ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

The share­hol­ders of Claus Nitsche & Sohn GmbH (“NITSCHE”), distri­bu­tor of high quality essen­tial oils and natu­ral flavors have sold the majo­rity of their shares to OQEMA AG. Network Corpo­rate Finance exclu­si­vely advi­sed the owners and the company on the transaction.

As part of the company’s succes­sion, NITSCHE was able to gain the OQEMA Group as a new majo­rity share­hol­der. The product range is a perfect comple­ment to the “Flavour & Fragrance” range of the OQEMA Group. NITSCHE will conti­nue to be mana­ged by one of the current mana­ging direc­tors in order to combine the long-stan­ding product know-how with the inter­na­tio­nal custo­mer and supplier network of the OQEMA Group.

The company

NITSCHE has specia­li­zed in high-quality essen­tial oils, natu­ral flavors, fragran­ces and inno­va­tive ingre­di­ent solu­ti­ons for over 60 years. The company excels in its analy­ti­cal under­stan­ding of high quality natu­ral essen­tial oils and products. www.nitsche-gmbh.de

About Network Corpo­rate Finance

Network Corpo­rate Finance is an inde­pen­dent, owner-mana­ged advi­sory firm focu­sed on mergers and acqui­si­ti­ons, capi­tal markets tran­sac­tions, and equity and debt finan­cing. We advise both estab­lished and young compa­nies in a wide range of indus­tries. With our team of more than 20 employees at our offices in Düssel­dorf, Berlin and Frank­furt, we have estab­lished oursel­ves as one of the most successful inde­pen­dent corpo­rate finance consul­ting firms in Germany since our foun­da­tion in 2002. www.ncf.de

News

Hamburg/ Bonn — GeneQuine Biothe­ra­peu­tics GmbH, a biotech company deve­lo­ping gene therapy drugs for the treat­ment of muscu­los­ke­le­tal dise­a­ses, announ­ces the closing of a €5.4 million Series A finan­cing round and the raising of €3.65 million in conver­ti­ble loans and grants.

The Series A finan­cing round is led by Pacira BioSci­en­ces, Inc (Parsippany, USA), a US-based phar­maceu­ti­cal company focu­sed on pain manage­ment and rege­ne­ra­tive medi­cine. Other inves­tors include High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (Bonn), which has alre­ady inves­ted in GeneQuine, as well as Noshaq SA (Liège, Belgium) and Samum Vermö­gens­ver­wal­tungs GmbH (Hamburg). Pacira Biosci­en­ces, Inc. and Samum Vermö­gens­ver­wal­tungs GmbH also provide conver­ti­ble loans in the amount of €2.75 million. A further €0.9 million comes in the form of subsi­dies from the Inves­ti­ti­ons­bank des Landes Brandenburg.

GeneQuine will use the funds raised to deve­lop lead candi­date GQ-303 for the treat­ment of osteo­ar­thri­tis through to a Phase 1 clini­cal trial. Further­more, the deve­lo­p­ment of new gene therapy drugs for the treat­ment of inter­ver­te­bral disc dege­ne­ra­tion will be advan­ced, and GeneQuine’s gene therapy vector plat­form will be further expan­ded. GeneQuine alre­ady expan­ded its work­force last year and estab­lished a subsi­diary in Liège (Belgium). GeneQuine has its head­quar­ters in Hamburg and a rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment labo­ra­tory in Lucken­walde (Grea­ter Berlin).

GeneQuine uses a gene therapy vector plat­form based on “Helper-depen­dent Adeno­vi­ral Vectors” (HDAd) to trans­form tissues and organs affec­ted by dise­ase into “facto­ries” for local produc­tion of thera­peu­tic prote­ins. A single, local injec­tion of a gene therapy drug could thus lead to protein produc­tion over seve­ral years without the need for repea­ted appli­ca­tion requi­red for most conven­tio­nal drugs.

GQ-303 is an HDAd vector that produ­ces the protein proteo­gly­can 4 and is curr­ently in precli­ni­cal deve­lo­p­ment. Proteo­gly­can 4 (also known as lubri­cin) has been shown to have a dual mecha­nism of action in the treat­ment of osteo­ar­thri­tis: On the one hand, it has a biome­cha­ni­cal effect due to lubri­ca­ting proper­ties, and on the other hand, it has effects on mole­cu­lar mecha­nisms that lead to the inhi­bi­tion of pain, inflamm­a­tion and carti­lage dege­ne­ra­tion. Ther­e­fore, GQ-303 has the poten­tial to have both sympto­ma­tic and dise­ase-modi­fy­ing effi­cacy in the treat­ment of osteo­ar­thri­tis, which has alre­ady been demons­tra­ted in seve­ral precli­ni­cal in vivo models.

GeneQuine is in advan­ced nego­tia­ti­ons with a suita­ble contract manu­fac­tu­rer for the produc­tion of GQ-303 for toxi­co­logy and clini­cal studies. Follo­wing produc­tion and formal toxi­co­logy studies with GQ-303, appr­oval for a Phase 1 clini­cal trial will be sought. GeneQuine’s former lead candi­date, an HDAd vector that produ­ces the protein interleukin‑1 (now refer­red to as FX201), was sold in 2017 to the phar­maceu­ti­cal company Flexion Thera­peu­tics, Inc. (Burling­ton, USA).

Flexion has since initia­ted a Phase 1 clini­cal trial and trea­ted multi­ple pati­ents in two dose groups with FX201. Because both GQ-303 and FX201 are HDAd vectors and both are injec­ted intra-arti­cu­larly (directly into the joint), GeneQuine esti­ma­tes that most vector-rela­ted deve­lo­p­ment risks for GQ-303 are mini­mi­zed. Although GQ-303 and FX201 are both being deve­lo­ped for knee osteo­ar­thri­tis, GeneQuine will focus on a speci­fic pati­ent popu­la­tion with GQ-303 that can poten­ti­ally bene­fit most from the dual mecha­nism of action of proteo­gly­can 4.

GeneQuine is also deve­lo­ping HDAd vector-based gene therapy drugs for the treat­ment of disc dege­ne­ra­tion. Despite the very high unmet medi­cal need in the treat­ment of disc dege­ne­ra­tion — one of the main causes of chro­nic low back pain — no dise­ase-modi­fy­ing drugs are available for this indi­ca­tion. GeneQuine’s data show that gene therapy with HDAd vectors has great poten­tial in the deve­lo­p­ment of sympto­ma­tic and dise­ase-modi­fy­ing drugs for this disease.

“We are very plea­sed to have closed this finan­cing round and will now use the capi­tal effi­ci­ently to bring GQ-303 into the clinic, expand our gene therapy program for the treat­ment of disc dege­ne­ra­tion, and expand our HDAd vector plat­form. We would like to thank all inves­tors in this finan­cing round for their trust and support. In parti­cu­lar, we are plea­sed to have Pacira as an inves­tor with their strong exper­tise in clini­cal drug deve­lo­p­ment in the muscu­los­ke­le­tal field,” Kilian Guse, CEO of GeneQuine (photo).

“Our equity invest­ment in GeneQuine repres­ents a signi­fi­cant oppor­tu­nity to parti­ci­pate in the deve­lo­p­ment of what we believe is an exci­ting dise­ase-modi­fy­ing gene therapy for osteo­ar­thri­tis. GeneQuine is conduc­ting precli­ni­cal work to support the initia­tion of human studies in appro­xi­m­ately two years. In addi­tion to our confi­dence in this tran­sac­tion as a sound invest­ment, we enthu­si­a­sti­cally look forward to the matu­ra­tion of data and for further oppor­tu­nity to parti­ci­pate in GeneQuine’s successful precli­ni­cal program and entry into the clinic. Importantly, this invest­ment is consis­tent with our mission to advance inno­va­tive pain manage­ment and rege­ne­ra­tive health solu­ti­ons,” Ron Ellis, Senior Vice Presi­dent, Corpo­rate Stra­tegy and Busi­ness Deve­lo­p­ment at Pacira.

“GeneQuine is a great exam­ple of a typi­cal HTGF invest­ment: a new gene­ti­cally engi­nee­red drug disco­very plat­form that broke comple­tely new scien­ti­fic ground when we made our seed invest­ment in 2012. That combi­ned with a strong team capa­ble of advan­cing gene therapy agents toward the clinic as effi­ci­ently as possi­ble. We look forward to support­ing GeneQuine toge­ther with the inter­na­tio­nal inves­tor consor­tium and Pacira’s exper­tise in deve­lo­ping their promi­sing pipe­line,” Martin Pfis­ter, Prin­ci­pal at High-Tech Gründerfonds

About GeneQuine Biothe­ra­peu­tics GmbH

GeneQuine Biothe­ra­peu­tics GmbH is a biotech company deve­lo­ping inno­va­tive gene therapy drugs for the treat­ment of muscu­los­ke­le­tal dise­a­ses. GeneQuine uses a gene therapy plat­form to turn tissues and organs affec­ted by dise­ase into “facto­ries” for local produc­tion of thera­peu­tic prote­ins. Lead candi­date GQ-303 is being deve­lo­ped as a topi­cally applied drug for the treat­ment of osteo­ar­thri­tis and has shown great poten­tial to have sympto­ma­tic and dise­ase-modi­fy­ing effi­cacy in multi­ple animal models. GeneQuine’s former lead candi­date for the treat­ment of osteo­ar­thri­tis, which is based on the same gene therapy vector tech­no­logy as GQ-303, was sold in 2017 to phar­maceu­ti­cal company Flexion Thera­peu­tics, Inc. (Burling­ton, USA) and is curr­ently being tested in a Phase 1 clini­cal trial. GeneQuine has a head office in Hamburg and branch offices in Lucken­walde (Grea­ter Berlin) and Liège (Belgium). www.genequine.com

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported almost 600 start-ups since 2005. His 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. Over €2.8 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,600 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 100 companies.

News

Bonn — DIV estab­lishes the inde­pen­dent infra­struc­ture fund Digi­tal Infra­struc­ture Vehicle (DIV) and acqui­res 38 percent of Cellnex Nether­lands for this purpose. SMP provi­ded compre­hen­sive tax advice on the estab­lish­ment of the inde­pen­dent funds vehicle (DIV) and tax advice on the anchor invest­ment in Cellnex Netherlands.

In the future, DIV will focus on invest­ments in digi­tal infra­struc­ture projects (fiber, towers and data centers) prima­rily in Europe. Deut­sche Tele­kom and Cellnex stand ready as anchor investors.

DIV’s anchor invest­ment is the acqui­si­tion of a 38% stake in Cellnex Nether­lands, in which Deut­sche Tele­kom and Cellnex combine their tower busi­ness in the Nether­lands. Upon comple­tion of the invest­ment, Cellnex Nether­lands will operate a total of 4,314 sites, inclu­ding 180 new sites to be built over the next 7 years. — Further infor­ma­tion is available in English on the Deut­sche Tele­kom and Cellnex websites.

Consul­tant DIV: SMP 
Jens Kretz­schmann (Lead Part­ner, Fund Forma­tion), Partner
Andreas Korten­dick (Lead Part­ner, Tax), Partner
Lenn­art Lorenz (Regu­la­tory Law), Partner
Dr. Stephan Bank (Fund Forma­tion), Partner
Matthias Enge (Fund Forma­tion), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Dr. Chris­tian Jois­ten (Taxes), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Michael Blank (Fund Forma­tion), Associate
Ramona Seufer (Taxes), Associate
David Wittek (Taxes), Associate
Dr. Niklas Ulrich (Regu­la­tory Law), Associate
Dr. Florian Wilbrink (Fund Forma­tion), Associate

About SMP

SMP is a law firm specia­li­zing in tax and busi­ness law, with core prac­tice areas in corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax and tran­sac­tions. SMP’s clients include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-owned mid-sized busi­nesses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity and venture capi­tal funds. Since its foun­da­tion in 2017, SMP 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.SMP today employs over 60 expe­ri­en­ced attor­neys, tax advi­sors, and tax specia­lists in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne.

News

Darmstadt/Madrid/Lyon — Imaweb, a leading inde­pen­dent deve­lo­per and provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for auto­mo­tive dealer­ships and repair shops in Europe, today announ­ced the acqui­si­tion of Procar Infor­ma­tik AG (“Procar”), a leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for car dealer­ships in the DACH region. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the finan­cial details of the transaction.

Darm­stadt-based Procar Infor­ma­tik AG was foun­ded in 1998 and, with around 1,000 custo­mers, is one of the leading provi­ders of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for car dealer­ships in Germany. The company offers solu­ti­ons for dealers and work­shops of the most famous auto­mo­tive brands such as Toyota, BMW, Skoda, Seat, Volks­wa­gen, Audi, Ford and Renault.

Imaweb provi­des auto­mo­tive manu­fac­tu­r­ers (OEMs) and car dealer­ships with a compre­hen­sive range of soft­ware solu­ti­ons to help them digi­tize their entire proces­ses. The company is the market leader in custo­mer rela­ti­onship manage­ment (CRM), dealer­ship manage­ment and after­sa­les soft­ware. Since May 2019, Madrid-based Imaweb has been accom­pa­nied by funds advi­sed by PSG. PSG is an inves­tor specia­li­zing in soft­ware compa­nies that provi­des growth capi­tal to leading mid-market companies.

Through the acqui­si­tion of Procar, Imaweb estab­lishes a strong presence in the DACH region, the largest auto­mo­tive market in Europe. At the same time, the acqui­si­tion crea­tes a leading plat­form that will enable further conso­li­da­tion of the highly frag­men­ted soft­ware market for car dealer­ships. The two foun­ders of Procar, Volker Holt­haus and Karl-Heinz Schlapp, will conti­nue to manage the opera­tio­nal business.

“We are deligh­ted to have the Procar team support Imaweb. This tran­sac­tion repres­ents a leap forward in the deve­lo­p­ment of our company and is ther­e­fore an important mile­stone,” empha­si­zed Patrick Prajs, CEO, and Julian Ciccale, co-foun­der and deputy CEO, of Imaweb. “By combi­ning Procar’s posi­tion as market leader in the DACH region with our exis­ting offe­ring in other Euro­pean count­ries, we are initia­ting Imaweb’s next phase of growth towards beco­ming a leading pan-Euro­pean provider.”

Volker Holt­haus and Karl-Heinz Schlapp added: “We are very plea­sed to become part of Imaweb’s success story. Imaweb has a strong posi­tion in Europe and follows a part­ner­ship approach. This makes it exactly the right part­ner to take Procar to the next level of its development.”

PSG has been support­ing the foun­ders of Imaweb in the pan-Euro­pean expan­sion of the leading Spanish provi­der of CRM solu­ti­ons in the auto­mo­tive indus­try since May 2019. Imaweb’s strong growth in recent years has been both orga­nic and driven by M&A acti­vity. Imaweb had alre­ady acqui­red IDF/Datafirst, a leading soft­ware deve­lo­per for car dealer­ships in France, in Septem­ber 2019 and formed it into a strong plat­form with the subse­quent acqui­si­ti­ons of TMS and Adstra­tegy. In addi­tion, Imaweb was able to expand its posi­tion on the Iberian Penin­sula through the acqui­si­tion of Serin­fer in Spain and Portu­gal, and also estab­lished itself in the Bene­lux count­ries with the acqui­si­tion of IT Motive and Evolutive.

About Imaweb

Imaweb is a leading soft­ware provi­der for auto­mo­tive sales in Europe. The company resul­ted from the merger in 2019 of Imaweb, a Spanish company specia­li­zing in the deve­lo­p­ment of global CRM solu­ti­ons for sales, marke­ting and custo­mer service, with DATA­FIRST-I’Car Systems Group, the leading French provi­der of car dealer­ship soft­ware. www.imaweb.com

About Procar

Procar Infor­ma­tik AG is one of the leading German provi­ders of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for car dealer­ships. Foun­ded in 1998 by Volker Holt­haus and Karl-Heinz Schlapp, Procar today offers solu­ti­ons for around 1,000 car dealers and OEMs in the DACH region. The company’s custo­mers include dealer­ships of seve­ral global auto­mo­tive brands, inclu­ding Toyota, BMW, Skoda, Seat, VW, Audi, Ford, Renault and Nissan. www.procar.de

About PSG

PSG is a specia­list soft­ware company inves­tor, a subsi­diary of PSG Group of South Africa, which provi­des growth capi­tal to leading, fast-growing mid-market compa­nies. PSG works closely with foun­ders and manage­ment teams and supports them in imple­men­ting their stra­tegy. PSG provi­des opera­tio­nal and finan­cial resour­ces for this purpose to acce­le­rate growth. Since its incep­tion in 2014, PSG has assis­ted more than 65 soft­ware compa­nies and helped execute more than 275 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons. PSG has offices in London, Boston and Kansas City.

News

Pfäf­fi­kon (Switz­er­land) — Ufenau has made a first invest­ment in Spain and acqui­red a majo­rity stake in the company “Diseño y Manten­imi­ento de Plan­tas Frigo­rí­fi­cas” (“R&M”). R&M, previously known as APR, is a leading provi­der of inte­gral indus­trial refri­ge­ra­tion solu­ti­ons based in Valencia.

With more than 70 employees at loca­ti­ons in Valen­cia and Madrid and sales of appro­xi­m­ately EUR 30 million, R&M has execu­ted some of the largest projects for the design, instal­la­tion and main­ten­ance of indus­trial cooling systems in Spain. The well-known custo­mers are mainly active in the growing food and logi­stics sector.

The company has become a refe­rence in both sectors thanks to its own very high tech­ni­cal quality stan­dards and strong focus on service quality. Even in times of pande­mic, these services are essen­tial and in high demand

The foun­ders and previous owners of R&M have taken a signi­fi­cant equity stake and conti­nue to manage the busi­ness. In addi­tion, toge­ther they will conti­nue to drive the growth of the new group through a combi­na­tion of orga­nic and inor­ga­nic growth initiatives.

Ricardo Mayor, foun­der of R&M, belie­ves that “Ufenau is the right part­ner for R&M’s deve­lo­p­ment, as it allows us not only to expand our presence in Spain, but also to incor­po­rate new busi­ness areas into the company. It brings toge­ther two teams with high tech­ni­cal and finan­cial skills with a clear objec­tive: to provide our custo­mers with high quality services with added value. Toge­ther, we are setting out to conso­li­date a leading indus­try group that will undoub­tedly bene­fit the entire natio­nal industry.”

Ralf Flore, mana­ging part­ner of Ufenau (photo), comm­ents: “R&M has grown rapidly in recent years and has been able to work successfully and on a recur­ring basis with blue chip custo­mers in an enorm­ously deman­ding tech­ni­cal sector. The foun­ders have succee­ded in buil­ding a great team of highly quali­fied and moti­va­ted profes­sio­nals. We, and speci­fi­cally our two Spanish colle­agues, Joaquín Alcalde and Igna­cio Goded, are plea­sed to support the entire R&M team in this new phase of growth and to contri­bute our exten­sive expe­ri­ence in value crea­tion stra­te­gies, which has enab­led us to successfully execute more than 180 growth invest­ments in the DACH region. It is our first acqui­si­tion in Spain, reflec­ting our strong commit­ment to expand our reach and acti­vity in Spain as well, which has alre­ady star­ted in 2019.”

About Ufenau Capi­tal Partners

Ufenau Capi­tal Part­ners is a Swiss inves­tor group based on Lake Zurich. The company focu­ses on majo­rity share­hol­dings in service compa­nies in Switz­er­land, Germany and Austria that are active in the areas of Busi­ness Services, Educa­tion & Life­style, Health­Care and Finan­cial Services. With an exten­sive circle of renow­ned and expe­ri­en­ced indus­try part­ners (owners, CEOs, CFOs), Ufenau Capi­tal Part­ners pursues an active value-added invest­ment approach at eye level with entrepreneurs.

News

Munich — Ques­tel has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in innosabi GmbH, based in Munich. In addi­tion to their product port­fo­lios, the two parties will leverage their respec­tive market presence to serve a global custo­mer base. In the future, innosabi will conti­nue its busi­ness under the innosabi brand as part of the Ques­tel Group.

Ques­tel will inte­grate the innosabi soft­ware into its product port­fo­lio and offer it globally to both new custo­mers and its exis­ting base of over 6,000 custo­mers in 30 count­ries. By joining Ques­tel, innosabi posi­ti­ons itself for further rapid growth and inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion under the umbrella of a leading soft­ware plat­form with 50% of sales in North America, 30% in Europe and 20% in Asia.

The combi­na­tion of innosabi’s inno­va­tion soft­ware with Questel’s exten­sive range of intellec­tual property manage­ment and cura­ted data source solu­ti­ons is the answer to the chal­lenges compa­nies face in today’s
the fast-moving busi­ness world.

As digi­tiza­tion and tech­no­lo­gi­cal inno­va­tion conti­nue, the compa­nies that are able to drive their success are those that tap into their own inno­va­tion poten­tial. — The combi­na­tion of innosabi’s inno­va­tion tools and Questel’s data and work­flow manage­ment solu­ti­ons makes it easier than ever to mine tech­ni­cal, scien­ti­fic and busi­ness data for new insights and emer­ging oppor­tu­ni­ties, deve­lop them into marke­ta­ble inno­va­tions in direct colla­bo­ra­tion with all stake­hol­ders invol­ved, and conti­nuously manage the results as new IP assets. innosabi as the third acqui­si­tion in this area mani­fests Questel’s stra­te­gic focus on innovation.

For Catha­rina van Delden, co-foun­der and CEO of innosabi, the inte­gra­tion of their
company into the Ques­tel Group is the next logi­cal step in pursuing innosabi’s vision: “Since innosabi’s first day, we have always belie­ved that inno­va­tion happens where the right people, ideas and know­ledge come toge­ther. That’s exactly what’s happe­ning now that innosabi is beco­ming part of Ques­tel. Toge­ther, we will expand the way IP data is used in crea­ting inno­va­tion — and how it is in turn mana­ged as the IP of the enter­prise. We’re very exci­ted to turn this poten­tial into new, inno­va­tive tools for our customers.”

Charles Besson, CEO of Ques­tel, shares this view and empha­si­zes the importance of
Inno­va­tion solu­ti­ons for Questel’s growth plans: “Since intellec­tual property protec­tion is inter­wo­ven with all successful inno­va­tion initia­ti­ves, innosabi’s soft­ware is very syner­gi­stic to what we do best. All intellec­tual property starts with a great inno­va­tion process, and innosabi has an excep­tio­nal track record of support­ing their clients’ inno­va­tion programs and ensu­ring that inno­va­tion is about more than just ideas. This makes them a perfect fit for the Ques­tel Group.”

About innosabi
innosabi is one of the world’s leading provi­ders of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for colla­bo­ra­tive inno­va­tion and idea manage­ment. The Munich-based company was foun­ded in 2010 by Catha­rina van Delden, Jan Fischer, Hans-Peter Heid and Moritz Sebas­tian Wurf­baum. Today innosabi employs 55 people. Large inter­na­tio­nal corpo­ra­ti­ons rely on innosabi’s soft­ware and metho­do­lo­gi­cal exper­tise to trans­form their inno­va­tion proces­ses by enab­ling open colla­bo­ra­tion with custo­mers, employees, suppli­ers and other rele­vant stake­hol­ders. innosabi empowers orga­niza­ti­ons to leverage their entire ecosys­tem for inno­va­tion. In addi­tion to new forms of digi­tal, large-scale colla­bo­ra­tion, innosabi is conti­nuously deve­lo­ping inno­va­tive analy­sis and evalua­tion mecha­nisms to make more infor­ma­tion and addi­tio­nal data sources available for busi­ness inno­va­tions. Today, innosabi’s custo­mers include Siemens, Daim­ler, Post­bank, Deut­sche Tele­kom and Bayer. Since Janu­ary 2021 innosabi is part of the Ques­tel Group.

About Ques­tel
Ques­tel is an end-to-end intellec­tual property solu­ti­ons provi­der with over 900 employees and more than 6,000 custo­mers and 1 million users in 30 count­ries. Ques­tel offers a compre­hen­sive soft­ware suite for sear­ching, analy­zing and mana­ging inven­ti­ons and IP assets. Ques­tel also provi­des services for the entire intellec­tual property life­cy­cle, inclu­ding prior art sear­ches, patent draf­ting, inter­na­tio­nal filings, trans­la­ti­ons and rene­wals. These solu­ti­ons, when combi­ned with Questel’s IP cost manage­ment plat­form, deli­ver custo­mers an average savings of 30–60% across the entire Prose­cu­tion budget.

News

Munich / Mann­heim — As part of the majo­rity take­over of Bitter­Power GmbH (“Bitter­Liebe”) by ARCUS Capi­tal AG, BayBG also became invol­ved as a co-inves­tor with equity and mezza­nine. Both the foun­ders Andre Sierek and Jan Strat­mann as well as the previous share­hol­der Judith Williams will retain a signi­fi­cant stake in the company. The law firm Gütt Olk Feld­haus advi­sed ARCUS Capi­tal AG on the transaction.

Mann­heim-based Bitter­Power was foun­ded in 2018 and distri­bu­tes dietary supple­ments contai­ning bitter subs­tances under the brand “Bitter­Liebe”. The company quickly achie­ved a high level of reco­gni­tion and was able to posi­tion itself sustain­ably in the market. The product port­fo­lio curr­ently includes bitters in the form of drops, capsu­les, (cooking/baking) powder as well as tea, which are manu­fac­tu­red in Germany and contain only natu­ral ingredients.

“In this promi­sing envi­ron­ment, we want to make the Bitter­Liebe brand the market leader for prepa­ra­ti­ons contai­ning bitter subs­tances in Germany toge­ther with the commit­ted foun­ders and also gain a foot­hold in the inter­na­tio­nal market,” says Stefan Eishold, CEO of ARCUS, on the acqui­si­tion of Bitterliebe.

In its third finan­cial year, Bitter­Power GmbH recor­ded growth of over 120% with the Bitter­Liebe brand, sales of almost double-digit milli­ons and a profit in the seven-digit range. The successful parti­ci­pa­tion in the VOX TV show “Die Höhle der Löwen” in 2019 has signi­fi­cantly acce­le­ra­ted this deve­lo­p­ment. The products are available throug­hout Germany in more than 4,000 stores at dm, Ross­mann and Budni­kow­sky, as well as regu­larly in tele­shop­ping at HSE24.

Legal advi­sors to ARCUS Capi­tal AG: 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), Matthias Uelner (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Domi­nik Forst­ner (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A)
— Alten­burg Fach­an­wälte für Arbeits­recht, Munich: Andreas Ege, Dr. Dirk Schnelle (both Labor Law)
— Blom­stein, Berlin: Dr. Max Klasse (anti­trust law)

About Arcus Capital

ARCUS Capi­tal is a Munich-based inde­pen­dent invest­ment company focu­sing on majo­rity invest­ments in medium-sized family-owned compa­nies in the DACH region. www.arcuscapital.de

About BayBG

With an inves­ted volume of more than 300 million euros, BayBG Baye­ri­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft is one of the largest provi­ders of equity capi­tal, espe­ci­ally for Bava­rian SMEs. With its venture capi­tal and equity invest­ments, which it provi­des in the form of equity and mezza­nine, it enables medium-sized compa­nies to imple­ment inno­va­tion and growth projects, arrange for corpo­rate succes­sion or opti­mize the capi­tal struc­ture, as well as solve special situa­tions or diver­sify the assets of entre­pre­neu­rial fami­lies. BayBG opera­tes as an ever­green fund and is not subject to exit pressure.

News

Golßen/ Düssel­dorf — The share­hol­ders of the fruit and vege­ta­ble proces­sing company Spree­wald­kon­serve Golßen have sold all their shares to the French Andros Group, Biars-sur-Cère, as part of a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship. The tran­sac­tion compri­ses the two company divi­si­ons and produc­tion sites in Golßen/Germany and in Szigetvár/Hungary. Network Corpo­rate Finance exclu­si­vely advi­sed Spree­wald­kon­serve Golßen and its share­hol­ders on the transaction.

Tran­sac­tion

The share­hol­ders of the fruit and vege­ta­ble proces­sing company Spree­wald­kon­serve Golßen sell their shares to the Andros Group as part of a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship. Andros, with annual sales of more than EUR 2.2 billion in 2019 and head­quar­te­red in Biars-sur-Cère in southern France, is a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of jams, fruit and dairy products. Alre­ady since 1991, the company has been present in Germany through the fruit manu­fac­tu­rer of the Oden­wald brand in Breu­berg. Further­more, the Elster­werda dairy plant with the “Mark Bran­den­burg” brand belongs to the group. With the acqui­si­tion of Spree­wald­kon­serve, Andros streng­thens its posi­tion in Germany and in the fruit and vege­ta­ble proces­sing market and plans to leverage syner­gies in regio­nal sourcing and distribution.

About Spree­wald Preserve Golßen

In Golßen (Dahme-Spree­wald), canned goods have been produ­ced with local fruit and vege­ta­ble products since 1946. The owners of Spree­wald­kon­serve are the third gene­ra­tion to run the busi­ness and have a company history of over 100 years, which began in the Lower Rhine region at the end of the 19th century. Around 32 diffe­rent types of fruit and vege­ta­bles are proces­sed into various special­ties every year. The product range includes 250 items incl. private labels and is distri­bu­ted in over 30 count­ries. In eastern Germany, the “Spree­wald­hof” brand is the market leader for pick­les in jars. www.spreewaldhof.de

About Network Corpo­rate Finance

Network Corpo­rate Finance is an inde­pen­dent, owner-mana­ged advi­sory firm focu­sed on mergers and acqui­si­ti­ons, capi­tal markets tran­sac­tions, and equity and debt finan­cing. We advise both estab­lished and young compa­nies in a wide range of indus­tries. With our team of more than 20 employees at our offices in Düssel­dorf, Berlin and Frank­furt, we have estab­lished oursel­ves as one of the most successful inde­pen­dent corpo­rate finance consul­ting firms in Germany since our foun­da­tion in 2002. www.ncf.de

News

Munich — Digi­tal insu­rance mana­ger Clark successfully closed a EUR 69 million Series C finan­cing round. The round was led by the Chinese Inter­net company Tencent (known among other things for the messen­ger service WeChat). In addi­tion, Portag3, White Star Capi­tal, Yabeo and Finleap again participated.

The Frank­furt-based startup intends to invest the addi­tio­nal funds in the German market: The number of custo­mers as well as brand aware­ness are to be signi­fi­cantly increased through advertising.

LUTZ | ABEL advi­ses Clark on the Series C finan­cing round through the follo­wing team: Dr. Marco Eick­mann, LL.M., Phil­ipp Hoene and Dr. Sebas­tian Sumal­vico (all M&A/VC, Munich). BRP Renaud und Part­ner mbB provi­ded anti­trust and foreign trade law support with Dr. Martin Beutel­mann, LL.M. (Stutt­gart).

About LUTZ | ABEL

With around 80 lawy­ers and offices in Munich, Hamburg, Stutt­gart and Berlin, the commer­cial law firm LUTZ | ABEL provi­des advice on all aspects of commer­cial law. www.lutzabel.com.

News

Frei­burg — Boston — Singa­pore — Jedox, an award-winning provi­der of enter­prise perfor­mance manage­ment solu­ti­ons for busi­ness plan­ning and analy­sis, today announ­ced an invest­ment of more than $100 million from global venture capi­tal and private equity firm Insight Part­ners, along with exis­ting inves­tors Iris Capi­tal, eCAPI­TAL and Wecken & Cie. This majo­rity invest­ment by Insight Part­ners comes at a time when Jedox is expe­ri­en­cing rapid global adop­tion of its market-leading cloud solu­tion for finance executives.

The new round of funding will help Jedox acce­le­rate its custo­mer growth and global expan­sion while enhan­cing its robust plat­form for cross-depart­mental inte­gra­ted busi­ness plan­ning, report­ing and analy­tics. In parti­cu­lar, the funds will be used to grow Jedox’s product inno­va­tion team, increase invest­ment in custo­mer support, and provide even grea­ter support to users in all major geogra­phic regi­ons. In addi­tion, 2021 marks the launch of indus­try-speci­fic solu­ti­ons. Toge­ther with Jedox’s dyna­mic part­ner network and stra­te­gic part­ner­ships, the scope of the solu­ti­ons will expand beyond finance and control­ling depart­ments to become a cross-func­tional “Exten­ded Plan­ning & Analy­tics” (xP&A) platform.

“In an incre­asingly fast-paced world, disrup­tion and uncer­tainty present both chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties for busi­nesses. Jedox modern cloud-based solu­ti­ons for scena­rio plan­ning, fore­cas­ting and mana­ging future value crea­tion enable our custo­mers to act even faster and outper­form the compe­ti­tion,” says Florian Winter­stein, CEO of Jedox. “Insight Part­ners’ invest­ment will further streng­then our unique EPM plat­form and momen­tum in the market and allow us to bene­fit from the exper­tise of a leading global invest­ment partner.”

Jedox offers the most advan­ced cloud-based budge­ting, plan­ning and analy­sis tools combi­ned with a fami­liar Micro­soft Excel-based inter­face. Jedox’s enter­prise-grade “Finan­cial Plan­ning & Analy­tics” (FP&A) tools are speci­fi­cally desi­gned to acce­le­rate time-to-value for CFOs and finance execu­ti­ves. From moving exis­ting finan­cial proces­ses to the cloud to lever­aging AI and “advan­ced analy­tics” for more accu­rate and agile plan­ning, Jedox helps leading compa­nies stream­line plan­ning proces­ses at all stages of growth. Jedox has over 2,500 custo­mers world­wide, inclu­ding Amazon, McDonald’s Switz­er­land and ABB.

“Jedox offers a diffe­ren­tia­ted approach to finan­cial plan­ning through its flexi­bi­lity, fami­liar Excel-based inter­face and focus on the custo­mer,” said Jeff Lieber­man, mana­ging direc­tor at Insight Part­ners. “We are exci­ted to work with Florian and the entire Jedox team to bring outstan­ding cloud plan­ning tools to market leaders in all indus­tries around the world. Our onsite team, the largest ScaleUp engine in the indus­try, will work with Jedox to provide stra­te­gic scaling exper­tise.” Rachel Geller, Mana­ging Direc­tor at Insight Part­ners, and Henry Fran­kie­vich, Prin­ci­pal, will join the Board of Directors.

Jedox’s leading EPM plat­form opti­mi­zes value crea­tion and helps compa­nies move faster than the compe­ti­tion. Jedox public and private cloud offe­rings enable finance profes­sio­nals to effec­tively colla­bo­rate across depart­ments to simplify busi­ness plan­ning through a powerful Micro­soft Excel and Power BI compa­ti­ble inter­face, while bene­fiting from arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and advan­ced analy­tics. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the first half of 2021.

About Jedox

Jedox simpli­fies plan­ning, analy­sis and report­ing with a unified and cloud-based soft­ware suite. Jedox supports decis­ion makers and busi­ness users in all depart­ments and helps them work smar­ter, opti­mize colla­bo­ra­tion and make infor­med decis­i­ons. Over 2,500 compa­nies in 140 count­ries use Jedox for plan­ning on the web, in the cloud, and on any device. Jedox is an award-winning provi­der of FP&A and enter­prise perfor­mance manage­ment solu­ti­ons with offices on four conti­nents and over 250 certi­fied busi­ness part­ners world­wide. www.jedox.com

About Insight Partners

Insight Part­ners is a leading global venture capi­tal and private equity firm inves­t­ing in high-growth tech­no­logy and soft­ware scale-up compa­nies that are driving trans­for­ma­tive change in their indus­tries. Since its foun­ding year in 1995, Insight Part­ners has inves­ted in more than 400 compa­nies world­wide and raised more than $30 billion in capi­tal commit­ments through a series of funds. Insight’s mission is to find, fund and successfully part­ner with visio­nary leaders by provi­ding them with prac­ti­cal, real-world soft­ware exper­tise to drive long-term success. Through its people and port­fo­lio, Insight fosters a culture based on the belief that ScaleUp compa­nies and growth create oppor­tu­ni­ties for all. For more infor­ma­tion about Insight and all of its invest­ments, visit insightpartners.com .

News

Frank­furt am Main — Beyond Capi­tal Part­ners Fund II, advi­sed by Beyond Capi­tal Part­ners GmbH (“BCP”), has acqui­red a 75% majo­rity stake in Frank­furt-based Xortec GmbH (“Xortec”), closing in Janu­ary 2021.

Xortec is a leading value added distri­bu­tor of holi­stic video surveil­lance and data commu­ni­ca­ti­ons solu­ti­ons. The company’s focus is on the distri­bu­tion of profes­sio­nal video surveil­lance solu­ti­ons and a compre­hen­sive accom­pany­ing service offering.Beyond Capi­tal Part­ners alre­ady coun­ted two value-added IT distri­bu­tors in its port­fo­lio in the past and was ther­e­fore able to convince the sellers with a promi­sing and proven growth strategy.

Mana­ging Direc­tor Hubert Irka explains the decis­ion to sell shares to Beyond Capi­tal Part­ners as follows: “For us, a part­ner­ship on an equal footing was decisive and, based on the posi­tive expe­ri­ence during the nego­tia­ti­ons, we are confi­dent that we have found this part­ner in Beyond Capi­tal Partners.”

“As an estab­lished and profes­sio­nal B2B service provi­der in the video surveil­lance and data commu­ni­ca­tion solu­tion segment, Xortec is one of the fastest growing provi­ders in Germany and has stood for dyna­mism and quality for years. We are plea­sed to accom­pany the next growth stage toge­ther with the two foun­ders. In the frag­men­ted compe­ti­tive envi­ron­ment, we see a very good oppor­tu­nity to build Xortec into one of the leading provi­ders in the DACH region with a broa­der product range and a pan-Euro­pean sales market over the coming years, also through further acqui­si­ti­ons,” says Chris­toph D. Kauter, Foun­der and Mana­ging Part­ner of Beyond Capi­tal Partners.

About Beyond Capi­tal Partners

Beyond Capi­tal Part­ners is an invest­ment company and acqui­res majo­rity stakes in profi­ta­ble medium-sized compa­nies from the DACH region through the funds it advi­ses, with a focus on the asset-light sectors of services, IT, soft­ware, health­care, life­style and enter­tain­ment. www.beyondcapital-partners.com

About Xortec

Xortec GmbH, based in Frank­furt am Main, Germany, is a leading provi­der of network-based video surveil­lance and data commu­ni­ca­ti­ons solu­ti­ons. The company focu­ses on the sale of profes­sio­nal video surveil­lance solu­ti­ons and a compre­hen­sive range of accom­pany­ing services.
video.xortec.com

News

Munich — Afinum Achte Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH & Co KG, advi­sed by Afinum Manage­ment GmbH, indi­rectly acqui­res a majo­rity stake in the Sander­Stroth­mann Group, a leading full-service provi­der (CDMO) in the fast-growing market for cosme­tics, beauty and health­care products. Afinum invests toge­ther with the two mana­ging direc­tors Sabrina Berg­haus and Stefan Vogels in the context of an entre­pre­neu­rial succes­sion situa­tion. Toge­ther with the manage­ment team, Afinum will support the group in conti­nuing the successful growth path of the past years.

The Sander­Stroth­mann Group (www.sanderstrothmann.de, “Sander­Stroth­mann”), consis­ting of the two group compa­nies Sander­Stroth­mann GmbH and Compes Cosme­tic GmbH & Co. KG (“Compes”), is a leading certi­fied full-service CDMO (Contract Deve­lo­p­ment and Manu­fac­tu­ring Orga­niza­tion) in the fast-growing market for cosme­tics, beauty and health­care products. Typi­cal Sander­Stroth­mann custo­mers have their own brand and/or distri­bu­tion chan­nel, but often lack the neces­sary exper­tise to deve­lop and manu­fac­ture beauty and health­care products (e.g. global e‑commerce platforms/social media networks/influencers, pharmacies/drug stores/stationary retail­ers, home shop­ping provi­ders and beauty centers).

In addi­tion to custo­mi­zed cosme­tic products, the broad product range also includes bioci­des, disin­fec­tants as well as nutri­tio­nal supple­ments with a specia­liza­tion in active ingre­di­ent cosme­tics and health-promo­ting “problem solvers”. The IP/formulation remains in the posses­sion of Sander­Stroth­mann. Thanks to the in-depth group-inter­nal know-how along the entire value chain (market analy­sis, product deve­lo­p­ment and formu­la­tion, design and pack­a­ging, regu­la­tory aspects and appr­oval proce­du­res, purcha­sing and logi­stics, produc­tion and filling, quality assu­rance, after-sales), Sander­Stroth­mann is distin­gu­is­hed by its full-service offe­ring, high flexi­bi­lity, very short deve­lo­p­ment and imple­men­ta­tion time, and — espe­ci­ally with a view to the fast-growing Asian market — its “Made in Germany” quality promise. The Group opera­tes an asset-light busi­ness model. Thus, most of the produc­tion is outsour­ced to trus­ted exter­nal part­ners, while the in-house Compes manu­fac­tu­ring exclu­si­vely produ­ces high-quality cosme­tic products for Pres­tige Beauty brands.

Sander­Stroth­mann GmbH was foun­ded in 2000 by Michael Sander and Rene Stroth­mann, who acqui­red a majo­rity stake in Compes in 2019 as part of an add-on acqui­si­tion. The two Group compa­nies toge­ther employ around 160 people at the joint site in Georgs­ma­ri­en­hütte, Lower Saxony, where the two certi­fied (inclu­ding DIN EN ISO 13485 for medi­cal products) high-tech labo­ra­to­ries with state-of-the-art equip­ment are also operated.

Afinum invests toge­ther with the two mana­ging direc­tors Sabrina Berg­haus and Stefan Vogels in the context of an entre­pre­neu­rial succes­sion situa­tion, wher­eby the foun­ders Michael Sander and Rene Stroth­mann will conti­nue to support the group as stra­te­gic advi­sors in the future. Toge­ther with the manage­ment team, Afinum will support the Group in conti­nuing the successful growth trajec­tory of the past years, inclu­ding by further streng­thening its posi­tio­ning in exis­ting and new geogra­phies and by progres­si­vely expan­ding its product and custo­mer portfolio.

The invest­ment in Sander­Stroth­mann repres­ents the eleventh plat­form tran­sac­tion of Afinum Achte Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH & Co KG.

About Afinum

AFINUM Manage­ment GmbH is an inde­pen­dent manage­ment-owned invest­ment company with offices in Munich, Zurich and Hong Kong, specia­li­zing in invest­ments in successful medium-sized compa­nies in German-spea­king Europe.

News

Frank­furt a. Main — DLA Piper advi­sed the French invest­ment company Idin­vest Part­ners on a corpo­rate finan­cing for Kine­tics Group. Idin­vest Part­ners is a leading Paris-based mid cap inves­tor specia­li­zing in venture capi­tal, growth capi­tal, private debt and private equity. The focus of busi­ness and invest­ment acti­vi­ties is on finan­cing high-growth Euro­pean SMEs.

Kine­tics Group is a global service provi­der and manu­fac­tu­rer of process tech­no­logy, specia­li­zing in the design and instal­la­tion of process, piping and HVAC systems and equip­ment. The company employs appro­xi­m­ately 2,000 people in 24 offices in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The private equity house Quadriga Capi­tal is behind the Kine­tics Group.

The DLA Piper team , led by part­ner Dr. Wolf­ram Distler, Foto (Finance & Projects), further included part­ners Dr. Marie-Theres Rämer (Tax, both Frank­furt) and Jamie Knox (Finance, New York) as well as asso­ciate Ilgin Ayhan (Finance & Projects, Frankfurt).

About DLA Piper

DLA Piper is one of the world’s leading commer­cial law firms, with offices in more than 40 count­ries in Africa, Asia, Austra­lia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. In Germany, DLA Piper is repre­sen­ted by more than 240 lawy­ers at its offices in Frank­furt, Hamburg, Colo­gne and Munich. In certain juris­dic­tions, this infor­ma­tion may be conside­red attor­ney adver­ti­sing. For more infor­ma­tion, visit: www.dlapiper.com

News

Tübingen/ Tutt­lin­gen — SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment mbH from Tübin­gen is parti­ci­pa­ting as lead inves­tor in the Tutt­lin­gen-based specia­list for func­tional spinal implants Blue Ocean Spine GmbH.

For SHS and the foun­der of Blue Ocean Spine, Gunt­mar Eisen, this is alre­ady the second colla­bo­ra­tion — the joint company EIT Emer­ging Implant Tech­no­lo­gies GmbH was sold to an inter­na­tio­nal medi­cal tech­no­logy group in 2018. Unlike tradi­tio­nal cage implants for inter­ver­te­bral spaces, Blue Ocean Spine’s implants will allow surge­ons to elimi­nate the need for addi­tio­nal screw fixa­tion. In addi­tion, they will no longer need to stock a multi­tude of implant vari­ants in diffe­rent sizes and dimen­si­ons. This should make proce­du­res more effi­ci­ent for surge­ons and safer for patients.

Back pain is proba­bly more preva­lent in Western socie­ties than any other pain. While most back complaints are nowa­days trea­ted conser­va­tively, i.e. with drugs and physio­the­rapy, severe dege­ne­ra­tive dise­a­ses, which are usually accom­pa­nied by insta­bi­lity of the spine, can only be trea­ted with surgery.

This usually invol­ves the use of a fusion implant to stabi­lize the spine. The disc place­hol­der, called a cage, is implan­ted and fixed between the verte­brae. In most cases, addi­tio­nal stabi­liza­tion is achie­ved with screws and rod systems.

Inno­va­tive, custo­mizable spinal implant

Expe­ri­en­ced engi­neer Gunt­mar Eisen is now deve­lo­ping a port­fo­lio of inno­va­tive, func­tional and adap­ta­ble cage systems with his Tutt­lin­gen-based company Blue Ocean Spine — some of these implants should be able to do comple­tely without addi­tio­nal screw fixation.

“With Blue Ocean Spine’s systems, we’re deal­ing with next-gene­ra­tion cage implants,” said Patrick Frohn­hei­ser, invest­ment mana­ger at SHS. “Inter­ven­ti­ons will thus be faster and safer. We are convin­ced that these systems will become popu­lar and want to support Blue Ocean Spine with equity and our large network.”

Blue Ocean Spine’s various implants are manu­fac­tu­red using the 3D prin­ting process. This can result in a signi­fi­cant cost advan­tage compared to compe­ti­tive systems. So-called expan­da­ble cages can be adjus­ted inde­pendently in height, width and lordo­sis angle. Previously, a clinic had to stock a variety of rigid cage implants in diffe­rent designs for diffe­rent pati­ents. This is time-consum­ing and expen­sive. The new gene­ra­tion of Blue Ocean Spine Cages will signi­fi­cantly reduce these costs in the future. Other models in the Blue Ocean Spine port­fo­lio have inte­gra­ted anchors that can be secu­rely fixed between the patient’s verte­brae by the surgeon in just a few steps, support­ing mini­mally inva­sive access tech­ni­ques. In some cases, addi­tio­nal screw fittings become obsolete.

Conti­nua­tion of a successful partnership

“We are plea­sed to have SHS as an expe­ri­en­ced indus­try inves­tor back on board as a part­ner and can now work at full speed on the deve­lo­p­ment and produc­tion of our inno­va­tive cage implants,” says company foun­der Gunt­mar Eisen, who has been active in spine surgery for more than 25 years and has alre­ady foun­ded and sold a number of inno­va­tive compa­nies. “If all goes accor­ding to plan, we will apply for FDA appr­oval in the U.S. as early as 2022, which is the largest market for spinal implants.”

“Gunt­mar Eisen is one of the most successful German entre­pre­neurs in medi­cal tech­no­logy. We are very plea­sed to conti­nue our trustful coope­ra­tion. Blue Ocean Spine is an excel­lent addi­tion with a lot of poten­tial for our fifth fund gene­ra­tion,” says Dr. Bern­hard Schirm­ers, Mana­ging Part­ner of SHS.

About SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment mbH

Tübin­gen-based SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment invests in medi­cal tech­no­logy and life science compa­nies with a focus on expan­sion finan­cing, share­hol­der chan­ges and succes­sion situa­tions. In doing so, SHS enters into both mino­rity and majo­rity share­hol­dings. As an expe­ri­en­ced indus­try inves­tor, the company, which was foun­ded in 1993, supports the growth of its port­fo­lio compa­nies through a network of colla­bo­ra­ti­ons, for exam­ple in the intro­duc­tion of new products, regu­la­tory issues or entry into addi­tio­nal markets. The German and inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors in SHS funds include profes­sio­nal pension funds, pension funds, stra­te­gic inves­tors, funds of funds, family offices, entre­pre­neurs and the SHS manage­ment team. The equity invest­ment of the AIFM-regis­tered company is up to € 30 million, volu­mes excee­ding this can be imple­men­ted with a network of co-inves­tors. Curr­ently, SHS is inves­t­ing from its fifth fund. The fund has recei­ved capi­tal commit­ments of over 130 million euros.

Welcome

About Blue Ocean Spine GmbH

Blue Ocean Spine GmbH, based in Tutt­lin­gen, Germany, deve­lops and markets inno­va­tive, func­tional spinal implants to support mini­mally inva­sive fusion surgery in spine surgery. The company uses addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring proces­ses to combine better func­tion­a­lity and unique product features with cost effi­ci­ency. Expan­da­ble fusion cage designs allow for better adapt­a­tion to indi­vi­dual pati­ent anatomy and precise resto­ra­tion of segmen­tal height and realignment of spinal curvat­ure. This signi­fi­cantly redu­ces the stock in clinics. Inte­gra­ted, exten­da­ble anchors in ALIF and late­ral fusion scages support mini­mally inva­sive surgi­cal approa­ches to the spine and allow secure fixa­tion in the inter­ver­te­bral space without addi­tio­nal screw fixation.
www.blueoceanspine.com for more information.

News

Munich, — Global busi­ness law firm Norton Rose Fulbright is streng­thening its private equity team in Munich with Bernd Dreier as Coun­sel, effec­tive Janu­ary 18, 2021.

Bernd Dreier joins Norton Rose Fulbright from AIG Europe, where he was most recently Head of M&A DACH, respon­si­ble for the W&I insu­rance busi­ness for Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land. In addi­tion to his insu­rance law and S&I exper­tise, he brings many years of expe­ri­ence in M&A and private equity, where he worked for seve­ral years as a lawyer at Henge­ler Muel­ler and Allen & Overy and as Gene­ral Coun­sel at EMH Partners.

Dr. Stefan Feuer­rie­gel, Head of Germany, comm­ents: “We are plea­sed to have gained Bernd Dreier as a reco­gni­zed and expe­ri­en­ced colle­ague for our private equity prac­tice, espe­ci­ally in the finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons sector. In addi­tion, his expe­ri­ence in the insu­rance indus­try is an ideal match for the deve­lo­p­ment and expan­sion of our insu­rance prac­tice in Germany. With almost 10 part­ners and more than 10 coun­sel and asso­cia­tes working across the prac­tice groups Corpo­rate, Tax, Real Estate and Dispu­tes in the insu­rance area, we have an extre­mely powerful team in the German market.”

Bernd Dreier added: “I am deligh­ted to be able to support the Norton Rose Fulbright team with my many years of exper­tise in the future and, toge­ther with my colle­agues, to accom­pany the German private equity and insu­rance prac­tice on its way to the next stage of development.”

Bernd Dreier studied law at the Univer­sity of Passau and Macqua­rie Univer­sity, Sydney and holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from Colum­bia Law School in New York.

About Norton Rose Fulbright

Norton Rose Fulbright is a global busi­ness law firm. With more than 4,000 lawy­ers in over 50 offices world­wide in Europe, the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Austra­lia, Africa and the Middle East, we advise leading natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal companies.

We offer our clients compre­hen­sive advice in all major indus­tries. These include Finan­cial Insti­tu­ti­ons; Energy; Infra­struc­ture, Mining and Commo­di­ties; Trans­por­ta­tion; Tech­no­logy and Inno­va­tion; and Life Scien­ces and Health­care. Our global Risk Advi­sory Group combi­nes this exten­sive indus­try expe­ri­ence with its exper­tise in legal, regu­la­tory, compli­ance and gover­nance matters. This enables us to provide our clients with prac­ti­cal solu­ti­ons to the legal and regu­la­tory risks they face.

The Swiss asso­cia­tion Norton Rose Fulbright helps to coor­di­nate the acti­vi­ties of Norton Rose Fulbright members, but does not provide legal advice to clients. Norton Rose Fulbright has offices in more than 50 cities world­wide, inclu­ding London, Hous­ton, New York, Toronto, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Sydney and Johan­nes­burg. nortonrosefulbright.com/legal-notices

News

Munich — The law firm Gütt Olk Feld­haus advi­sed ARCUS Capi­tal AG on the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in Bitter­Power GmbH. The foun­ders Jan Strat­mann and Andre Sierek, as well as “Höhle der Löwen” inves­tor Judith Williams, retain a stake in Bitter­Power GmbH via a reverse invest­ment. In their manage­ment func­tion, Jan Strat­mann and Andre Sierek will syste­ma­ti­cally deve­lop Bitter­Power GmbH toge­ther with ARCUS Capi­tal AG.

Bitter­Power GmbH, based in Mann­heim, Germany, distri­bu­tes dietary supple­ments under the brand name “Bitter­Liebe”. Through its successful parti­ci­pa­tion in “Die Höhle der Löwen”, the company quickly gained reco­gni­tion and was able to posi­tion itself sustain­ably in the market. The product port­fo­lio curr­ently includes bitters in the form of drops, capsu­les, powder as well as tea, which are manu­fac­tu­red in Germany and contain only natu­ral ingredients.

ARCUS Capi­tal is a Munich-based inde­pen­dent invest­ment company focu­sing on majo­rity invest­ments in medium-sized family-owned compa­nies in the DACH region.

Legal advi­sors to ARCUS Capi­tal AG: 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), Matthias Uelner (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Domi­nik Forst­ner (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A)

Alten­burg Fach­an­wälte für Arbeits­recht, Munich: Andreas Ege, Dr. Dirk Schnelle (both Labor Law)

Blom­stein, Berlin: Dr. Max Klasse (anti­trust 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

Frank­furt a. Main — The foun­ding share­hol­der of IMTEC GmbH, Thomas Schulz, has sold his company to VI-grade GmbH, a German subsi­diary of the Spec­tris Group. IMTEC specia­li­zes in inno­va­tive auto­ma­tion tech­no­logy and simu­la­tors for OEMs in the auto­mo­tive and trans­por­ta­tion sectors as well as for indus­trial compa­nies. The law firm FPS provi­ded legal advice to IMTEC GmbH on the sale of the company to VI-grade GmbH.

“This is a stra­te­gic move for IMTEC and we are very exci­ted about joining VI-grade,” said Thomas Schulz, Mana­ging Direc­tor at IMTEC. “There are many bene­fits to beco­ming part of this global group. VI-grade’s leader­ship team has a strong inte­rest in deve­lo­ping and inves­t­ing in IMTEC’s capa­bi­li­ties, products and highly talen­ted people. As a combi­ned company, we are confi­dent that we can lead the global market for inno­va­tive simu­la­tor products and solutions.”

“IMTEC has been a key part­ner and supplier to VI-grade for many years and this move repres­ents an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity for us to join forces and create a power­house in the vehicle simu­la­tor market,” said Bob Ryan, presi­dent of VI-grade. “By combi­ning VI-grade’s soft­ware pedi­gree and exper­tise with IMTEC’s mecha­tro­nic hard­ware exper­tise and the finan­cial strength of VI-grade’s parent company, Spec­tris plc, VI-grade is posi­tio­ning itself to scale its global simu­la­tor busi­ness more quickly.”

Phil­ipp Weber, M&A Part­ner at law firm FPS, added: “Our multi­di­sci­pli­nary FPS team is deligh­ted with the successful comple­tion of this multi-face­ted tech M&A tran­sac­tion with an inter­na­tio­nally posi­tio­ned acqui­rer. IMTEC is a great exam­ple of the crea­tion and successful deve­lo­p­ment of inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies in Germany as an indus­trial and high-tech location.”

About IMTEC GmbH

Foun­ded in 2003 near Berlin, IMTEC deve­lops and manu­fac­tures auto­ma­tion tech­no­logy and simu­la­tors for OEMs in the auto­mo­tive and trans­por­ta­tion sectors as well as for indus­trial companies.

About VI-grade Group

VI-grade is the leading provi­der of best-in-class soft­ware products and services for advan­ced system-level simu­la­tion appli­ca­ti­ons. Toge­ther with a network of selec­ted part­ners, VI-grade also offers revo­lu­tio­nary turn­key solu­ti­ons for static and dyna­mic driving simu­la­ti­ons. Foun­ded in 2005, VI-grade provi­des inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons to opti­mize the deve­lo­p­ment process from concept to sign-off in the trans­por­ta­tion indus­try, prima­rily in the auto­mo­tive, aero­space, motor­cy­cle, motor­sport and rail­road sectors. With offices in Germany, Switz­er­land, Italy, the UK, Japan, China and the USA and a world­wide chan­nel network of more than 20 trus­ted part­ners, VI-grade is a dyna­mic and growing company with a highly skil­led tech­ni­cal team. VI-grade is part of Spec­tris, which is head­quar­te­red in Egham / Surrey, UK and employs appro­xi­m­ately 9000 people in over 30 countries.

Advi­sor to the foun­ding share­hol­ders of IMTEC GmbH: FPS Fritze Wicke Seelig, Frankfurt

Phil­ipp Weber, Part­ner, Lead (M&A / Corpo­rate), Kevin Brühl (Corpo­rate / Finance), Diet­rich Sammer (Real Estate and Cons­truc­tion), Dr. Marco Wende­roth (Labor), John Bütt­ner (Tax), Advi­sor VI-grade / Spec­tris Group, Addle­shaw Goddard (Germany) LLP;

Advi­sor VI-grade / Spec­tris Group: Addle­shaw Goddard (Germany) LLP

Dr. Huber­tus Schrö­der, Part­ner, Lead Part­ner (M&A / Corporate)
Helge Hein­rich, Part­ner (Anti­trust Law)
Dr. Jan-Oliver Schrotz, Part­ner (Regu­la­tory)
Jens Peters, Part­ner (Labor Law)
Dr. Staf­fan Wegdell, Part­ner (Commer­cial), Caro­lyn Kram­pitz, Part­ner (Commer­cial)
Dr. Nata­lia Ilye­vich (Corpo­rate / M&A)
Yves Alex­an­der Wolff (IP / Commercial)
Dr. Eva Lotte Stöckel (Finance / Real Estate)

News

Madrid — One Equity Part­ners (“OEP”), a middle-market private equity firm, has announ­ced the comple­tion of its acqui­si­tion of VASS Consul­to­ría de Siste­mas S.L. (“VASS” or “the Company”), a leading Euro­pean provi­der of digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion, cloud infra­struc­ture and mana­ged IT services solu­ti­ons. Terms of the tran­sac­tion were not disclosed.

VASS, head­quar­te­red in Madrid, specia­li­zes in the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion of its custo­mers’ value chain through the imple­men­ta­tion and main­ten­ance of custo­mer rela­ti­onship manage­ment and enter­prise resource appli­ca­ti­ons and the provi­sion of tech­no­logy infra­struc­ture services. The company has many years of expe­ri­ence with Big Data, robo­tic process auto­ma­tion imple­men­ta­tion, intel­li­gent busi­ness process manage­ment and simi­lar tech­no­lo­gies. — Demand for cloud infra­struc­ture services, cloud soft­ware and cyber­se­cu­rity is expec­ted to drive growth in Spain’s digi­tal services sector. Infra­struc­ture services are the largest segment of the mana­ged IT services market in the coun­try, gene­ra­ting about half of total annual reve­nue, follo­wed by network and secu­rity services.

“We have analy­zed the Spanish IT services market in detail for 18 months and are convin­ced that VASS is the perfect buy-and-build plat­form. The company provi­des indus­try-leading services to its custo­mers who want to remain compe­ti­tive through digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion solu­ti­ons that span the entire value chain,” said Jörg Zire­ner (photo), senior mana­ging direc­tor at One Equity Part­ners. “This tran­sac­tion is repre­sen­ta­tive of OEP’s approach to part­ne­ring with start-ups that have a strong track record of orga­nic growth as well as inves­t­ing in market-leading tech­no­logy companies.”

OEP has a long track record of working with foun­ders and share­hol­ders of high-quality, high-growth global IT services and enter­prise soft­ware compa­nies. These can gradu­ally expand their tech­no­lo­gi­cal capa­bi­li­ties, geogra­phic reach and market share thanks to OEP’s exper­tise in trans­for­ma­tive acqui­si­ti­ons and orga­nic growth investments.

“A simi­lar invest­ment by OEP in the Euro­pean IT services sector, that of Italian digi­tal solu­ti­ons provi­der Lutech, allo­wed Lutech to grow from €180 million to €440 million in less than three years. In that time, Lutech has brought on board highly sought-after tech­no­lo­gies through 15 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons that have convin­ced foun­ders and manage­ment teams to become part of this exci­ting evolu­tion, a larger distri­bu­tion chan­nel for its suppli­ers and a more compre­hen­sive part­ner for its custo­mers,” said Sebas­tian Schat­ton, Asso­ciate at One Equity Part­ners. “We believe Vass is the perfect plat­form to imple­ment simi­lar growth deve­lo­p­ment in Spain and Latin America.”

“We are very exci­ted to part­ner with OEP and look forward to provi­ding next-gene­ra­tion IT consul­ting solu­ti­ons across Europe for compa­nies looking to improve their busi­ness models, deli­ver inno­va­tive services and enhance the custo­mer expe­ri­ence through digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion,” said Fran­cisco Javier Latasa, foun­der and CEO of VASS, who will remain an inves­tor in the company.

OEP has expe­ri­ence buil­ding IT consul­ting and soft­ware compa­nies, and built Info­bip, a global cloud commu­ni­ca­ti­ons plat­form for the world’s largest compa­nies; CDI, a leading U.S. provi­der of tech­no­logy infra­struc­ture hard­ware and soft­ware, consul­ting and mana­ged services; and Lutech, an Italian IT systems inte­gra­tion and solu­ti­ons provi­der, among others.

Advi­sor One Equity Part­ners (OEP): Allen & Overy LLP

The Allen & Overy team, led by part­ner Dr. Nils Koffka and senior asso­ciate Dr. Marcus Macken­sen (both Corporate/Private Equity, Hamburg), included part­ners Igna­cio Hornedo (Madrid) and Sophie Roozend­aal (Amster­dam, all Corporate/Private Equity). In addi­tion, part­ner Thomas Neubaum (lead, Frank­furt) and part­ner Jimena Urre­ta­vi­z­caya (Madrid, both banking and finance) advi­sed on the finan­cing. In addi­tion, Coun­sel Mark Hallet (Banking and Finance, Frank­furt), Senior Asso­cia­tes Rafael Gime­nez-Reyna (Tax) and José Luis Terron (Liti­ga­tion, both Madrid), and Asso­cia­tes Dr. Jan Frede­rik C. Holst (Corporate/Private Equity, Hamburg), Louisa Drew­niok (Banking and Finance, Frank­furt), Miguel Zulaica, Xavier Castella (both Corporate/M&A), Marina Granada (Tax), Sofía Sanchez-Calero, Paloma Asegu­rado (both Banking and Finance), Inigo Olabarri (Labor Law, all Madrid) and Justine Drei­jer (Corporate/M&A, Amsterdam).

About One Equity Partners

One Equity Part­ners (“OEP”) is a middle-market private equity firm focu­sed on the indus­trial, health­care and tech­no­logy sectors in North America and Europe. The company builds market-leading busi­nesses by iden­ti­fy­ing and execu­ting trans­for­ma­tive busi­ness combi­na­ti­ons. OEP is a trus­ted part­ner with a diffe­ren­tia­ted invest­ment process and a diverse and expe­ri­en­ced team. It has a long track record and gene­ra­tes long-term value for its part­ners. Since 2001, the company has comple­ted more than 300 tran­sac­tions world­wide. OEP, foun­ded in 2001, was spun off from JP Morgan in 2015. The company has offices in New York, Chicago, Frank­furt and Amster­dam. www.oneequity.com.

News

Paris/Frankfurt/Aurich/Oldenburg — Olden­burg-based energy service provi­der EWE and the Aloys Wobben Foun­da­tion, sole share­hol­der of Aurich-based wind turbine manu­fac­tu­rer ENERCON, today signed a share­hol­der and invest­ment agree­ment to estab­lish a joint venture for onshore wind energy. Ardian, one of the world’s leading inde­pen­dent invest­ment compa­nies, has held a 26 percent stake in EWE since Febru­ary 2020 and is support­ing the estab­lish­ment of the new company.

The agree­ment stipu­la­tes that each side will hold 50 percent of the shares and will contri­bute ENERCON’s and EWE’s exis­ting parks and onshore projects to the future joint venture. EWE is respon­si­ble for the entre­pre­neu­rial manage­ment of the joint venture, while the Aloys Wobben Foun­da­tion chairs the Super­vi­sory Board. The closing of the tran­sac­tion, expec­ted for spring 2021, is still subject to anti­trust review.

EWE and Aloys Wobben Foun­da­tion sign agree­ment to estab­lish a joint venture with plan­ned invest­ment volume of €3.6 billion until 2030.

The new company will have more than 2,300 mega­watts of instal­led capa­city in its port­fo­lio and a project pipe­line of more than 9,400 mega­watts, making it the market leader in onshore wind in Germany and one of the largest wind energy compa­nies in Europe. The goal is to add more than 200 mega­watts per year and increase the port­fo­lio to up to 5 giga­watts by 2030. In addi­tion, further inter­na­tio­nal growth is plan­ned. In this way, one of the largest produ­cers of green elec­tri­city in Germany and France is to be crea­ted in the coming years. The company, which also includes the Düssel­dorf-based direct marketer Quadra Energy, takes a manu­fac­tu­rer-inde­pen­dent approach to reali­zing its projects.

Dr. Daniel Graf von der Schu­len­burg, Mana­ging Direc­tor and Head of Ardian Infra­struc­ture Germany and Nort­hern Europe, said: “This tran­sac­tion shows how we as share­hol­ders support the further deve­lo­p­ment and trans­for­ma­tion of the compa­nies in which we invest, in line with the energy tran­si­tion. Acce­le­ra­ting EWE’s growth, espe­ci­ally in the rene­wa­ble energy sector, has been one of our common stra­te­gic goals since we joined EWE a year ago. With this part­ner­ship, the company is now taking another signi­fi­cant step on this path within a very short time, on which we warmly congra­tu­late Stefan Dohler and his team.”

Stefan Dohler, CEO of EWE AG, added: “If we still want to achieve the climate targets set in the Paris Agree­ment, we need to act quickly and, above all, decisi­vely. This requi­res strong market play­ers who have the criti­cal mass to make a diffe­rence. We are now forming such a player with the new joint venture. We consider oursel­ves fort­u­nate to have Ardian as a co-share­hol­der who supports this goal.”

Ardian Infra­struc­ture is a pioneer in rene­wa­ble energy invest­ments in Europe and the Ameri­cas, with a total capa­city of around 5 GW in wind, solar and biomass.

About Ardian

Ardian is one of the world’s leading inde­pen­dent invest­ment firms, mana­ging over US$103 billion in assets for its inves­tors from Europe, South and North America and Asia. The company is majo­rity-owned by its employees and gene­ra­tes sustainable, attrac­tive returns for its investors.

With the objec­tive of achie­ving posi­tive results for all stake­hol­ders, Ardian’s acti­vi­ties promote indi­vi­du­als, compa­nies and econo­mies world­wide. Ardian’s invest­ment philo­so­phy is aligned with the three guiding prin­ci­ples of excel­lence, loyalty and entrepreneurship.

The company has a global network of more than 700 employees and 15 offices in Europe (Frank­furt, Jersey, London, Luxem­bourg, Madrid, Milan, Paris and Zurich), South America (Sant­iago de Chile), North America (New York and San Fran­cisco) and Asia (Beijing, Seoul, Singa­pore and Tokyo). Ardian mana­ges the assets of its more than 1,000 inves­tors in five invest­ment areas: Direct Funds, Funds of Funds, Infra­struc­ture, Private Debt and Real Estate.

News

Munich — Kirk­land & Ellis is advi­sing cable network opera­tor Tele Colum­bus on a public take­over offer by Kublai GmbH, a bidding company of Morgan Stan­ley Infra­struc­ture Partners.

Kublai has announ­ced its inten­tion to acquire Tele Colum­bus for 3.25 euros per share. The accep­tance period for the offer is to be six weeks. Subject to regu­la­tory appr­ovals, the take­over offer is expec­ted to be comple­ted in the second quar­ter of 2021. The main condi­ti­ons of the offer are a mini­mum accep­tance thres­hold of 50 percent, waivers by bond­hol­ders and credi­tors of termi­na­tion rights due to change of control in suffi­ci­ent numbers, and regu­la­tory approvals.

An extra­or­di­nary share­hol­ders’ meeting of Tele Colum­bus on Janu­ary 20, 2021 is also expec­ted to approve a rights issue in the amount of EUR 475 million, which will be guaran­teed by Kublai.

As the anchor share­hol­der, United Inter­net AG supports the take­over bid and has announ­ced its inten­tion to contri­bute a mino­rity stake of around 29.90 percent to the bidder company if the take­over bid is successful. — The take­over bid was prece­ded by a multi-stage bidding process initia­ted by Tele Columbus.

Advi­sors to Tele Colum­bus: Kirk­land & Ellis Munich

Dr. Achim Herfs (Corporate/M&A, lead), Wolf­gang Nardi (Finance), Dr. Anna Schwan­der (Capi­tal Markets), Tim Volk­hei­mer (London, Capi­tal Markets); Asso­cia­tes: Vanessa Schmie­ding, Ange­lina Seel­bach (both Corporate/M&A), Dr. Tamara Zehen­t­bauer (Capi­tal Markets) and Fabrice Hipp (Finance)

Advi­sor United Inter­net: Henge­ler Mueller

Part­ners Dr. Daniela Favoc­cia, Dr. Lucina Berger (both Lead, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Wolf­gang Groß (Corporate/ECM) and Dr. Johan­nes Tieves (Finan­cing) as well as Asso­cia­tes Dr. Jan Häller, Dr. Arvid Morawe (both Corporate/M&A) (all Frank­furt), Mauritz Rogier (M&A) and Dr. Cars­ten Bormann (Public Commer­cial Law) (both

About Kirk­land & Ellis
With more than 2,700 lawy­ers in 15 offices world­wide, Kirk­land & Ellis is one of the leading inter­na­tio­nal commer­cial law firms. The Munich team provi­des focu­sed advice in the areas of private equity, M&A, corpo­rate, capi­tal markets, restruc­tu­ring, finan­cing and tax law.

News

New York/ Berlin/ Frank­furt a. M. — Finan­cial inves­tor TCV invests in Spry­ker Systems GmbH (“Spry­ker”) advi­sed. The Series C finan­cing round was led by TCV as lead inves­tor. Exis­ting inves­tors One Peak Part­ners and Project A also parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round tota­ling over USD 130 million. With this, Spry­ker exceeds a valua­tion of USD 500 million. The Frank­furt and Munich offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP advi­sed the finan­cial inves­tor TCV on its invest­ment in Spryker.

About Spry­ker
Spry­ker deve­lops e‑commerce solu­ti­ons for its custo­mers at the highest level. The new capi­tal will be used to conti­nue global growth. The funding will be used to further deve­lop Spryker’s alre­ady popu­lar B2B and enter­prise market­place products, provide a leading AppS­tore for tech­no­logy part­ners and acce­le­rate global growth. In parti­cu­lar, the US, which alre­ady accounts for over 10% of Spry­ker Software’s reve­nue, is the focus of expan­sion. Spry­ker also plans to hire many new employees globally to expand its market leader­ship posi­tion and deve­lop new products for future models and inter­faces in IoT commerce, click & coll­ect and subscrip­tion commerce. More and more custo­mers are trans­forming their orga­niza­ti­ons into so-called “composable enter­pri­ses” led by multi­di­sci­pli­nary “fusion teams” from IT and busi­ness. Spry­ker is at the spear­head of this change it has helped shape and predic­ted since its inception.

Advi­sor to TVC: Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP

The Weil team for this tran­sac­tion was led by Frank­furt-based Corpo­rate Part­ner Dr. Chris­tian Tapp­ei­ner and included Coun­sel Konrad v. Buch­waldt (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt) and Benja­min Rapp (Tax, Munich) as well as Asso­cia­tes Julian Schwa­ne­beck, Sara Afschar-Hamdi, Mario Kuhn (all Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), Mareike Pfeif­fer, Lili­anna Ranody (both Labor, Frank­furt), Markus Cejka (Finance, Frank­furt), Dr. Khatera Zuschlag (Commercial/Regulatory, Frank­furt), Alisa Preiß­ler (Tax, Frank­furt), and Para­le­gal Nata­scha Späth (Corpo­rate, Frankfurt).

Advi­sors to Spry­ker: honert + part­ner (Hamburg)

Part­ner Dr. Jan-Chris­tian Heins and Asso­ciate Chris­tina Frig­ger advised.

Consul­tant Project A: SMP

Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Partner
Fabian Euhus (Co-Lead, Funds), Partner
Adrian Haase (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Associate

About TCV
Foun­ded in 1995, TCV is one of Sili­con Valley’s leading inter­na­tio­nal growth capi­tal firms, support­ing private and public growth-stage compa­nies. Over the past 25 years, TCV has inves­ted over $14 billion in more than 350 leading high-tech compa­nies and assis­ted CEOs in more than 125 IPOs and stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons. TCV has inves­ted in compa­nies such as Airbnb, AxiomSL, Dollar Shave Club, Exact­Tar­get, Expe­dia, Face­book, Linke­dIn, Netflix, Nubank, Payo­neer, Splunk, Spotify, Strava, Toast, Xero, and Zillow. In Europe, TCV has inves­ted over $2 billion in compa­nies such as Believe Digi­tal, Brillen.de, Flix­Mo­bi­lity, Klarna, Mollie, Perfecto, Redis Labs, RELEX Solu­ti­ons, Revo­lut, RMS, Spor­t­ra­dar, The Pracuj Group, and World­Re­mit. TCV is head­quar­te­red in Menlo Park, Cali­for­nia, with offices in New York and London.

About Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP 
Weil, Gotshal & Manges is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,100 lawy­ers, inclu­ding appro­xi­m­ately 300 part­ners. Weil is head­quar­te­red in New York and has offices in Boston, Dallas, Frank­furt, Hong Kong, Hous­ton, London, Miami, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Prince­ton, Shang­hai, Sili­con Valley, Warsaw and Washing­ton, D.C.

About SMP
SMP is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of corpo­rate, funds, liti­ga­tion, tax and tran­sac­tions. SMP attor­neys and tax advi­sors repre­sent 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, SMP 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, SMP employs over 50 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers and tax advi­sors in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.

News

Frank­furt a.M. — Good­win advi­sed the legal tech company Right­Now GmbH on a Series A finan­cing of $10.5 million. Lead inves­tors are venture capi­ta­list VR Ventures and the family office of Schwarz­wäl­der Boten, which in turn was advi­sed by VC inves­tor Redstone.

VR Ventures also faci­li­ta­ted an invest­ment in the bond issued by Right­Now to purchase govern­ment-guaran­teed Covid19 travel vouchers.

Right­Now had alre­ady recei­ved $2.1 million in a pre-Series A finan­cing in a first closing that included parti­ci­pa­tion from the foun­ders of Triv­ago in 2019.

Foun­ded in 2017, Right­Now GmbH is conside­red one of the pioneers in the moder­niza­tion of consu­mer protec­tion. The start-up, which specia­li­zes in “consu­mer claims purcha­sing,” buys claims from consu­mers against airlines, tour opera­tors, hotels, insu­rance compa­nies and other compa­nies and asserts the claims at its own risk. Right­Now foun­ders Dr. Torben Antret­ter, Phil­lip Eischet and Dr. Bene­dikt M. Quarch were recently named to the “30 under 30” by Forbes magazine.

Advi­sor Right­Now GmbH: Good­win, Frank­furt a.M.

Gregor Klenk (Part­ner, Private Equity, Lead), Heiko Penn­dorf (Part­ner, Tax), Joana Pamu­kova (Asso­ciate, Private Equity)

About VR Ventures

Foun­ded in Febru­ary 2020, the venture capi­tal fund VR Ventures sees itself as an inno­va­tion driver in the finance and real estate indus­try. The fund’s invest­ment focus is on start­ups in FinTech and PropTech as well as adja­cent digi­tal busi­ness solu­ti­ons for small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses. Invests in the best teams and solu­ti­ons across Europe from the late seed stage.

VR Ventures is backed by the Berli­ner Volks­bank Ventures team, which has been mana­ging Berli­ner Volksbank’s startup invest­ments since 2015. The exis­ting part­ner­ship with Reds­tone Digi­tal will also conti­nue. Andreas Laule (Mana­ging Direc­tor, VR Ventures): “The idea of VR Ventures is to build on the expe­ri­ence of Berli­ner Volks­bank Ventures and provide parti­ci­pa­ting inves­tors with imme­diate access to stra­te­gi­cally rele­vant start­ups in addi­tion to an attrac­tive return.”

Timo Fleig (Mana­ging Direc­tor, VR Ventures): “We invest in indus­tries where we know our way around and where our inves­tors do busi­ness them­sel­ves. This market know­ledge not only helps us to select strong port­fo­lio compa­nies, rather we want to bring our expe­ri­ence and strong network to the colla­bo­ra­tion and seize the oppor­tu­ni­ties of digi­ta­liza­tion toge­ther with our port­fo­lio companies.”

For the Volks- und Raiff­ei­sen­ban­ken, VR Ventures is another leap into the future of banking. In addi­tion to Berli­ner Volks­bank, the follo­wing other Volks­banks and Raiff­ei­sen­banks are invol­ved in VR Ventures: Bank 1 Saar, Rhein­gauer Volks­bank, Verbund Volks­bank OWL, Volks­bank Biele­feld-Güters­loh, Volks­bank Kassel Göttin­gen, Volks­bank Rhein-Ruhr, VR-Bank Südpfalz and VR-Bank Würz­burg. In addi­tion, IDEAL Lebens­ver­si­che­rung, a company outside the Genos­sen­schaft­li­che Finanz­Gruppe, was won as an inves­tor. A total of ten inves­tors have inves­ted a total of around €40 million in the fund. Over the next twelve months, parti­ci­pa­tion in VR Ventures is open to addi­tio­nal insti­tu­tio­nal investors.

News

Frank­furt a.M. — McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed ELF Capi­tal Group on a unitran­che finan­cing for Berlin-based clean­tech company ABIONIK. ELF Capi­tal provi­des ABIONIK with a medium- to long-term finan­cing volume of more than 20 million euros to replace the previous bank finan­cing and for further growth.

ABIONIK is a pioneer in the envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy indus­try with nearly 30 years of expe­ri­ence in water and air treat­ment. The product port­fo­lio with the brands Martin Systems, Likusta and Stein­hardt is used in muni­ci­pal as well as indus­trial and mari­time envi­ron­ments. The group has sites in Germany, China and India with appro­xi­m­ately 200 employees and gene­ra­tes 35 million euros in sales (2020).

ELF Capi­tal Group specia­li­zes in flexi­ble finan­cing solu­ti­ons for medium-sized compa­nies, prima­rily in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land as well as Northwest Europe. Target invest­ments for compa­nies range from €10 million to €40 million, with a focus on capi­tal solu­ti­ons for compa­nies with solid and profi­ta­ble busi­ness models, leading market posi­tio­ning and good growth prospects.

Advi­sors to ELF Capi­tal Group: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frankfurt

Dr. Oliver Hahn­elt, LL.M. (Lead), Dr. Niko­las Kout­sós (Coun­sel; both Finan­cing), Nina Siewert (Tax), Tobias Riemen­schnei­der (Asso­ciate, Corpo­rate), Ardalan Zargari (Para­le­gal, Financing)

News

Paris — Ardian, a leading private equity firm, announ­ces the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in AD Educa­tion along­side Kevin Guene­gan, the group’s foun­der and CEO as well as the manage­ment team. AD Educa­tion is one of the leading Euro­pean plat­forms for educa­tion in the fields of art, design, digi­tal and audio­vi­sual. As part of the part­ner­ship with AD Educa­tion, Ardian will help the manage­ment team acce­le­rate growth both orga­ni­cally and through further acqui­si­ti­ons, as well as drive geogra­phic expansion.

AD Educa­tion was foun­ded in 2009 and focu­ses on the areas of crea­tive arts. With more than 15,000 students in 12 insti­tu­ti­ons and 36 campu­ses in France, Italy, Spain and Germany, AD Educa­tion covers four segments: Design & Graphi­cal Arts, Media & Digi­tal, Audio­vi­sual and Culture & Luxury.

In Germany, AD Educa­tion is repre­sen­ted by the Hoch­schule für Medien, Kommu­ni­ka­tion und Wirt­schaft (HMKW), which has campu­ses in Berlin, Colo­gne and Frank­furt. In France, the company has estab­lished itself as the market leader over the last ten years.

The ARDIAN consul­tants involved:
Emma­nuel Miquel, Nico­las Trani, Jean-Baptiste Hunaut, Anouk Daoudal

Buyer M&A advi­sors: Center­view Partners
Nico­las Constant, Pierre Pasqual, Matthieu Sommier, Cassandre Devoir
Buyer legal advisor:
Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her: Eduardo Fernan­dez, Gil Kiener, Louis Jambu-Merlin (corpo­rate)
Latham & Watkins (Xavier Farde, Carla-Sophie Impe­ra­deiro (finan­cing), Olivia Rauch-Ravisé, Clémence Morel (struc­tu­ring)),
Buyer stra­te­gic DD: EY Parthe­non (Guéric Jacquet, Anna Grotberg),
Buyer finan­cial DD: KPMG (Guil­hem Maguin, Grégo­ire Didier),
Buyer legal DD: Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her (Eduardo Fernan­dez, Gil Kiener, Louis Jambu-Merlin),
Buyer tax DD: KPMG Avocats (Sophie Fournier-Dedoyard),
Buyer labor DD: Chassany Watre­lot et Asso­ciés (Julien Boucaud-Maitre)

News

Düssel­dorf, Germany, Decem­ber 9, 2020 — ARQIS advi­sed Emer­gence Thera­peu­tics AG, a Euro­pean life science startup, on its exten­ded follow-on seed finan­cing round. The capi­tal comes from a consor­tium of leading Euro­pean inves­tors, consis­ting of Bpifrance (through its Inno­Bio 2 Fund), Grün­der­fonds Ruhr, Heidel­berg Pharma Rese­arch GmbH, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, idin­vest Part­ners, Kurma Part­ners and NRW.Bank. The follow-on seed round was led by High-Tech Grün­der­fonds and included support from the first pillar of the German government’s €2 billion package of measu­res for startups.

Jack Elands, CEO of Emer­gence Thera­peu­tics, said, “We are grateful for the contin­ued support from our inves­tors at this seed stage. Proceeds from the follow-on seed round will be used to advance our deve­lo­p­ment programs focu­sed on Nectin‑4 as a target protein — an incre­asingly important and clini­cally vali­da­ted thera­peu­tic target across a broad spec­trum of cancers. In addi­tion, the funding will enable us to acce­le­rate work on addi­tio­nal programs and expand our ADC tool­kit to include addi­tio­nal highly inno­va­tive linker payload technologies.”

Emer­gence Thera­peu­tics is a biophar­maceu­ti­cal company deve­lo­ping novel anti­body-drug conju­ga­tes (ADCs) for the treat­ment of cancers with high unmet medi­cal need. Its lead program uses inno­va­tive linker and payload tech­no­logy to address Nectin‑4, an important and vali­da­ted target for a broad range of cancers. In addi­tion, the company is actively explo­ring and deve­lo­ping oppor­tu­ni­ties to deve­lop addi­tio­nal best- or first-in-class ADCs based on thera­peu­tic need. Emer­gence is based in Duis­burg, Germany, and has a subsi­diary in Marseille, France.

The ARQIS team led by part­ner Dr. Chris­tof Alex­an­der Schnei­der alre­ady star­ted advi­sing Emer­gence Thera­peu­tics in 2019, when the startup was foun­ded via a colla­bo­ra­tion between (inter alia) the Univer­sity of Marseille and Heidel­berg Pharma AG. As a result, the firm orga­ni­zed the prece­ding finan­cing round.

Advi­sor Emer­gence Thera­peu­tics: ARQIS Attor­neys at Law

Dr. Chris­tof Alex­an­der Schnei­der (Lead; Tran­sac­tions; Düssel­dorf), Dr. Mauritz von Einem (Tax Law); Asso­ciate: Louisa Theresa Graf (Tran­sac­tions; both Munich)
Niit­väli (Frank­furt): Evelyn Niit­väli (Anti­trust)

About ARQIS

ARQIS Attor­neys at Law is an inde­pen­dent busi­ness law firm opera­ting in Germany and Japan. The firm was foun­ded in 2006 in Düssel­dorf, Munich and Tokyo. Around 55 profes­sio­nals advise dome­stic and foreign compa­nies at the highest level on German and Japa­nese busi­ness law. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.arqis.com.

News

Munich — A year ago, Early­bird inves­ted in Isar Aero­space for the first time. A Series B round of EUR 75 million has now been closed. The funding round was led by Lake­star in co-lead with Lake­star and VSquared. The Series B finan­cing round will fund Isar Aerospace’s first launch vehicle through to launch, allo­wing Isar Aero­space to now fully concen­trate on the final deve­lo­p­ment steps and upco­ming tests.

As the indus­try moves from larger, single satel­li­tes to constel­la­ti­ons of smal­ler satel­li­tes, the market for rocket laun­ches is expec­ted to grow. Accor­ding to Fortune Busi­ness Insights’, Global Space Launch Services Market, that growth might be as much as 30 billion euros by 2027. This is due to nume­rous appli­ca­ti­ons for small- and medium-sized satel­li­tes and satel­lite constel­la­ti­ons — ranging from nati­on­wide high-speed inter­net coverage and auto­no­mous driving to smart farming and beyond. We are brin­ging our Earth-bound compu­ta­tion infra­struc­ture to low Earth orbit (LEO), which will deli­ver and allow unpar­al­le­led insights about climate change, navi­ga­tion systems for mobi­lity appli­ca­ti­ons, or asset track­ing in supply chains.
Early­bird belie­ves that in the next decade, micro-satel­li­tes in LEO will become a central plat­form tech­no­logy with enorm­ous inno­va­tion and busi­ness poten­tial. Isar Aero­space is the under­ly­ing base tech­no­logy for this plat­form: “In our early conver­sa­ti­ons with the Isar Aero­space foun­ders, despite them not having yet reached their first commer­cial launch plan­ned for Q4/2021, we could toge­ther envi­sion their full plat­form stra­tegy. We noted the rele­vance and market oppor­tu­nity. We saw that the stra­te­gic importance of launch vehic­les was not bound to LEO, and that the ambi­tion of this team goes beyond: Isar’s first launch vehicle “Spec­trum” provi­des access to space and unlocks further plat­form verti­cals, such as manned Moon missi­ons, buil­ding resource-mining infra­struc­ture on the Moon and Mars, as well as human spaceflights.”

The foun­ders and the team combine deter­mi­na­tion and an uncon­ven­tio­nal way of thin­king. They are passio­nate engi­neers from the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich who don’t shy away from big chal­lenges. Growing the team from 25 to over 100 employees in the past year, the co-foun­ders hired the best talents from insti­tu­ti­ons such as the Euro­pean Space Agency, SpaceX, Airbus, Uber and Apple. Scaling the team to more than three times its size, demons­tra­ted the foun­ders’ talent, endu­rance, and great leader­ship skills that we obser­ved since our first invest­ment. By infu­sing exper­tise from rela­ted indus­tries — like auto­mo­tive and robo­tics into aero­space- they applied mate­rial and physics know­ledge and adopted a lear­ning-on-the-go approach.

Isar Aero­space has achie­ved many criti­cal mile­sto­nes within the last year, which truly makes us proud and has substan­tia­ted our invest­ment thesis. Despite the chal­lenges arising through the global COVID-19 pande­mic, the team made great progress on buil­ding the test­ing rig in Sweden, inau­gu­ra­ting their 4k sqm produc­tion faci­li­ties in Otto­brunn, Germany and growing a diverse team from around 30 nati­ons, while main­tai­ning their prac­ti­cal and family-like culture.

While working with Isar Aero­space over the last year, the team’s prag­ma­tic way of re-thin­king space has been visi­ble in all of the team’s actions and achie­ve­ments. Daniel, Josef and Markus have truly deve­lo­ped into visio­na­ries with great leader­ship skills. Daniel was just reco­gni­zed as the youn­gest reci­pi­ent in a 40under40 award here in Germany. Next to their natu­ral curio­sity and hands-on atti­tude that it takes to build a company with this vision, the foun­ders showed courage and perse­ver­ance over the past year. Even when things looked chal­len­ging, they kept their forward-looking and stra­te­gic way of thin­king, progres­sing in an aggres­sive and time-effi­ci­ent manner.
Disco­ver Daniel’s perspec­tive about Isar Aero­space in this behind-the-scenes video: “To be honest, it’s damn compli­ca­ted to build some­thing that actually goes into space.”
We are super proud to back the next cate­gory leader of Euro­pean space launch systems.

Dr. Frank Vogel and Dr. Simon Pfef­ferle of the law firm Vogel Heerma Waitz advi­sed Early­bird and Vsquared Ventures on the Series B finan­cing of Isar Aero­space, Germany’s leading space startup.

News

Munich, Luxem­bourg — IDnow, a leading provi­der of Iden­tity Veri­fi­ca­tion-as-a-Service solu­ti­ons, recei­ves 15 million in growth funding from the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank. The funds will be used for IDnow’s rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment and inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion. The finan­cing of the Bank of the EU is made possi­ble by the Invest­ment Plan for Europe.

The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) is awar­ding EUR 15 million in growth finan­cing to the German iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion plat­form IDnow. IDnow specia­li­zes in secure remote auto and video iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and elec­tro­nic signa­tures. Compa­nies can thus acquire custo­mers and carry out tran­sac­tions more quickly and easily without viola­ting “Know Your Custo­mer” and money laun­de­ring regu­la­ti­ons. The invest­ment will prima­rily go towards IDnow’s rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment acti­vi­ties and inter­na­tio­nal expansion.

The finan­cing falls under the Euro­pean Growth Finance Faci­lity (EGFF), made possi­ble by the guaran­tee of the Euro­pean Fund for Stra­te­gic Invest­ments (EFSI). EGFF is desi­gned to fill a gap in quasi-equity finan­cing in Europe. This gap is caused by struc­tu­ral market fail­ures in provi­ding suita­ble venture capi­tal to compa­nies that have alre­ady recei­ved venture capi­tal and are now in a later stage. Euro­pean small, medium and mid-cap compa­nies often suffer from a syste­mic shortage of non-dilu­tive large-scale finan­cing for growth invest­ments in property, plant and equip­ment and intan­gi­ble assets. The bene­fit of the EFSI in this case is that it signi­fi­cantly impro­ves the bank’s risk-bearing capacity.

The EFSI is the main pillar of the Invest­ment Plan for Europe, in which the EIB and the Euro­pean Commis­sion work toge­ther as stra­te­gic part­ners. With its loans, the EIB is helping to make the Euro­pean economy more compe­ti­tive. In addi­tion, there is the Euro­pean Invest­ment Advi­sory Hub (EIAH), which helps public and private project promo­ters struc­ture invest­ment projects in a more profes­sio­nal manner.

Ambroise Fayolle, EIB Vice-Presi­dent over­see­ing EFSI as well as the Bank’s opera­ti­ons in Germany, said: “IDnow, which is recei­ving an EIB loan for the first time, has to invest signi­fi­cantly in its rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment and commer­cia­liza­tion acti­vi­ties. This loan is an excel­lent exam­ple of how the EU’s bank can use the Invest­ment Plan for Europe to foster inno­va­tion, espe­ci­ally in sensi­tive areas such as the fight against money laun­de­ring and terro­rist finan­cing, as well as cyber­se­cu­rity, which are of great stra­te­gic importance to the EU and its economy.”

Euro­pean Commis­sio­ner for Econo­mic Affairs Paolo Genti­loni said: “As more and more of our inter­ac­tions take place online, it is more important than ever that we streng­then data secu­rity and fraud preven­tion. It is right that the Invest­ment Plan for Europe contri­bu­tes to these efforts. This support will enable the German plat­form IDnow to expand its services for digi­tal iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion of custo­mers and busi­ness part­ners. We are inves­t­ing in a secure busi­ness envi­ron­ment online, one of the goals of our digi­tal finance strategy.”

IDnow CFO Joe Lich­ten­ber­ger said, “Covid-19 has noti­ce­ably boos­ted demand for digi­tal services, and thus for our ‘veri­fi­ca­tion as-a-service’ solu­tion, across various indus­tries and geogra­phies. EIB’s flexi­ble finan­cing helps us to invest faster in the deve­lo­p­ment of the plat­form and take advan­tage of busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. The EIB is the ideal part­ner for us to estab­lish oursel­ves as a leading Euro­pean iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion provider.”

About IDnow

With its Iden­tity Veri­fi­ca­tion as a Service (IVaaS) plat­form, IDnow is on a mission to make the connec­ted world a safer place. IDnow’s unma­ni­pulable iden­tity veri­fi­ca­tion is used in all indus­tries where compa­nies conduct online custo­mer inter­ac­tions that require the highest level of secu­rity. IDnow tech­no­logy uses arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to ensure that all secu­rity features are present on an ID docu­ment and can ther­e­fore relia­bly detect coun­ter­feit docu­ments. Poten­ti­ally, the iden­ti­ties of more than 7 billion custo­mers from 193 diffe­rent count­ries can be verified.
IDnow covers a wide range of use cases both in regu­la­ted indus­tries in Europe and for comple­tely new digi­tal busi­ness models world­wide. Through the plat­form, iden­tity flow can be custo­mi­zed on a case-by-case basis to meet regio­nal, legal and busi­ness requirements.
IDnow is supported by venture capi­tal inves­tors Corsair Capi­tal, BayBG, Seven­ture Part­ner, G+D Ventures and a consor­tium of renow­ned busi­ness angels. Its more than 250 custo­mers include leading inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies from various indus­tries such as Bank of Scot­land, BNP Pari­bas, Commerz­bank, even­tim, Raisin (Welt­spa­ren), Sixt, sola­ris­Bank, Tele­fó­nica Deutsch­land, UBS and Western Union, as well as fintechs such as Fidor, N26, smava and wefox.

The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank

The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) is the long-term lending insti­tu­tion of the Euro­pean Union. Its share­hol­ders are the member states of the EU. The EIB lends long-term funds to sound projects that meet EU objectives.

The invest­ment offen­sive for Europe

The Invest­ment Plan for Europe aims to boost invest­ment in Europe and thus create jobs. Through guaran­tees from the Euro­pean Fund for Stra­te­gic Invest­ments (EFSI), the EIB and the EIF are able to assume a larger share of the project risk, making it easier for private finan­ciers to also parti­ci­pate in the projects. The projects and agree­ments appro­ved so far for EFSI-guaran­teed finan­cing are expec­ted to mobi­lize €535.4 billion in invest­ments and bene­fit over 1.4 million start-ups and small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses across all EU countries.

News

Vienna/ Zurich — Austrian growth finance invest­ment fund Round2 Capi­tal has inves­ted a seven-figure sum in Swiss EdTech scale-up Aval­lain. With its inno­va­tive reve­nue-based finan­cing approach for growth-stage compa­nies, which is more acces­si­ble than bank loans and offers more favorable terms than venture capi­tal, Round2 invests in leading tech­no­logy and soft­ware scale-ups in Europe. Photo: Round2 Capi­tal manage­ment team from left to right: Stefan Nagel, Jan Hille­red, Chris­tian Czer­nich, Isabella Hermann-Schön . Award-winning e‑learning and EdTech pioneer Aval­lain is using the funds raised to expand its product offe­ring for corpo­rate use cases and to further streng­then its inter­na­tio­nal market position.

After Round2 Capi­tal further expan­ded its alre­ady two-year part­ner­ship with Munich-based cyber­se­cu­rity company Myra Secu­rity with a double-digit million invest­ment at the begin­ning of Novem­ber, mana­ging direc­tor Dr. Chris­tian Czer­nich has now announ­ced a further seven-figure finan­cing. The new member of the Round2 Capi­tal family is Swiss company Aval­lain, which provi­des cutting-edge e‑learning and EdTech solu­ti­ons for clients — such as Oxford Univer­sity Press and Natio­nal Geogra­phic — Lear­ning-Cengage. i5invest acted as advi­sor to Aval­lain AG, which sees this measure as an important step towards scaling Avallain’s new product business.

“Aval­lain is a leading Euro­pean player in the EdTech market. With this invest­ment, we are adding a third company based in Switz­er­land to our port­fo­lio. The foun­ders — Ursula Suter and Ignatz Heinz — have mana­ged to build up their busi­ness inde­pendently and estab­lish an impres­sive custo­mer base — espe­ci­ally in the acade­mic market. We are exci­ted to provide the growth capi­tal to expand their products and services for the corpo­rate space,” said Chris­tian Czer­nich, CEO and Co-Foun­der Round2 Capi­tal Part­ners. The invest­ment will be used by Aval­lain to further deve­lop and scale the “Aval­lain Magnet” product for corpo­rate educa­tion and training.

Vienna-based finan­cing provi­der Round2 Capi­tal is the pioneer of reve­nue-based finance in Europe. Previously widely used for finan­cing tech­no­logy and soft­ware compa­nies, parti­cu­larly in the U.S., the model was adopted in Europe — by seve­ral other provi­ders in the U.K. and Germany — follo­wing its launch by Round2 in 2017. The inno­va­tive finan­cing instru­ment helps to fund the growth of compa­nies without perso­nal guaran­tees, rigid repay­ment sche­du­les or dilu­tion of owner­ship. In return, Round2 Capi­tal is provi­ded a small share from the company’s reve­nue until a prede­fi­ned cap is reached. With this approach, Round2 Capi­tal finan­ces leading Euro­pean tech­no­logy scale-ups.

About Round2 Capital
Round2 Capi­tal is a fast-growing Euro­pean invest­ment fund with €30 million in capi­tal under manage­ment. The Vienna-based company is a strong part­ner for Euro­pean scale-ups with digi­tal and sustainable busi­ness models. Since its incep­tion in 2017, Round2 Capi­tal has been pionee­ring reve­nue-based finance in Europe and is active in seve­ral Euro­pean count­ries, with a focus on Germany, Switz­er­land, Austria and the Nordic count­ries. To date, Round2 Capi­tal has inves­ted in 13 compa­nies, with Aval­lain being the newest company in the port­fo­lio. With this third invest­ment in Switz­er­land, Round2 Capi­tal further streng­thens its market posi­tion. www.round2cap.com

Company Aval­lain
Foun­ded in 2002 by EdTech pioneers Ursula Suter and Ignatz Heinz, Aval­lain is an award-winning Swiss provi­der of EdTech and eLear­ning solu­ti­ons, working with leading brands world­wide. The company’s mission is to unleash human poten­tial through inno­va­tive and tech­no­logy-based educa­tion. Avallain’s team spans five conti­nents and repres­ents more than 14 nati­ons. The company is an active parti­ci­pant in the UN Global Compact and aims to advance the SDGs by achie­ving a zero carbon foot­print and contri­bu­ting to posi­tive social change in sub-Saha­ran Africa through the Aval­lain Foun­da­tion. www.avallain.com

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