ments in our plat­form. In this way, we will further digi­tize the real estate indus­try and thus come closer to our goal of signi­fi­cantly redu­cing CO2 emis­si­ons from buil­dings,” explains Dr. Franka Birke, CEO & Foun­der of metr. “The buil­ding sector is curr­ently under great pres­sure to act. The aim is to achieve climate targets, save energy and signi­fi­cantly increase energy effi­ci­ency, espe­ci­ally in exis­ting buil­dings. That’s why we will also use the cash injec­tion to expand our team to meet the increased demand.”

metr can look back on a very successful fiscal year 2022. The young company was able to triple its custo­mer base and expand its digi­tal plat­form for tech­ni­cal buil­ding equip­ment with addi­tio­nal part­ner solutions.

In view of the energy and climate crisis, the company has laun­ched another solu­tion to comple­ment the remote moni­to­ring of heating and drin­king water systems: AI-supported heating opti­miza­tion. Because, accor­ding to Dr. Franka Birke, it is beco­ming incre­asingly important for buil­ding owners and faci­lity mana­gers to reduce energy costs, save resour­ces and imple­ment effi­ci­ent, safe and sustainable buil­ding manage­ment. This also convin­ced the investors.

Advi­sors to metr Buil­ding Manage­ment Systems GmbH: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek

Ariane Neubauer (lead; venture capi­tal), Astrid Reich (employ­ment law), Shimon Merkel (venture capi­tal), all Berlin

News

Düssel­dorf — A Deloitte Legal team has advi­sed Main Capi­tal port­fo­lio company Pro4all on its merger with PMG, a Munich-based German soft­ware provider.

Pro4all is a leading provi­der of docu­ment manage­ment, quality assu­rance and proac­tive risk manage­ment solu­ti­ons for the cons­truc­tion indus­try, based in the Nether­lands. The stra­te­gic merger with PMG is the first step in Pro4all’s inter­na­tio­nal buy-and-build stra­tegy since manage­ment teamed up with stra­te­gic soft­ware inves­tor Main Capi­tal Partners.

Munich — PMG was foun­ded in 2009 with head­quar­ters in Munich and is a leading soft­ware provi­der for the cons­truc­tion and real estate indus­try. The main product PAVE is a colla­bo­ra­tion plat­form for the entire life cycle of a cons­truc­tion project. The core of PAVE is a powerful and compre­hen­sive CDE (Common Data Envi­ron­ment), which is supple­men­ted with modu­les such as work­flows, project control, BIM, ESG, cost control­ling or cons­truc­tion docu­men­ta­tion. PMG serves more than 250 cons­truc­tion and real estate compa­nies, mainly in the DACH region, which curr­ently handle more than 1000 projects with PAVE.

Through the merger of Pro4all and PMG, the group will have a diver­si­fied custo­mer base of more than 1,000 play­ers in the cons­truc­tion and real estate indus­try. With a strong market presence in the Bene­lux and DACH regi­ons, the Group has a solid custo­mer base with an inter­na­tio­nal perspec­tive that can be lever­a­ged for expan­sion into other Euro­pean count­ries. In addi­tion, the compa­nies see oppor­tu­ni­ties for a strong and unique combi­ned product offe­ring that is well posi­tio­ned to support the cons­truc­tion indus­try in the digi­tiza­tion process. The combi­ned group curr­ently employs a total of 100 people.

The team led by Düssel­dorf-based Deloitte Legal attor­neys Felix Fell­ei­sen and Max Lüer­ßen has advi­sed Main Capi­tal on a number of plat­form and add-on tran­sac­tions and exits since 2015. As part of the stra­te­gic merger of Pro4all and PMG, the team was able to build in parti­cu­lar on its expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in deal­ing with German-Dutch constel­la­ti­ons as well as the inter­cul­tu­ral and lingu­i­stic skills of its Dutch-spea­king members.

Advi­sor Main Capi­tal: Deloitte Legal

Max Lüer­ßen, Foto (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf, Lead), Felix Fell­ei­sen (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf, Co-Lead); Frauke Heudt­lass (Part­ner, Labor Law, Düssel­dorf); Dr. Fleur Johanna Prop, LL.M. (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf); Nicole Deneke, Nicole Rurik (Asso­cia­tes, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), Leonie Onkel­bach (Asso­ciate, Labor Law, Düsseldorf).

News

Düssel­dorf — Herbert Smith Freeh­ills has advi­sed Luft­hansa Group on the sale of its global cate­ring divi­sion LSG Group to private equity firm Aure­lius Group. Herbert Smith Freeh­ills alre­ady advi­sed Luft­hansa Group in 2019 on the sale of LSG Group’s Euro­pean busi­ness to Swiss-based Gategroup.

The carve-out tran­sac­tion includes all tradi­tio­nal cate­ring acti­vi­ties as well as the onboard retail and food commerce busi­nesses. The LSG Group has around 19,000 employees and consists of over 100 compa­nies opera­ting more than 130 service centers in the Ameri­cas (USA and Latin America), EMMA (emer­ging markets) and Asia-Paci­fic. LSG Group also includes onboard retail specia­list Retail InMo­tion and SCIS Air Secu­rity Services.

The tran­sac­tion invol­ves the trans­fer of shares and assets in more than 30 juris­dic­tions world­wide. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is subject to the neces­sary regu­la­tory appr­ovals and is expec­ted to take place in the third quar­ter of 2023.

LSG Group is head­quar­te­red in Neu-Isen­burg near Frank­furt am Main. In the pande­mic year 2021, it gene­ra­ted conso­li­da­ted sales of EUR 1.96 billion worldwide.

The Aure­lius Group is a private equity inves­tor based in Grün­wald, Germany. The invest­ment company curr­ently opera­tes in eight diffe­rent loca­ti­ons in Europe, inclu­ding Munich, London, Amster­dam, Stock­holm, Milan, Madrid, Luxem­bourg and Düsseldorf.

Advi­sor Deut­sche Luft­hansa: Herbert Smith Freehills

Düsseldorf/Frankfurt: Dr. Sönke Becker, Photo (Lead, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Marcel Nuys (Compe­ti­tion), Dr. Marius Boewe (Regu­la­tory), Dr. Stef­fen Hoer­ner (Tax), Kai Liebrich (Finance); Coun­sel: Dr. Chris­tian Johnen, Lena von Richt­ho­fen (both Corporate/M&A), Dr. Florian Huer­kamp (Compe­ti­tion), Dr. Hannes Jacobi (Finance); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Niko­laus Moench, Marjel Dema, Janis Rentrop, Tobias Beuker, Dr. Marius Dicke (all Corpo­rate), Mirko Gleits­mann, Anne Ecken­roth, Caro­line Wendt (all Compe­ti­tion), David Rasche, Kris­tin Kattwin­kel (both Regu­la­tory), Wladi­mir Leon­hard, Tatiana Güns­ter (both Tax), Sophia Peter (Finance), Dr. Simone Zieg­ler (Data Protec­tion), Dr. Tim Abend­schein, Justus ter Veen (both Finance).

Hong Kong: Hilary Lau (Corpo­rate)
Johan­nes­burg: Rudolph du Ples­sis (Corpo­rate)
London: Mark Bardell (Corpo­rate), Kris­ten Roberts, Gabri­elle Wong (both Finance), Rachel Pinto (Pensi­ons)
New York: James Robin­son (Corpo­rate), Joseph Falcone, Jona­than Cross (both Regulatory)
Milan: Pietro Pouche (Dispu­tes)
Beijing: Nanda Lau (Corpo­rate)

 

News

New York & London — KKR, a leading global inves­tor, has announ­ced the final closing of Euro­pean Fund VI (the “Fund”). At $8.0 billion, inclu­ding the commit­ment from KKR itself, it is KKR’s largest Euro­pean private equity fund to date, follo­wed by the $6.6 billion fund laun­ched in 2019. The new fund will focus on private equity invest­ments, mainly in econo­mic­ally strong regi­ons of Western Europe.

Phil­ipp Freise Photo (© KKR), Co-Head of Euro­pean Private Equity at KKR, said, “KKR has been inves­t­ing in Europe for nearly 25 years and we believe the oppor­tu­ni­ties are grea­ter today than ever before. We believe the Euro­pean economy offers tremen­dous poten­tial for trans­for­ma­tive invest­ments in the context of struc­tu­ral trends, such as digi­ta­liza­tion, health­care and sustainability.”
Mattia Caprioli, Co-Head of Euro­pean Private Equity at KKR, added: “We look forward to support­ing foun­ders, family busi­nesses and corpo­ra­tes as a stra­te­gic part­ner helping them take their busi­ness to the next level.”

Chris­tian Ollig, Part­ner and Head of DACH at KKR, said: “Since 1999, we have inves­ted more than €15 billion in over 30 long-term orien­ted corpo­rate invest­ments in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land. The DACH region is a key anchor for KKR in Europe, and our latest fund is a strong demons­tra­tion of our consis­tent commit­ment to the region. We look forward to the oppor­tu­ni­ties presen­ted by working with poten­tial part­ners and the resour­ces of the new fund.”

KKR’s success in Europe is based on a combi­na­tion of a strong local presence and exper­tise and access to a global network and resour­ces. More than 100 employees, inclu­ding 57 Euro­pean private equity execu­ti­ves, 25 members of KKR Capst­one Europe and other experts from KKR Capi­tal Markets, Public Affairs and the EMEA Macro team support the port­fo­lio compa­nies with their in-depth local market exper­tise. The team is repre­sen­ted in over eight diffe­rent Euro­pean offices and brings toge­ther a total of more than 15 Euro­pean natio­na­li­ties. This exper­tise is comple­men­ted by KKR’s global network. This draws on the know­ledge and skills of the KKR Global Insti­tute and KKR’s senior advi­sors, among others.

Alisa Amarosa Wood, Part­ner and Head of Global Private Markets and Real Assets Stra­te­gies Group at KKR, said, “We are plea­sed that our inves­tors share our Euro­pean team’s belief that there are excel­lent invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in Europe. Many inves­tors have chosen not only to reinvest, but also to increase their expo­sure to our Euro­pean busi­ness. The place­ment of this fund in the current market envi­ron­ment demons­tra­tes the strong confi­dence inves­tors have in our Euro­pean team and plat­form, as well as our long track record of deli­ve­ring value and outstan­ding results.”

Through the fund, KKR will conti­nue to invest along­side family owners, foun­ders, entre­pre­neurs and compa­nies, provi­ding flexi­ble capi­tal for stra­te­gic part­ner­ships, plat­form expan­sion and carve-outs. In addi­tion to inves­tors, KKR itself will make a signi­fi­cant invest­ment in the fund, inves­t­ing a total of more than $1 billion in balance sheet funds and employee stock options.

KKR’s Euro­pean private equity plat­form curr­ently mana­ges total assets of $28.3 billion1 and is part of its $165 billion global private equity busi­ness. The current port­fo­lio includes invest­ments in over 45 compa­nies in Western Europe.

Debe­voise & Plimp­ton LLP acted as primary legal coun­sel to KKR in the fund­rai­sing process.

About KKR 

KKR is a leading global inves­tor provi­ding alter­na­tive asset manage­ment, capi­tal markets and insu­rance solu­ti­ons. The focus is on gene­ra­ting attrac­tive invest­ment returns through a long-term and disci­pli­ned invest­ment approach, employ­ing highly skil­led profes­sio­nals and support­ing growth at its invest­ment proper­ties and in the commu­ni­ties where KKR has a presence. KKR finan­ces funds that invest in private equity, credit products, real assets, and — through stra­te­gic part­ners — hedge funds.

News

Munich — The law firm Gütt Olk Feld­haus has advi­sed PLENTICON GROUP GmbH on the acqui­si­tion of the micro­PLAN Group. Plen­ti­con is a port­fo­lio company of Harald Quandt Indus­trie­be­tei­li­gun­gen GmbH.

The addi­tion of the Emsdet­ten-based IT systems house expands the group’s range of exper­tise, parti­cu­larly in the DATEV and data center areas as well as in DATEV consul­ting, while also incre­asing its geogra­phi­cal reach.

PLENTICON GROUP GmbH, head­quar­te­red in Frank­furt am Main, is one of the leading nati­on­wide full-service provi­ders for IT services. The majo­rity share­hol­der is Harald Quandt Indus­trie­be­tei­li­gun­gen GmbH (HQIB).

With around 120 employees at seven loca­ti­ons and its own data center, micro­PLAN is one of the largest IT inno­va­tion mana­gers in Germany. The port­fo­lio of the IT system house includes cloud services, ASP/IT outsour­cing, IT and DATEV solutions.

The GOF team led by part­ners Dr. Sebas­tian Olk (photo © GOF) and Dr. Tilmann Gütt advi­sed PLENTICON and Harald Quandt Indus­trie­be­tei­li­gun­gen GmbH on all tran­sac­tion-rela­ted legal issues as well as on the finan­cing. The law firm had previously advi­sed the group on the acqui­si­tion of System­haus Cramer GmbH, PK Office GmbH and Horn & Cosi­fan Compu­ter­sys­teme GmbH.

Legal advi­sors to Harald Quandt Indus­trie­be­tei­li­gun­gen GmbH and PLENTICON GROUP GmbH: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Dr. Sebas­tian Olk (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Tilmann Gütt (Part­ner, Banking/Finance, both Lead), Thomas Becker (Of Coun­sel, IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Isabelle Vran­cken, Dr. Domi­nik Forst­ner (both Senior Asso­cia­tes, Corporate/M&A), Chris­to­pher Krappitz (Asso­ciate, Banking/Finance)

Alten­burg Fach­an­wälte für Arbeits­recht, Munich
Andreas Ege, Dr. Char­lotte Beck, Henning Timm, Gero Thole (all labor law)

News

Munich — Global inves­tor River­side signs binding agree­ment to acquire leading clean­room consu­ma­bles compa­nies Dastex in Germany and Vita Verita in Sweden.

The River­side Company, the global inves­tor specia­li­zing in mid-market growth compa­nies, has signed an agree­ment to acquire Dastex Rein­raum­zu­be­hör GmbH & Co KG (Dastex), a leading specia­li­zed inde­pen­dent distri­bu­tor of clean­room appa­rel and consu­ma­bles in Europe. — In paral­lel, River­side signed an agree­ment to acquire Vita Verita, a leading company in the Swedish market, as the first exten­sion of the plat­form. The closing of the acqui­si­ti­ons is subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory approvals.

Foun­ded in Germany in 1979, Dastex has become a market-leading supplier of clean­room garm­ents and consu­ma­bles in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land, with a strong foot­hold in the Bene­lux and a growing presence across Europe. The company has grown rapidly in recent years to meet strong demand from the phar­maceu­ti­cal and semi­con­duc­tor indus­tries, thanks to its unique tech­ni­cal know-how and rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment exper­tise, compre­hen­sive product range and excel­lent custo­mer service.

Foun­ded in Sweden in 1983, Vita Verita is a specia­list in clean­room consu­ma­bles and labo­ra­tory equip­ment, air quality test­ing, service and main­ten­ance for phar­maceu­ti­cal compa­nies, hospi­tals and other control­led envi­ron­ments. The company offers both proprie­tary and third-party products, inclu­ding disposable garm­ents, gloves and wipes, as well as veri­fi­ca­tion and vali­da­tion services. Vita Verita can look back on nearly two deca­des of conti­nuous growth, supported by long-stan­ding custo­mer rela­ti­onships and a consis­tent focus on quality.

Damien Gaudin, Part­ner at River­side Europewho led the tran­sac­tions, commen­ted: “Through the acqui­si­tion of Dastex and Vita Verita, we combine two clean­room consu­ma­bles specia­lists in Europe that offer indis­pensable products and services and form the core of our pan-Euro­pean buy-and-build stra­tegy. This crea­tes a unique plat­form perfectly posi­tio­ned to grow further orga­ni­cally and through acqui­si­ti­ons. We look forward to working with the strong manage­ment teams of Dastex and Vita Verita to build the Euro­pean leader in clean­room conta­mi­na­tion control, offe­ring both best-in-class products and tech­ni­cal and regu­la­tory services, supported by an ambi­tious ESG strategy.”

Kars­ten Langer, Mana­ging Part­ner of River­side Europe, added, “The invest­ments unders­core River­side Europe’s exper­tise at the inter­sec­tion of two of our focus sectors: Health­care and Specialty Distri­bu­tion. They are also a clear exam­ple of our pan-Euro­pean presence and our ability to build leading busi­nesses. Dastex and Vita Verita serve the conti­nuously growing clean­room indus­try, helping custo­mers in the phar­maceu­ti­cal, life scien­ces and other high-tech indus­tries to meet incre­asingly strin­gent quality and regu­la­tory stan­dards. The acqui­si­tion of Dastex and Vita Verita crea­tes a leader in clean­room conta­mi­na­tion control for the bene­fit of its customers.”

Cars­ten Mosch­ner, CEO of Dastex, commen­ted, “The manage­ment team and I are deligh­ted to join forces with Vita Verita and River­side to open the next chap­ter in the company’s history. I stron­gly believe that River­side is the ideal part­ner to support our ambi­tious growth plans and that the addi­tion of Vita Verita and their compre­hen­sive service offe­ring in Sweden is a criti­cal step in our jour­ney to become one of the pree­mi­nent provi­ders of conta­mi­na­tion control products and services in Europe. We look forward to further expan­ding our busi­ness across the conti­nent and provi­ding our custo­mers with an even broa­der full-service offe­ring. I would like to thank all employees, colle­agues, suppli­ers and custo­mers for their great support and trust.”

Anders Kumbrant, CEO, and Magnus Kumbrant, COO of Vita Verita, added: “We are deligh­ted to be working with Dastex and River­side to further realize our ambi­ti­ons and vision for the company. We are parti­cu­larly exci­ted at the pros­pect of working with Dastex, one of Europe’s leading clean­room appa­rel and consu­ma­bles compa­nies, known for its outstan­ding exper­tise and profes­sio­na­lism. We would like to thank Anna-Lena Weiss, who will take a leading role at Vita Verita in the future, as well as the entire Vita Verita team, our custo­mers, suppli­ers and the River­side team for their trust and support.”

Working with Gaudin on the tran­sac­tion for River­side were Vice Presi­dent Maxime Meule­mees­ter, Senior Asso­ciate Nicola Tomaschko, Asso­cia­tes Sebas­tiaan Pauwels and Nils Mjörn­emark, and Origi­na­tion Asso­ciate Bence Putnoky. Damien Gaudin acqui­red the Dastex deal for River­side, while Ali Al Alaf and Nils Mjorn­emark acqui­red the Vita Verita deal.

Advi­sors to the share­hol­ders of the Dastex Group: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frankfurt
Dr. Michael Cziesla, Norman Wasse, LL.M. (both Corporate/M&A, lead), Dr. Heiko Kermer, Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel; both Tax), Dr. Chris­tian Rolf, Dr. Gudrun Germa­kow­ski (Düssel­dorf; both Labor), Dr. Laura Stamm­witz (Coun­sel, Anti­trust), Dr. Deniz Tschamm­ler (Commercial/ Regu­la­tory, Frankfurt/Munich), Dr. Johan­nes Honzen (Real Estate); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Marion von Grön­heim, Lisa Schick­ling (both Corporate/M&A), Lukas Deutz­mann (Cologne/Düsseldorf), Ilva Woeste (Munich; both Labor Law), Dr. Lea Hach­meis­ter, Alex­an­dra Heberle (both Healthcare/Regulatory)

dhmp Wirt­schafts­prü­fungs­ge­sell­schaft Steu­er­be­ra­tungs­ge­sell­schaft, Karls­ruhe, Germany
Nota­ries Dr. Frank and Dr. Schnee­weiß, Munich: Dr. Susanne Frank

About The River­side Company

The River­side Company is a global invest­ment firm focu­sed on invest­ments in middle-market growth compa­nies. Since its foun­ding in 1988, River­side has made more than 960 invest­ments. The firm’s inter­na­tio­nal private equity and struc­tu­red capi­tal port­fo­lios include more than 150 compa­nies. Riverside’s Euro­pean opera­ti­ons are an inte­gral part of the company’s exten­sive global network which has been active in Europe since 1989. River­side belie­ves that an inter­na­tio­nal presence combi­ned with deep under­stan­ding of local condi­ti­ons, culture and busi­ness prac­ti­ces makes team members better inves­tors and busi­ness partners.
www.riversidecompany.com

News

Landshut/Munich — Munich-based elec­tric motor start-up Deep­Drive has successfully comple­ted a Series A finan­cing round of 15 million euros. In addi­tion to the exis­ting inves­tors Bayern Kapi­tal with its Bava­rian Growth Fund and UVC Part­ners, which came on board a year ago, BMW i Ventures and the Corpo­rate Venture Capi­tal Unit of Conti­nen­tal AG are also invol­ved. The company is also supported by the renow­ned auto­mo­tive mana­ger and former Audi board member for deve­lo­p­ment Dr. Peter Mertens. The addi­tio­nal funds are inten­ded to inten­sify the path taken to start large-scale produc­tion of the highly effi­ci­ent e‑motor and to be able to respond in terms of person­nel to the further increase in demand.

Foun­ded in 2021, Deep­Drive has deve­lo­ped a radial flux dual rotor motor inclu­ding power elec­tro­nics that can be instal­led in produc­tion vehic­les as a central drive as well as a wheel hub drive, setting enti­rely new stan­dards in e‑mobility. The paten­ted archi­tec­ture has a higher torque and power density compared to other drive tech­no­lo­gies and solves funda­men­tal problems of other e‑vehicle concepts. For exam­ple, a vehicle with Deep­Drive tech­no­logy can travel 20 percent further on a fully char­ged charge, or requi­res 20 percent smal­ler batte­ries than the compe­ti­tion for the same range, enab­ling the next gene­ra­tion of low-cost elec­tric vehic­les. Less rare earths are also used in produc­tion — a clear sustaina­bi­lity advan­tage. Deep­Drive is curr­ently alre­ady working with eight of the top ten auto­ma­kers on various deve­lo­p­ment projects and plans to bring the dual-rotor engine to market in large-scale produc­tion by 2026.

The Deep­Drive team is alre­ady working with eight of the top ten OEMs and is on track to bring its tech­no­logy into mass produc­tion by 2026. Deep­Drive co-foun­der and CEO Felix Pörn­ba­cher says: “The effi­ci­ency of e‑vehicles is one of the biggest chal­lenges facing almost all car manu­fac­tu­r­ers. With our double rotor drive, we have been able to deve­lop a key tech­no­logy that addres­ses precis­ely this problem and is thus attrac­ting extre­mely high inte­rest from indus­try. With our focus on disrup­tive inno­va­tion coupled with profes­sio­nal high-volume expe­ri­ence, we see oursel­ves as a pioneer of elec­tri­fi­ca­tion for mobi­lity. We look forward to working with our strong new part­ners and exis­ting support­ers to bring this tech­no­logy to the road and win initial volume projects.”

Bavaria’s Minis­ter of Econo­mic Affairs Hubert Aiwan­ger: “Deep Drive’s busi­ness model is an excel­lent fit for Bava­ria as an auto­mo­tive loca­tion. There is great econo­mic poten­tial in the plat­form for the deve­lo­p­ment of elec­tric vehic­les. That is why we are support­ing the start-up with the Bava­ria 2 Growth Fund.”

“The use of Deep­Drive motors can save considera­ble costs — another step towards making e‑mobility more attrac­tive and cost-effec­tive and driving forward the all-important market pene­tra­tion,” says Monika Steger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal. “We are plea­sed that the goal of scaling up to large-scale produc­tion in the near future has become a good deal more tangi­ble as a result of this new round of financing.”

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.
www.bayernkapital.de

About UVC

A tech team for tech teams. — We are rocket scien­tists, CS geeks, elec­tri­cal engi­neers, AI rese­ar­chers, mecha­ni­cal engi­neers, mate­ri­als scien­tists, and econo­mists. We value the entre­pre­neu­rial spirit, the pursuit of inno­va­tion and the pursuit of quality. Since 2011, we have built one of Europe’s leading B2B venture capi­tal funds inves­t­ing across Europe from our offices in Berlin and Munich. As a team, we have made over one hundred B2B invest­ments with over thirty exits, inclu­ding some of our own compa­nies. https://www.uvcpartners.com

About BMW i VENTURES

Venture capi­tal for sustainable future tech­no­lo­gies and game chan­gers in mobi­lity. — Venture capi­ta­list BMW i Ventures invests in inno­va­tive, rapidly scaling start-ups from the auto­mo­tive envi­ron­ment that are helping to shape the indi­vi­dual mobi­lity of tomor­row. The focus is on tech­no­lo­gi­cal solu­ti­ons for the trans­por­ta­tion, manu­fac­tu­ring and supply indus­tries, as well as on inter­di­sci­pli­nary, sustainable solu­ti­ons. Thanks to its inde­pen­dence, BMW i Ventures makes invest­ment decis­i­ons quickly and in a manner appro­priate to the indus­try. This auto­nomy makes it possi­ble to match the speed and quality of the best venture capi­ta­lists and attract top invest­ment part­ners. The proxi­mity to the BMW Group in turn streng­thens the tech exper­tise of BMW i Ventures. https://www.bmwgroup.com/de/innovation/unternehmen/venturing_into_new_tech.html

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