ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Frank­furt am Main — Baker McKen­zie advi­sed Chr. Hansen Holding A/S (Chr. Hansen) in connec­tion with the acqui­si­tion of all shares in Jenne­wein Biotech­no­lo­gie GmbH (Jenne­wein), a leading company in the market for human milk oligos­ac­cha­ri­des (HMOs). The purchase price amounts to appro­xi­m­ately EUR 310 million (on a debt-free basis). The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close before the end of Septem­ber 2020.

Follo­wing the acqui­si­tion, Chr. Hansen plans to invest more than EUR 200 million by 2025, inclu­ding in a new produc­tion faci­lity. This is inten­ded to expand HMO capa­city to meet anti­ci­pa­ted demand.

Jenne­wein is a leading inter­na­tio­nal biotech­no­logy company with a range of products in the field of human milk oligos­ac­cha­ri­des (HMOs) and rare monosac­cha­ri­des such as L‑fucose and sialic acid. Jenne­wein produ­ces a broad port­fo­lio of inno­va­tive HMO products, inclu­ding 2′-fucosyllactose, 3′-fucosyllactose, lacto-N-neote­tra­ose, and lacto-Ntetra­ose. These are rare sugars used in the food indus­try (espe­ci­ally in infant milk formula), in the phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­try and in the cosme­tics industry.

Chr. Hansen is a leading global life science company deve­lo­ping products based on natu­ral ingre­di­ents for the food, nutri­tion, phar­maceu­ti­cal and agri­cul­tu­ral indus­tries. This includes the deve­lo­p­ment and produc­tion of cultures, enzy­mes, probio­tics and natu­ral colors for a variety of foods, confec­tion­ery, bever­a­ges, dietary supple­ments as well as animal feed and crop protec­tion products. This allows food manu­fac­tu­r­ers, for exam­ple, to reduce the use of chemi­cals and other arti­fi­cial substi­tu­tes, thus crea­ting “more” from “less,” which is what makes the food products in ques­tion special in today’s world. In 2019, Chr. Hansen was ranked the most sustainable company in the world by Corpo­rate Knights.

Advi­sor Chr. Hansen Holding A/S: Baker McKen­zie
Lead Corporate/M&A: Chris­tian Atzler, Foto (Part­ner, Frankfurt)
Team: Corporate/M&A: Dr. Peter Wand (Part­ner, Frank­furt), Dr. Markus Mörtel (Senior Asso­ciate, Frank­furt), Jessica Köhler (Asso­ciate, Frank­furt), Rouven Reuter (Asso­ciate, Frank­furt), Esther Xiang (Asso­ciate, Frankfurt)
Commer­cial: Dr. Johan­nes Teich­mann (Part­ner, Frank­furt), Dr. Ingmar Oltmanns (Asso­ciate, Frank­furt) Rebecca Romig, Isabel Weaver (both Asso­cia­tes, Frankfurt)
IP: Dr. Rembert Niebel (Part­ner, Frank­furt), Alex­an­der Ritter (Senior Asso­ciate, Munich), Lena Weber (Asso­ciate, Frankfurt)
IT: Dr. Holger Lutz (Part­ner, Frank­furt), Dr. Tobias Born (Senior Asso­ciate, Frankfurt)
Regu­la­tory: Dr. Frank Pflü­ger (Part­ner, Frank­furt), Dr. Chris­tian Lebrecht (Asso­ciate, Frankfurt)
Employ­ment: Dr. Chris­tian Reichel (Part­ner, Frank­furt), Dr. Felix Diehl (Asso­ciate, Frankfurt)
Real Estate: Dr. Florian Thamm (Part­ner, Frank­furt), Till Pflug (Asso­ciate, Frankfurt)
Banking & Finance: Dr. Oliver Socher (Part­ner, Frank­furt), Silke Fritz (Coun­sel, Frank­furt), Phil­ipp Thimm (Asso­ciate, Frankfurt)
Foreign Trade Law: Anahita Thoms (Part­ner, Düssel­dorf), Alex­an­der Ehrle (Asso­ciate, Berlin)
Anti­trust: Gavin Bushell (Part­ner, Brussels), Chris­tian Horst­kotte (Part­ner, Düsseldorf)

Inhouse Legal Chr. Hansen: Chris­tel May-Worre (Hørs­holm, Denmark)

About Baker McKenzie
Baker McKenzie’s global Corporate/M&A team advi­ses on more cross-border tran­sac­tions than any other law firm. Most recently, Baker McKen­zie advi­sed GEA on the sale of compres­sor manu­fac­tu­rer Bock to NORD, DBAG on an invest­ment in conga­tec Holding AG, benpac holding ag on the acqui­si­tion of Gallus Group, SAP on the sale of the SAP Digi­tal Inter­con­nect commu­ni­ca­ti­ons unit to Sinch AB, Para­gon Part­ners on the acqui­si­tion of Casto­lin Eutec­tic, Air Liquide on the sale of the Schülke Group to Swedish finan­cial inves­tor EQT, METRO AG on the sale of its China busi­ness and the estab­lish­ment of a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Wumei, Bayer AG on the sale of its majo­rity stake in chemi­cal park opera­tor Currenta, SPIE on the acqui­si­tion of OSMO, Toppan Prin­ting Co. Ltd. on its acqui­si­tion of the German Inter­print Group, and Evonik on the sale of its methacry­la­tes group to Advent International.

News

Berlin/ Munich — The robo­tics company Maga­zino has closed a Series B finan­cing round of 21 million euros. Jung­hein­rich AG and the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) lead the round, and exis­ting inves­tors also parti­ci­pa­ted. The capi­tal raised will be used to expand inter­na­tio­nal sales acti­vi­ties and, above all, to expand the “ACROS.AI” soft­ware stack — a soft­ware plat­form for intel­li­gent robots deve­lo­ped by Maga­zino, which is also used on third-party hard­ware. Once again, Maga­zino recei­ved compre­hen­sive legal advice on both equity and debt finan­cing from a team led by SMP

In addi­tion to the invest­ments made by the exis­ting share­hol­ders and Jung­hein­rich AG, the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) is provi­ding Maga­zino GmbH with venture debt finan­cing of up to 12 million euros. The EU Bank loan is backed by a guaran­tee from the Euro­pean Fund for Stra­te­gic Invest­ments (EFSI). The EFSI is the center­piece of the Invest­ment Plan for Europe, under which the EIB and the Euro­pean Commis­sion work toge­ther as stra­te­gic part­ners to chan­nel private capi­tal into projects that streng­then the sustaina­bi­lity and compe­ti­ti­ve­ness of the Euro­pean economy. In many of these finan­cings, EIB invol­vement has an important signal­ing effect to private inves­tors, whose risk is often signi­fi­cantly redu­ced by the EU bank’s compre­hen­sive analy­sis and input.

Accor­ding to Maga­zino, the capi­tal raised will be used both to expand inter­na­tio­nal sales and to opti­mize the company’s proprie­tary soft­ware plat­form for intel­li­gent robots.

About Maga­zino
Maga­zino GmbH deve­lops and builds intel­li­gent, mobile robots that perceive their envi­ron­ment and make decis­i­ons them­sel­ves. The auto­no­mous robots work in paral­lel with humans and make proces­ses in the areas of e‑commerce, fashion and produc­tion logi­stics more flexi­ble and effi­ci­ent. With over 100 employees at the Munich site, Maga­zino provi­des the largest advan­ced robo­tics team in Europe. Magazino’s inves­tors include Körber AG, Zalando and Fiege Logistik.

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 have been reco­gni­zed natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally 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. www.smp.law

Consul­tant Maga­zino: SMP
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Lead Part­ner, Tran­sac­tions), Partner
Dr. Adrian Haase (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Associate
Chris­tiane Schnitz­ler (Tran­sac­tions), Associate
Matthias Kres­ser (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Associate

News

Paris/ Frank­furt am Main — Ardian, a leading inde­pen­dent invest­ment firm, today announ­ced the successful fund­rai­sing of €2 billion for its latest expan­sion fund, Ardian Expan­sion Fund V. Despite the chal­len­ging market envi­ron­ment due to Covid-19, Ardian Expan­sion has thus doubled the fund size compared to the previous gene­ra­tion in just six months, which also speaks for the unch­an­ged high attrac­ti­ve­ness of high-growth Euro­pean mid-cap companies.

Ardian Expan­sion Fund V has a global and diver­si­fied inves­tor base. While more than one-third of inves­tors inves­ted with Ardian for the first time, inves­tors in previous gene­ra­ti­ons of funds repre­sent half of the new fund’s volume, a testa­ment to their long-term confi­dence in the expan­sion team and the attrac­ti­ve­ness of the asset class. Thanks to new inves­tors from the Asia and Middle East regi­ons, the fund has also broa­dened its geogra­phi­cal focus.

In addi­tion, the fund expan­ded its inves­tor base, which now includes a sove­reign wealth fund for the first time along­side insu­rance compa­nies, high net worth indi­vi­du­als and pension funds. Seve­ral mana­gers from Ardian Expansion’s port­fo­lio compa­nies have also subscri­bed to fund units. They account for nearly five percent of the fund’s assets, unders­coring the good rela­ti­onships the expan­sion team has built with the manage­ment teams of their port­fo­lio companies.

With a total of 27 profes­sio­nals in Paris, Frank­furt am Main, Milan and Luxem­bourg, the Ardian Expan­sion team will conti­nue its stra­tegy of support­ing successful entre­pre­neurs in imple­men­ting their growth plans. On average, Ardian Expansion’s port­fo­lio compa­nies have each grown orga­ni­cally by more than ten percent in the past and have reali­zed almost four acqui­si­ti­ons on average. Thus, the stra­te­gic value of the compa­nies was increased through acce­le­ra­ted transformation.

Fran­çois Jerpha­gnon, Head of Ardian Expan­sion, said: “We are hono­red by the trust our inves­tors have placed in us. To double the fund size from our prede­ces­sor fund in just six months speaks to the success of our stra­tegy and the finan­cial perfor­mance it is deli­ve­ring for our inves­tors. Part of this invest­ment philo­so­phy, which we have culti­va­ted for 20 years, is to build strong rela­ti­onships with expe­ri­en­ced and dedi­ca­ted manage­ment teams and acce­le­rate value crea­tion for all stake­hol­ders through the Ardian platform.”

Ardian’s expan­sion team is focu­sed on buil­ding long-term rela­ti­onships with manage­ment teams — on average, there are about three years between first meeting and an invest­ment. As part of its flexi­ble invest­ment approach, the team is able to take both mino­rity and majo­rity stakes. This approach is also reflec­ted in the team’s strong track record of support­ing manage­ment teams in the areas of digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion and sustaina­bi­lity. For exam­ple, the team supports digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects at Diam and CCC, as well as native digi­tal busi­ness models, such as at CLS and Berlin Brands Group. As a pioneer in the imple­men­ta­tion of profit-sharing, Ardian and the Expan­sion Team distri­bute a portion of the profits reali­zed through growth to the employees of its port­fo­lio compa­nies upon dive­st­ment. Since the intro­duc­tion of this concept ten years ago, around 15 port­fo­lio compa­nies of Ardian Expan­sion have alre­ady bene­fi­ted from the profit-sharing scheme.

Despite the econo­mic down­turn in the COVID-19 pande­mic, Ardian Expan­sion contin­ued to make new invest­ments. The team has focu­sed on compa­nies that have strong orga­nic and exter­nal growth poten­tial and operate in robust sectors. The new fund is alre­ady 10 percent inves­ted. In May 2020, i.e. still during the lock-down, the purchase agree­ment was signed for Swiss­bit, a provi­der of NAND flash-based storage as well as embedded IoT solu­ti­ons for deman­ding niche appli­ca­ti­ons with substan­tial orga­nic growth poten­tial. This was follo­wed in July 2020 by the acqui­si­tion of Finaxy, a leading French broad-based insu­rance broker with a track record of strong orga­nic as well as exter­nal growth. The strong manage­ment teams in each case were among the decisive factors in the closing of these transactions.

About Ardian
Ardian is one of the world’s leading inde­pen­dent invest­ment firms, mana­ging over US$100 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 690 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

Düssel­dorf — McDer­mott has advi­sed Main Capi­tal Part­ners on the acqui­si­tion of MACH AG, a market-leading soft­ware provi­der for public admi­nis­tra­tion. The foun­ding Müller-Ontjes family remains the active owner. The joint growth stra­tegy will focus on expan­ding the product and tech­no­logy offe­ring through orga­nic as well as inor­ga­nic growth.

MACH AG, foun­ded in 1985 and head­quar­te­red in Lübeck, specia­li­zes in the digi­tiza­tion of public admi­nis­tra­tion. The company provi­des soft­ware, consul­ting and opera­ti­ons for more than 100,000 users in fede­ral and state agen­cies, muni­ci­pa­li­ties, church admi­nis­tra­ti­ons, teaching and rese­arch insti­tu­ti­ons, and non-govern­men­tal orga­niza­ti­ons. With more than 400 employees, MACH AG gene­ra­tes sales of 44 million euros.

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a stra­te­gic inves­tor focu­sed on the soft­ware sector in the Bene­lux, DACH and Scan­di­na­via with offices in The Hague, Düssel­dorf and Stock­holm. With a long-term invest­ment hori­zon for successful part­ner­ships with manage­ment teams, its goal is to build larger soft­ware groups. Main Capi­tal Part­ners mana­ges appro­xi­m­ately €1 billion in assets for invest­ment in mature and growing soft­ware companies.

About Main Capital
Main Capi­tal is a stra­te­gic inves­tor in the soft­ware indus­try. We focus on acce­le­ra­ting busi­ness growth and gene­ra­ting busi­ness value. Expe­ri­ence and lessons lear­ned from the soft­ware market are bund­led in our Market Intel­li­gence prac­tice. This dedi­ca­ted group focu­ses on prac­ti­cal indus­try analy­sis to help our compa­nies iden­tify oppor­tu­ni­ties and achieve opera­tio­nal excel­lence. Bench­mar­king, process opti­miza­tion and segment / terri­tory analy­sis are just a few of the topics addres­sed by the team to deve­lop an adapted growth stra­tegy for each indi­vi­dual company. www.main.nl

Advi­sors to Main Capi­tal Part­ners: McDer­mott Will & Emery (Düssel­dorf)
Dustin Schwerdt­fe­ger, Norman Wasse (both Lead, Corporate/Private Equity), Dr. Kian Tauser (both Frank­furt), Dr. Nils Chris­tian Wighardt (Munich), Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel; Frank­furt; all Tax), Dr. Gudrun Germa­kow­ski, Dr. Thomas Gennert (both Labor Law), Daniel von Brevern (Anti­trust), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Clos­ter­meyer (Real Estate Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Alexa Ningel­gen (Public Law), Dr. Chris­tian Masch (IT/IP, Munich); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Marion von Grön­heim, Tobias Riemen­schnei­der, Isabelle Müller (all Corporate/M&A, all Frank­furt), David Schä­fer (Finan­cing), Dr. Florian Schie­fer (Tax Law, Frank­furt), Julian Jäger (Labor Law), Tina Zeller (Real Estate, Frank­furt), Mirjam Büsch, Lene Niemeier (both Public Law)

News

Iceland / Frank­furt — Marel hf , a public limi­ted company listed on the Icelan­dic Nasdaq OMX and Euron­ext Amster­dam, based in Garda­baer / Iceland, has acqui­red the entire busi­ness shares of TREIF Maschi­nen­bau GmbH (TREIF), inclu­ding all rele­vant busi­ness acti­vi­ties of the group. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the fourth quar­ter of 2020, subject to regu­la­tory approval.

TREIF, a family-owned company based in Ober­lahr, Germany, is a cutting machine manu­fac­tu­rer for the food and espe­ci­ally the meat indus­try. The company was foun­ded in 1948, curr­ently employs around 500 people at loca­ti­ons in Europe, the USA and China, and most recently gene­ra­ted annual sales of over 80 million euros.

Marel is an Icelan­dic manu­fac­tu­rer of food proces­sing equip­ment with more than 6,300 employees in over 30 count­ries with annual sales of 1.3 billion euros. The acqui­si­tion follows Marel’s stra­te­gic goal to become a full-service provi­der of advan­ced food proces­sing and stan­dard equip­ment solu­ti­ons and to further expand its global market presence.

Advi­sors to TREIF Maschi­nen­bau GmbH: Flick Gocke Schaum­burg (Bonn/Hamburg)
Dr. Stephan Göcke­ler, Dr. Chris­tian Bochmann (both lead, M&A/Corporate; Bonn/Hamburg), Dr. Chris­tian Pitzal, Dr. Bastian Lieg­mann (both Tax; Berlin), Dr. Florian C. Haus (Anti­trust), Alex­an­der Lösch­horn (IT); Asso­cia­tes: Fabian Schmidt (Anti­trust), Dr. Verena Roder-Hieße­rich (IP), Alex­an­der Heinen, Dr. Paul Schirr­ma­cher (both M&A/Corporate; Hamburg)

Advi­sors to Marel hf: Allen & Overy
Part­ners Dr. Michiel Huizinga (Lead, Corporate/M&A) and Dr. Michael Ehret (Tax, both Frank­furt) and Coun­sel Dr. René Galle (Anti­trust, Hamburg), Peter Wehner (Pensi­ons) and Dr. Udo H. Olgem­öl­ler (Public Law, both Frank­furt). Further­more, the team compri­sed Senior Asso­cia­tes Dr. Marcus Grühn (Real Estate Law, Hamburg), Dr. Sebas­tian Schulz (Labor Law), Stefa­nie Günther (Public Law, both Frank­furt), Catha­rina Glugla (Data Protec­tion, Düssel­dorf) as well as Asso­cia­tes Laura Reuther (Corporate/M&A), Sven Bisch­off, Paul Kess­ler (both Tax Law), Dr. Anna Jung (Public Law, all Frank­furt), Anna Kräling (IP, Düssel­dorf), Katrin Pilgram (Real Estate, Hamburg) and Senior Tran­sac­tion Offi­cer Nadine Gommel (Corporate/M&A, Frankfurt).

About Flick Gocke Schaumburg
Flick Gocke Schaum­burg has more than 350 profes­sio­nals in Berlin, Bonn, Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt, Hamburg, Munich, Stutt­gart and Zurich, advi­sing corpo­rate groups and family busi­nesses, private clients, NPOs and the public sector on tax law, corpo­rate and commer­cial law as well as audi­ting and busi­ness valuation.

About Allen & Overy
Allen & Overy is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with appro­xi­m­ately 5,500 employees, inclu­ding appro­xi­m­ately 550 part­ners, in more than 40 loca­ti­ons world­wide. An up-to-date over­view of Allen & Overy’s offices can be found here: allenovery.com/locations.

Allen & Overy is repre­sen­ted in Germany at its offices in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt am Main, Hamburg and Munich with appro­xi­m­ately 220 lawy­ers, inclu­ding 47 part­ners. The lawy­ers advise leading natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies prima­rily in the areas of banking, finance and capi­tal markets law, corpo­rate law and M&A, tax law as well as other areas of busi­ness law.

This press release is issued by Allen & Overy LLP. In this press release, “Allen & Overy” refers to “Allen & Overy LLP or its affi­lia­tes.” The named part­ners are either share­hol­ders, advi­sors or employees of Allen & Overy LLP and/or its affiliates.

News

Wie / Frank­furt a. M. — In addi­tion to lead inves­tor APEX Digi­tal Health, exis­ting inves­tors Entre­pre­neur First, SOSV and seve­ral high-ranking busi­ness angels also parti­ci­pa­ted in the seed round for Berlin-based medtech startup Deep­Spin. Deep­Spin says it plans to use the fresh capi­tal to expand the team and further deve­lop the tech­no­logy it has developed.

Alre­ady in Q2, a team led by SMP part­ner Martin Scha­per advi­sed APEX Digi­tal Health on its invest­ment in Berlin-based medtech startup Deep­Spin, as well as acting as lead inves­tor in the seed finan­cing round of Berlin-based startup Phan­tasma Labs. Other inves­tors include Signals VC, IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft, Wi Ventures, Entre­pre­neur First, and seve­ral high-profile busi­ness angels. Accor­ding to Phan­tasma Labs, the capi­tal raised will be used to expand the team as well as product development.

“We are very plea­sed that we were able to advise APEX Ventures on two finan­cing rounds at the same time. The invest­ments in DeepT­ech and Health­Tech under­line the ever incre­asing importance of these sectors in the VC market”, says Martin Schaper.

APEX Ventures
APEX Ventures is a Euro­pean venture capi­tal fund focu­sed on DeepT­ech start­ups with unique IP and extra­or­di­nary market poten­tial. APEX Ventures has comple­ted nume­rous invest­ments in Europe as well as in the U.S., inclu­ding AI for medi­cal appli­ca­ti­ons, quan­tum and laser tech­no­logy, auto­no­mous mobi­lity, compu­ter vision, and digi­tal foren­sics. APEX Ventures is in close colla­bo­ra­tion with the foun­ding teams to work toge­ther on go-to-market stra­te­gies and acce­le­rate inter­na­tio­nal growth. For an effec­tive selec­tion of talen­ted teams and their best possi­ble support, APEX Ventures is in close exch­ange with acade­mic insti­tu­ti­ons, entre­pre­neur­ship programs and other inter­na­tio­nal VC partners.

APEX Digi­tal Health
APEX Digi­tal Health — the second fund under the APEX Ventures umbrella — invests in early-stage health­care compa­nies. As in the first fund, which has alre­ady made 16 successful invest­ments, the focus is on DeepT­ech compa­nies with defen­si­ble intellec­tual property in the DACH region. Howe­ver, invest­ments are also plan­ned in the rest of Europe, the USA and Israel. Since the fund was regis­tered in Janu­ary 2020, four invest­ments have been comple­ted, in patho­logy, radio­logy and neurology.

Deep­Spin
Based on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, Berlin-based medtech startup Deep­Spin is deve­lo­ping a novel magne­tic reso­nance imaging (MRI) system. Compared to conven­tio­nal systems, DeepSpin’s solu­tion is said to be a frac­tion of the cost, size and weight. The company’s goal is to make MRI acces­si­ble to all pati­ents world­wide through the use of its tech­no­logy, thus estab­li­shing a new stan­dard of care in this specialty. The company was foun­ded in 2020 by Clemens Tepel and Pedro Silva.

Phan­tasm Labs
Phan­tasma Labs offers a solu­tion to improve self-driving systems. Using virtual simu­la­tion and novel AI tech­no­logy, Phan­tasma Labs’ soft­ware will help self-driving cars predict and under­stand human beha­vior, for exam­ple. In the simu­la­ti­ons, entire cities such as London or New York are recrea­ted virtually, in which an auto­no­mously driving system encoun­ters real-life situa­tions with other road users or even pede­stri­ans. The company was foun­ded in 2018 by Rama­krishna Nanjun­daiah and Maria Meier, who previously met in the Talent Inves­tor Entre­pre­neur First program.

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 have been reco­gni­zed natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally 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. www.smp.law

Advi­sor APEX Ventures: SMP
Dr. Martin Scha­per (Lead/Corporate), Part­ner, Dr. Chris­tian Jois­ten (Tax), Asso­ciate Pia Dürre (Corpo­rate) Associate

Advi­sor APEX Digi­tal Health: SMP
Dr. Martin Scha­per (Corpo­rate Law), Part­ner, Jonas Huth (Corpo­rate Law), Associate

News

Munich — In the future, 45-year-old Michael Riemen­schnei­der will be part of the manage­ment team of the Strüng­mann family’s single family office Athos.

For half a year it was quiet around Michael Riemen­schnei­der, the former mana­ging direc­tor of Reimann Inves­tors, where he made nume­rous direct invest­ments. Then it became known that Riemen­schnei­der has been one of three mana­ging direc­tors since the begin­ning of July, along with Helmut Jeggle and Thomas Maier. Athos is the single family office of brot­hers Thomas and Andreas Strüng­mann, the foun­ders and former owners of Hexal.

The 45-year-old was previously Mana­ging Direc­tor of the Single Family Office of those members of the Reimann family of entre­pre­neurs who parted with their stake in the former family busi­ness at the end of the 1990s for more than 13 years. He had left the family office at the end of 2019. From 2000 to 2005, the indus­trial engi­neer with a docto­rate in busi­ness admi­nis­tra­tion was a stra­tegy consul­tant at the Boston Consul­ting Group.

News

Frank­furt a.M. — McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed giro­pay GmbH on the sale of giro­pay to paydi­rekt GmbH. paydi­rekt GmbH takes over all rele­vant parts of giro­pay GmbH in order to provide the online payment proce­dure giro­pay in the future. The German banks and savings banks are thus bund­ling their two account-based online payment proces­ses. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is sche­du­led for Decem­ber 2020.

giro­pay GmbH, foun­ded in 2005 by Post­bank, the Spar­kas­sen-Finanz­gruppe (Star Finanz GmbH), and the coope­ra­tive Finanz­gruppe (Fidu­cia & GAD IT AG), provi­des an account-based service that enables “regis­tra­tion-free” payments on the Inter­net via online banking. As a payment method in German e‑commerce, giro­pay curr­ently proces­ses over one million tran­sac­tions per month in a wide range of industries.

Advi­sors to giro­pay GmbH: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frank­furt a.M.
Dr. Michael Cziesla (Lead Part­ner), Norman Wasse, LL.M. (both Corporate/M&A), Daniel von Brevern (Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf), Florian Lech­ner (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A, Tech­no­logy Law); Asso­ciate: Dr. Marion von Grön­heim (Corporate/M&A)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery
McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm. With over 1,200 attor­neys, we are repre­sen­ted in 20 loca­ti­ons world­wide: Atlanta, Boston, Brussels, Chicago, Dallas, Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt a. M., Hous­ton, Colo­gne, London, Los Ange­les, Miami, Milan, Munich, New York, Orange County, Paris, San Fran­cisco, Sili­con Valley, Washing­ton, D.C. and Wilm­ing­ton. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP. www.mwe.com

News

Berlin/ Munich — Berlin-based acade­mic publisher De Gruy­ter has acqui­red eight acade­mic jour­nals from Munich-based Carl Hanser Verlag. Carl Hanser Verlag will trans­fer the jour­nals “Inter­na­tio­nal Jour­nal of Mate­ri­als Rese­arch,” “Inter­na­tio­nal Poly­mer Proces­sing,” “Kern­tech­nik,” “Mate­ri­als Test­ing,” “Prac­ti­cal Metall­o­gra­phy,” “Tenside Surfac­tants Deter­gents,” “ZWF-Zeit­schrift für wirt­schaft­li­che Fabrik­be­trieb” and “HTM-Jour­nal of Heat Treat­ment and Mate­ri­als” to De Gruy­ter on Janu­ary 1, 2021. Raue advi­sed Berlin-based acade­mic publisher De Gruy­ter on the transaction.

De Gruy­ter is an inde­pen­dent acade­mic publisher with head­quar­ters in Berlin and offices in Basel, Boston, Munich, Beijing, Warsaw and Vienna. De Gruy­ter publishes more than 1,300 new book titles and more than 900 jour­nals a year, is a world leader in open access, and provi­des digi­tal access to scho­larly content to more than 12 million users a year on its website, degruyter.com.

Carl Hanser Verlag is one of Germany’s leading publishers of lite­ra­ture as well as applied engi­nee­ring, tech­no­logy, compu­ter science and business.

Advi­sor Walter De Gruy­ter GmbH: Raue (Berlin)
Dr. Jörg Jaecks (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner Corpo­rate Law, M&A), Dr. Michael K. Berg­mann (Part­ner, Anti­trust Law), Dr. Johan­nes Modest (Asso­ciate, Anti­trust Law)

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

News

Munich/ Pfäf­fi­kon (Switz­er­land) — Afinum Achte Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH & Co KG, advi­sed by Afinum Manage­ment GmbH, acqui­res a stake in Threema GmbH. Toge­ther with the foun­ders Martin Blat­ter, Manuel Kasper and Silvan Enge­ler, who will remain signi­fi­cantly invol­ved after the tran­sac­tion, Afinum will support the growth course of the past years. Toge­ther with Afinum, the company intends to further expand its own market posi­tion as the leading Euro­pean secure messen­ger for private and corpo­rate customers.

Threema (www.threema.ch), based in Pfäf­fi­kon, Switz­er­land, is a leading Euro­pean secure messa­ging provi­der for private users, public insti­tu­ti­ons as well as compa­nies. With Threema’s soft­ware solu­ti­ons, neither meta­data nor chat content is stored, which is a strong diffe­ren­tia­tor from other commer­cial messen­gers. This reflects the primary goal of ensu­ring custo­mer data secu­rity and privacy. Threema’s app for private users is used by custo­mers in over 90 count­ries. The corpo­rate custo­mer solu­tion Threema Work has become the market leader in the DACH region in recent years and is used by a large number of DAX 30 compa­nies, govern­ment agen­cies, NGOs and educa­tio­nal insti­tu­ti­ons. — Threema is to become open source.

Threema was foun­ded in 2014 by the three soft­ware deve­lo­pers Martin Blat­ter, Manuel Kasper and Silvan Enge­ler, who will conti­nue to lead the company. By ente­ring into this part­ner­ship, Threema lays the foun­da­tion for conti­nuity and gains resour­ces to grow beyond German-spea­king Europe. Threema will conti­nue to improve its own soft­ware and deve­lop addi­tio­nal features to conti­nue provi­ding custo­mers with the most secure secure messen­ger. Thanks to the inno­va­tive cross-plat­form multi-device solu­tion, Threema will also be usable on multi­ple devices in paral­lel in the future, without leaving perso­nal data on a server. In addi­tion, Threema will fully disc­lose the source code of Threema apps in the coming months to allow anyone to check the secu­rity and func­tion­a­lity of Threema itself and verify that the published source code matches the instal­led app.

The invest­ment in Threema is the ninth 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

Septem­ber 2020, Hano­ver, Germany — NORD Holding, toge­ther with an indus­try-expe­ri­en­ced manage­ment team led by Mana­ging Direc­tor Mr. Wilhelm Evers, is pursuing a buy-and-build stra­tegy in the premium hearing care segment. With part of the oton-/ Ohrwerk Group (a total of 29 estab­lished specialty stores), the foun­da­tion has now been laid for the inor­ga­nic growth plan­ned to more than 150 specialty stores. The compa­nies will be united in perspec­tive under a common appearance as “OHRWERK Hörge­räte” in the stron­gly growing market of premium hearing acoustics.

“With these invest­ments, audiO­sono will directly join the ranks of the largest hearing care compa­nies in Germany. Thanks to Mr. Evers’ indus­try expe­ri­ence and network, we are parti­ci­pa­ting in the strong growth in the hearing care market in the best possi­ble way and are very much looking forward to support­ing him in the further deve­lo­p­ment of the new company,” says Phil­ipp von Mitzlaff, Member of the Execu­tive Board at NORD Holding.

“We give our hearing care profes­sio­nals the oppor­tu­nity to concen­trate fully on their craft: Advi­sing custo­mers in the best possi­ble way, fitting hearing aids opti­mally and selling them. With this in mind, we want to be the most attrac­tive buyer and, above all, employer for hearing care profes­sio­nals in Germany,” says Wilhelm Evers, Mana­ging Direc­tor of audiOsono.

“We are plea­sed to have found strong part­ners in NORD Holding and audiO­sono, who share our corpo­rate philo­so­phy of respon­si­ble hearing care craft­sman­ship and will conti­nue the group’s growth course on this basis. In the future, I will concen­trate more on support­ing the oton & friends network part­ners,” says Andreas Roberg, Mana­ging Direc­tor of oton.

On the part of NORD Holding, the tran­sac­tions were accom­pa­nied by Phil­ipp von Mitzlaff, André Seidel and David Wössner.

About audiO­sono
With audiO­sono, NORD Holding is addres­sing the incre­asing demand for high-quality hearing aids and custo­mer-orien­ted advice in clear distinc­tion to the estab­lished branch concepts. As a buy-and-build plat­form with a focus on hearing acou­stics, audiO­sono prima­rily bene­fits from the high degree of frag­men­ta­tion in the German market and the incre­asing pene­tra­tion and accep­tance of hearing aids in society. audiO­sono parti­ci­pa­tes in estab­lished hearing care stores with a strong local presence as well as natio­nally active chains throug­hout Germany, offe­ring inde­pen­dent acou­sti­ci­ans an alter­na­tive to selling to a large chain store.

About oton and Ohrwerk
The Group opera­tes a total of 29 own stores with approx. 75 employees under the two umbrella brands oton — Die Hörakus­ti­ker and Ohrwerk Hörge­räte with seve­ral regio­nal clus­ters throug­hout Germany (esp. NRW, nort­hern Germany and Bava­ria). With its own hearing aid coll­ec­tion, an attrac­tive finan­cing concept, broad service port­fo­lio and various trai­ning programs, the Group is a leading entity in Germany in terms of custo­mer proxi­mity, quality aware­ness and employee deve­lo­p­ment. www.oton-hoerakustik.de/ and www.ohrwerk-gmbh.info/

Advi­sor Nord Holding: BPG Bera­tungs- und Prüfungsgesellschaft 
Andreas Hoff­mann, WP and Part­ner (Over­all Manage­ment), Alex­an­der Schnei­der, Asso­ciate (Finan­cial), Ludger Fang­mann, StB and Part­ner (Tax), and Jan Phil­ipp Kruse, Asso­ciate (Tax).
www.bpe.de

About NORD Holding
With its 50-year history and assets under manage­ment of € 2.5 billion, NORD Holding is one of the leading private equity asset manage­ment compa­nies in Germany. The focus is on the Direct Invest­ments and Fund Invest­ments busi­ness areas. The focus of the direct busi­ness is on the struc­tu­ring and finan­cing of corpo­rate succes­sion models, the acqui­si­tion of group parts/subsidiaries and the expan­sion finan­cing of medium-sized compa­nies. In contrast to most other finan­cial inves­tors, who only manage time-limi­ted funds, NORD Holding acts as a so-called “ever­green fund” with no time limit and invests from its own balance sheet. The company is curr­ently invol­ved with more than 15 compa­nies in Germany and other German-spea­king count­ries. The Fund Invest­ments busi­ness unit targets the small-cap segment of the Euro­pean private equity market and focu­ses on primary, secon­dary and co-invest­ments. NORD Holding focu­ses stron­gly on buyout mana­gers newly estab­lished in the market, opera­tio­nal invest­ment stra­te­gies and also regu­larly acts as an anchor investor.

News

Berlin / Vienna — Berlin-based fintech with a branch office in Vienna Bambus.io has closed another finan­cing deal with a total volume in the mid-six-figure range. The round was led by Calm/Storm Ventures, a new fund initia­ted by Lucas Polag­noli (pictu­red right) and Michael Ströck (pictu­red left). In addi­tion to the lead inves­tor, busi­ness angels and exis­ting inves­tors inves­ted in the fintech company specia­li­zing in real estate lending. Bambus.io was compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed on corpo­rate and regu­la­tory law by a team led by SMP part­ners Benja­min Ullrich and Lenn­art Lorenz.

“Bambus.io helps real estate owners to increase their liqui­dity and informs them about the diffe­rent capi­tal raising alter­na­ti­ves as well as the asso­cia­ted condi­ti­ons of more than 400 banks,” explains SMP part­ner Benja­min Ullrich. “We are plea­sed that we were able to advise FinTech on both corpo­rate and regu­la­tory matters — the tran­sac­tion is not only exem­plary for our close rela­ti­onship with Austria, but also demons­tra­tes the success of our inte­gra­ted approach of corpo­rate and regu­la­tory advice.”

Bamboo.io
Bambus.io is a fintech with offices in Berlin and Vienna. The company, which specia­li­zes in real estate lending, was foun­ded in 2019 by Patrick Woll­ner and Franz Hoerhager.

Consul­tant Bambus.io: SMP
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Lead Part­ner, Tran­sac­tions), Partner
Dr. Adrian Haase (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Associate
Lenn­art Lorenz (Regu­la­tory Law), Partner
Niklas Ulrich (Regu­la­tory Law), Senior Associate

Advi­sor Bambus.io: Brandl & Talos (Austrian law)
MMag. Roman Rericha (Tran­sac­tions), Partner

About Calm/Storm
Calm/Storm is an exclu­sive foun­der network and boutique venture capi­tal firm.

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 have been reco­gni­zed natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally 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

Garching b. Munich — 3YOURMIND, a leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring (indus­trial 3D prin­ting), today announ­ced the successful closing of a new finan­cing round. The Series A+ is led by EnBW New Ventures (ENV), the venture capi­tal subsi­diary of EnBW, one of Europe’s largest energy and infra­struc­ture opera­tors. ENV and exis­ting inves­tors UVC Part­ners, AM Ventures, TRUMPF Venture and copa­rion are inves­t­ing a total of EUR 4.7 million in the Berlin-based soft­ware company. The current invest­ment round will not only acce­le­rate 3YOURMIND’s further growth in key indus­tries such as aero­space, auto­mo­tive and engi­nee­ring, but will also streng­then its posi­tion in the energy sector and infra­struc­ture. Today, 3YOURMIND custo­mers alre­ady include more than 50 compa­nies from nume­rous count­ries — with the soft­ware suite ensu­ring the smooth 3D prin­ting of seve­ral compon­ents every day.

3YOURMIND’s work­flow soft­ware is at the heart of manu­fac­tu­ring compa­nies that rely on addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring. This enables them to opti­mize their value chain, save up to 40 percent in costs, and achieve up to 18 percent shorter lead times compared with conven­tio­nal manu­fac­tu­ring. In addi­tion, indus­trial users are put in a posi­tion to help deter­mine the next gene­ra­tion of manu­fac­tu­ring at an early stage and use it for their own bene­fit. The work­flow soft­ware from 3YOURMIND is used prima­rily by compa­nies from a wide range of indus­tries that manu­fac­ture spare parts cost-effec­tively on demand, effi­ci­ently replace outda­ted machi­nery or switch to a digi­tal warehouse. Although most of 3YOURMIND’s custo­mers alre­ady rely heavily on addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring in their day-to-day produc­tion, the work­flow soft­ware also offers an opti­mal entry point for compa­nies that have yet to iden­tify use cases for indus­trial 3D prin­ting or want to plan and simu­late the use of agile manu­fac­tu­ring in their own production.

“The current econo­mic situa­tion in the wake of the Corona Lock­downs is just forcing many compa­nies to review their supply chains and look for alter­na­ti­ves,” says Alek­san­der Ciszek, co-foun­der and CEO of 3YOURMIND GmbH. “Our custo­mers are alre­ady bene­fiting from our work­flow soft­ware, which opti­mally controls decen­tra­li­zed produc­tion, increa­ses flexi­bi­lity in supply networks and thus ensu­res the indus­trial value chain at all times. We are plea­sed that ENV and our port­fo­lio inves­tors share our vision of next-gene­ra­tion effi­ci­ent manu­fac­tu­ring and support it through this Series A+ investment.”

The current invest­ment round enables 3YOURMIND to signi­fi­cantly increase its soft­ware deve­lo­p­ment capa­ci­ties. In addi­tion, the deve­lo­p­ment of new markets is to be massi­vely acce­le­ra­ted, in addi­tion to the exis­ting loca­ti­ons in Europe and the USA.

“The success of Indus­try 4.0 is based on addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring,” says Crispin Leick, Mana­ging Direc­tor at ENV. “Thanks to 3YOURMIND’s soft­ware, compa­nies can easily and effi­ci­ently inte­grate addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring into their exis­ting produc­tion proces­ses. At the same time, this supports the sustaina­bi­lity of many manu­fac­tu­ring and MRO (Main­ten­ance, Repair & Opera­ti­ons) appli­ca­ti­ons. We are extre­mely plea­sed with our invest­ment in a company like 3YOURMIND that is play­ing a major role in shaping the future of indus­trial manu­fac­tu­ring.” ENV invests prima­rily in strong and inno­va­tive compa­nies that can have a major impact on the energy and mobi­lity market in the future.

“Even in this econo­mic year, domi­na­ted by a globally rampant virus and ther­e­fore unpre­ce­den­ted, we at 3YOURMIND expect to double our sales for the third year in a row,” says Stephan Kühr, CEO of 3YOURMIND GmbH and respon­si­ble for the company’s growth. “The invest­ment round, carried by ENV and our exis­ting inves­tors UVC Part­ners, AM Ventures, TRUMPF Venture and copa­rion, opens up new and very good pros­pects for us in terms of strong global expansion.”

Simi­lar to other energy suppli­ers, EnBW opera­tes nume­rous power plants of diffe­rent ages and an exten­sive infra­struc­ture for relia­ble energy supply. In order to relia­bly supply its more than six million custo­mers and ensure smooth opera­ti­ons, the company has to find effi­ci­ent solu­ti­ons to main­tain and renew outda­ted equip­ment. Addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring has proven to be a parti­cu­larly viable solution.

About 3YOURMIND
When 3YOURMIND was foun­ded in 2014, the goal was to provide wide­spread access to addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring. In the first few years, corpo­rate custo­mers such as Siemens Energy, DB and Volks­wa­gen are added. This made it possi­ble to directly address the needs of enter­prise produc­tion and deve­lop soft­ware that is ready for the future of manu­fac­tu­ring. From 2020, the Agile Manu­fac­tu­ring Soft­ware Suite will offer modu­les for opti­mi­zing AM work­flows along the entire value chain. This provi­des your custo­mers with trans­pa­rency and scala­bi­lity for the entire industry.
www.3yourmind.com

About UVC Partners
Unter­neh­mer­tum Venture Capi­tal Part­ners (UVC Part­ners) is an early-stage venture capi­tal firm based in Munich and Berlin that invests speci­fi­cally in tech­no­logy-based start­ups in the areas of indus­trial tech­no­lo­gies, enter­prise soft­ware and mobi­lity. Per invest­ment round € 0.5 — 3 million are inves­ted and in successful invest­ments up to € 12 million in total. Port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from the exten­sive invest­ment and exit expe­ri­ence of the manage­ment team and from the close coope­ra­tion with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s leading inno­va­tion and start-up center. With its more than 240 employees and more than 100 indus­try part­ners, Unter­neh­mer­TUM has many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding young compa­nies. Through the part­ner­ship, UVC Part­ners can offer start­ups unique access to talent, custo­mers and part­ners. The port­fo­lio includes invest­ments such as Blick­feld, Carjump (Free2Move), Flix­Bus, KONUX, TWAICE and Vimcar.
https://www.uvcpartners.com/

News

Berlin — Aigno­stics, a spin-off of Charité — Univer­si­täts­me­di­zin Berlin and the Berlin Insti­tute of Health (BIH) that deve­lops AI-based solu­ti­ons for patho­logy, today announ­ced the closing of a €5m seed funding. Böhrin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF) acted as lead inves­tor, with parti­ci­pa­tion from High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), the VC Fonds Tech­no­lo­gie of IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft, and Future Capital.

Formally, the deve­lo­p­ment of Aigno­stics began in early 2018 when rese­ar­chers from Charité and TU Berlin were accepted into BIH’s Digi­tal Health Acce­le­ra­tor (DHA) program to further deve­lop their inno­va­tive rese­arch in AI-based patho­logy and “Explainable AI” into a spin-off company.

Howe­ver, the foun­da­tion for Aigno­stics was laid much earlier, by Prof. Frede­rick Klau­schen, deputy. Direc­tor of the Insti­tute of Patho­logy at Charité, and rese­ar­chers from the Fraun­ho­fer Gesell­schaft and TU Berlin, led by Prof. Klaus-Robert Müller, Direc­tor of the Berlin Center for Machine Lear­ning (BZML), who filed their first patent for AI-based patho­logy back in 2011. Prof. Klau­schen, who studied physics as well as medi­cine, reco­gni­zed the poten­tial of AI for patho­logy early on. “While patho­lo­gists are excel­lent at compre­hen­si­vely analy­zing the morpho­lo­gi­cal features of tissues in indi­vi­dual samples, AI is parti­cu­larly well-suited for evalua­ting indi­vi­dual features in a stan­dar­di­zed and quan­ti­ta­tive manner, as well as unco­ve­ring corre­la­ti­ons in larger data­sets, such as clini­cal trials,” explains Prof. Klauschen.

Aigno­stics’ proprie­tary “Explainable AI” plat­form is parti­cu­larly well suited for such unco­ve­ring of new contexts. It is based on rese­arch by the Fraun­ho­fer Gesell­schaft, Charité and TU Berlin and allows to over­come the often criti­ci­zed “black box” problem of AI in patho­logy. “Explainable AI is a new and exci­ting field in modern AI rese­arch with a lot of poten­tial for both acade­mia and indus­try,” said Prof. Müller. “For exam­ple, we can train our AI with tissue samples that have a posi­tive or nega­tive response to therapy. We can then have the AI graphi­cally “explain” to us which morpho­lo­gi­cal charac­te­ristics distin­gu­ish the posi­tive cases from the nega­tive cases,” Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Alber, CTO of Aigno­stics, explains further. “This tech­no­logy is not only essen­tial for routine diagno­stics, where it can help verify the func­tio­ning of AI appli­ca­ti­ons, but is also a very inte­res­t­ing approach to find poten­tial new biomar­kers that can predict therapy response,” adds Prof. Klauschen.

“What makes us unique, howe­ver, is not only our tech­no­logy, but also our orga­niza­tio­nal struc­ture. We have exten­sive access to multi­mo­dal data as well as patho­lo­gists, which allows us to deve­lop tail­o­red algo­rithms for a wide variety of issues, from diagno­stics to rese­arch to CDx. In addi­tion, our close networ­king with Charité and TU Berlin is a great advan­tage, as we deve­lop our appli­ca­ti­ons in constant exch­ange with compu­ter scien­tists, rese­ar­chers, as well as patho­lo­gists as “end users”,” explains Viktor Matyas, CEO of Aigno­stics. “We are also very grateful for the support of Charité, BIH and Ascen­ion, without which we would not have come this far,” Matyas continues.

Aigno­stics will use the finan­cing to expand its port­fo­lio in phar­maceu­ti­cal rese­arch as well as fund longer-term projects aimed at deve­lo­ping companion/complementary diagno­stics (CDx) for routine diagno­stics. “We find Aigno­stics’ approach very promi­sing and think that more speci­fic diagno­stics will enable more perso­na­li­zed, effec­tive treat­ment for pati­ents,” said Dr. Alex­an­der Ehlgen of BIVF.

About Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund GmbH
The Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund (BIVF) supports early-stage rese­arch and tech­no­lo­gies through stra­te­gic invest­ments. Led by Frank Kalk­bren­ner, Global Head of the Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund. With a volume of €300 million, the BIVF invests in biotech and start-up compa­nies that have the poten­tial to deve­lop breakth­rough tech­no­lo­gies. The BIVF port­fo­lio curr­ently consists of 34 compa­nies. In addi­tion, the BIVF supports the crea­tion of new compa­nies based on promi­sing rese­arch projects at univer­si­ties or acade­mic insti­tu­ti­ons. The BIVF’s inte­rest in young, tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies reflects its commit­ment to promo­ting inno­va­tive ideas and new scien­ti­fic approa­ches. The BIVF thus crea­tes oppor­tu­ni­ties for Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim to expand into new busi­ness areas with a focus on onco­logy, rege­ne­ra­tive medi­cine, infec­tious dise­a­ses and digi­tal health. www.boehringer-ingelheim-venture.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 from the fields of digi­tal busi­ness models, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €2.5 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.
Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the 32 companies.

About Future Capital
Future Capi­tal (www.future-capital.com) is a public-private part­ner­ship between the state of Hesse and Sanofi-Aven­tis Deutsch­land GmbH. Since 1999, we have been support­ing early-stage and start-up compa­nies in the health­care sector with capi­tal, network and know-how. The company is head­quar­te­red in Frank­furt and we invest in our region, but also in Germany and Europe.

About IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft
IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft(www.ibb-bet.de) provi­des venture capi­tal to inno­va­tive Berlin-based compa­nies and has estab­lished itself as the market leader in early stage finan­cing in Berlin. The funds are prima­rily used for the deve­lo­p­ment and market launch of inno­va­tive products or services and for busi­ness concepts in the crea­tive indus­tries. Since March 2015, two funds mana­ged by IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft are in the invest­ment phase, the VC Fonds Tech­no­lo­gie Berlin II with a fund volume of EUR 60 million and the VC Fonds Krea­tiv-Wirt­schaft Berlin II with a fund volume of EUR 40 million. Both VC funds are finan­ced by funds from Inves­ti­ti­ons­bank Berlin (IBB) and the Euro­pean Regio­nal Deve­lo­p­ment Fund (ERDF), mana­ged by the State of Berlin. Since 1997, IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft has provi­ded appro­xi­m­ately EUR 1.52 billion to over 210 Berlin-based crea­tive and tech­no­logy compa­nies in consor­tia with part­ners, of which IBB Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft has inves­ted EUR 217 million as lead, co-lead or co-investor.

About Ascen­ion
Ascen­ion GmbH (www.ascenion.de) is an inde­pen­dent tech­no­logy trans­fer company with parti­cu­lar exper­tise in the life scien­ces. It is a part­ner of more than 30 rese­arch insti­tu­ti­ons, univer­si­ties and univer­sity hospi­tals in Germany and Europe. Parti­cu­lar strengths are the support of spin-offs and project deve­lo­p­ment. As a tech­no­logy trans­fer part­ner of BIH and Charité, Ascen­ion accom­pa­nied the foun­ders and scien­tists and helped to launch the spin-off toge­ther with the BIH-Digi­tal Health Acce­le­ra­tor. In close coor­di­na­tion with BIH, Ascen­ion accom­pa­nied the nego­tia­tion of essen­tial contracts on the way to the foun­da­tion and finan­cing. www.ascenion.de

News

Berlin — SMP advi­sed venture capi­ta­list La Fami­glia on the launch of its second fund. With a volume of 50 million, the fund is signi­fi­cantly larger than the first gene­ra­tion of funds laun­ched in 2017 and is desi­gned to support Tran­sTech compa­nies. Skype foun­der Niklas Zenn­ström as well as fund foun­der Jean­nette zu Fürs­ten­berg, the family offices of the Oetker, Hymer and Swarov­ski fami­lies as well as other well-known inves­tors parti­ci­pate in La Fami­glia II. La Fami­glia was compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed on legal and tax matters by the team led by SMP part­ner Fabian Euhus.

“Deve­lo­pers of trans­for­ma­tive tech­no­lo­gies are on a mission to improve human well-being. This important endea­vor will be further advan­ced with the launch of the new La Fami­glia Fund. We are plea­sed to have served as legal advi­sors to the team in this effort,” said SMP part­ner Fabian Euhus.

About La Famiglia
La Fami­glia is a venture capi­ta­list based in Berlin. The VC is mana­ged by Jean­nette zu Fürs­ten­berg (photo r.) and Judith Mutters­bach-Dada (photo l.).

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 have been reco­gni­zed natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally 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.

Consul­tant La Fami­glia: SMP
Dr. Fabian Euhus (Lead Part­ner, Fund Struc­ture), Partner
Dr. Helder Schnitt­ker (Tax), Partner
David John (Fund), Associate
Dr. Sebas­tian Schwarz (Tax), Senior Associate
Lenn­art Lorenz (Regu­la­tory), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Dr. Niklas Ulrich (Regu­la­tory), Associate

News

Munich — Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Clif­ford Chance has The new private equity mana­ger Maguar Capi­tal has acqui­red HR soft­ware provi­der HRworks with its first funds (Maguar I Fund). A select group of insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, inclu­ding Aber­deen Stan­dard Invest­ments, EMZ Part­ners, Golding Capi­tal Part­ners and LFPE, are co-inves­t­ing with the Maguar I Fund.

The acqui­si­tion finan­cing is provi­ded by Joh. Beren­berg, Goss­ler & Co.KG provi­ded. The tran­sac­tion is subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory appr­ovals and is expec­ted to close in Septem­ber 2020.

HRworks is an inte­gra­ted Soft­ware-as-a-Service (SaaS) provi­der of HR soft­ware with a focus on the SME segment (small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses) in Germany. The company focu­ses on key HR func­tions such as time manage­ment, travel, people manage­ment, recruit­ment and employee bene­fits. HRworks was foun­ded in 1999 and curr­ently serves 210,000 users and over 1,700 custo­mers. The company opera­tes a scalable tech­no­logy plat­form and curr­ently employs 60 FTEs in its offices in Berlin, Frank­furt and Frei­burg im Breisgau.

Maguar Capi­tal is a German private equity mana­ger focu­sing exclu­si­vely on small cap soft­ware invest­ments in the DACH region. Foun­ded in 2019 by Arno Poschik, Gunther Thies and Matthias Ick, Maguar specia­li­zes in part­ner­ships with foun­der-led B2B soft­ware compa­nies that have an EBITDA of circa one million to six million euros. Maguar supports these compa­nies in reali­zing their growth potential.

Clif­ford Chance Finance Part­ner Barbara Mayer-Traut­mann said, “We are plea­sed to advise Maguar, the new private equity mana­ger, on this tran­sac­tion in turbu­lent times in the highly dyna­mic tech­no­logy-rela­ted private equity market.”

Arno Poschik, foun­der of Maguar, comm­ents: “It was important, espe­ci­ally for this tran­sac­tion, to have Clif­ford Chance, an expe­ri­en­ced legal advi­sor in the private equity sector, on our side. The Clif­ford Chance team impres­sed us with its effi­ci­ency and commer­cial approach. We hope that more invest­ments will follow shortly.”

Advi­sor Maguar Capi­tal GmbH: Clif­ford Chance
Manage­ment Part­ner Barbara Mayer-Traut­mann (Finance, Munich)

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

News

London/ Frankfurt/ Munich — Finan­cial inves­tor Advent Inter­na­tio­nal acqui­res a 30% stake in Aareon AG. Accor­ding to Aareal Bank AG, the purchase price for the invest­ment amounts to EUR 260 million. As part of the tran­sac­tion, the company was paid approx. EUR 960 million. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is subject to custo­mary condi­ti­ons, with closing expec­ted in Q4 2020. The London and German offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP advi­sed the finan­cial inves­tor Advent Inter­na­tio­nal on the acqui­si­tion of a 30% stake in Aareon AG

Mainz-based Aareon AG is a leading Euro­pean provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for the property sector and a subsi­diary of Aareal Bank AG, a leading inter­na­tio­nal provi­der of finan­cing solu­ti­ons and services, parti­cu­larly in the property sector.

Advi­sor Advent: Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
The combi­ned London/German Weil team was led on this tran­sac­tion by Corpo­rate Part­ners Jona­than Wood (London) and Dr. Ansgar Wimber, photo (Frank­furt) and was supported by Coun­sel Max Oppen­hei­mer and Ellie Fialho (both Corpo­rate, London), Manuel-Peter Fringer (Corpo­rate, Munich), Benja­min Rapp (Tax, Munich) and Svenja Wach­tel (Liti­ga­tion, Munich) as well as Asso­cia­tes Sebas­tian Bren­ner, Kai Neumann (both Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), Florian Wessel, Andreas Fogel, Sandra Kühn, Corne­lia Tu (all Corpo­rate, Munich), Dr. Barbara Sand­fuchs (IP/IT Law, Munich), Markus Cejka (Finance, Frank­furt), Mareike Pfeif­fer and Lili­anna Ranody (both Labor Law, Frankfurt).

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 and Washing­ton, D.C.

News

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) invests in conga­tec Holding AG (conga­tec), a leading supplier of compu­ter modu­les for indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons. In the context of a manage­ment buy-out (MBO), DBAG Fund VIII, which is advi­sed by DBAG, will acquire the majo­rity of the shares from the foun­ding share­hol­ders. DBAG will invest around 23 million euros along­side the fund; in future, it will hold around 20 percent of the shares. In addi­tion, the conga­tec manage­ment will also parti­ci­pate. The closing of the purchase agree­ment is subject to the appr­oval of the anti­trust autho­ri­ties and is sche­du­led for the fourth quar­ter of 2020. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

The MBO of conga­tec Holding AG is the second invest­ment of DBAG Fund VIII, which invests in medium-sized compa­nies — mainly in German-spea­king count­ries. The fund’s invest­ment period had star­ted on August 1, 2020; in the middle of the month, DBAG had struc­tu­red the fund’s first tran­sac­tion with the MBO of Multi­mon AG.

Global market leader in computer-on-modules
conga­tec Holding AG (www.congatec.com), head­quar­te­red in Deggen­dorf, Bava­ria, is a fast-growing tech­no­logy company in the field of embedded compu­ting with a focus on high-perfor­mance so-called compu­ter-on-modu­les (CoM) and indus­trial single-board compu­ters (SBC). conga­tec focu­ses on the hard­ware design of CoMs, which account for around 80 percent of sales. CoMs are used for speci­fic appli­ca­ti­ons within a broa­der system, for exam­ple in indus­trial robots, image proces­sing or ultra­so­nic devices, and typi­cally have to meet speci­fic requi­re­ments, for exam­ple high relia­bi­lity as well as longe­vity even under adverse condi­ti­ons, real-time proces­sing or zero error tole­rance, often imple­men­ted in small sizes. CoMs are complete compu­ting units, they consist of a proces­sor, memory and proces­sor peri­pherals and are opti­mi­zed for speci­fic appli­ca­ti­ons. CoMs are essen­tial prere­qui­si­tes for advan­cing digi­tiza­tion because, for exam­ple, they make it possi­ble to network physi­cal and virtual objects and have them work toge­ther through infor­ma­tion and commu­ni­ca­tion tech­no­lo­gies. CoMs are also needed for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence applications.

In the compu­ter-on-module segment, the company, foun­ded in 2004, is the global market leader with a broad custo­mer base ranging from start-ups to inter­na­tio­nal blue-chip compa­nies. conga­tec has subsi­dia­ries in the USA, Taiwan, China, Japan and Austra­lia as well as in Great Britain, France and the Czech Repu­blic. 270 employees gene­ra­ted $126 million in reve­nue in 2019. This reve­nue is spread across a wide range of appli­ca­ti­ons — as a result, the company has so far hardly been affec­ted by the Covid 19 pandemic.

Growth through inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and new proces­sor types
More than two thirds of congatec’s custo­mers come from the Euro­pean econo­mic area, and the share of sales to custo­mers in the USA or Asia is growing. This is expec­ted to acce­le­rate in the coming years. In addi­tion to grea­ter inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion, an expan­sion of the product range to include CoMs for new proces­sor types is also expec­ted to drive the company’s growth. A key driver here is also the rapidly growing demand for higher-perfor­mance compu­ting solu­ti­ons in edge appli­ca­ti­ons, among others, in which CoMs in a network provide compu­ting power in real time on a decen­tra­li­zed basis — unlike cloud solu­ti­ons. In addi­tion, congatec’s RTS Hyper­vi­sor is an inno­va­tive soft­ware solu­tion that can set new stan­dards in terms of real-time perfor­mance — both as a stand-alone soft­ware solu­tion and in conjunc­tion with the CoMs produ­ced by congatec.

“We expect contin­ued strong growth in digi­tiza­tion,” said Dr. Rolf Schef­fels (photo), member of the DBAG Manage­ment Board, on the occa­sion of the contract signing. He contin­ued, “The pande­mic has given another strong boost to the ‘Inter­net of Things’ and ‘Indus­try 4.0’ — this will give a further boost to demand for the compu­ter compon­ents requi­red for this.” In recent years, DBAG has been inten­si­vely invol­ved with compa­nies in the embedded elec­tro­nics sector and has alre­ady inves­ted in a compa­ra­ble busi­ness model with its stake in duagon Holding AG. “This expe­ri­ence has now paid off in the assess­ment of the invest­ment oppor­tu­nity,” said DBAG board member Dr. Scheffels.

The Chair­man of congatec’s Manage­ment Board, Jason Carlson, today poin­ted to the diverse market poten­tial: “In DBAG, we have found a part­ner for the further deve­lo­p­ment of our company that is well versed in key end markets for our custo­mers and brings finan­cing exper­tise and M&A expe­ri­ence to the table — with DBAG and DBAG Fund VIII, we are well posi­tio­ned to take advan­tage of market opportunities.”

About Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG
Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, a listed company, initia­tes closed-end private equity funds and invests — predo­mi­nantly along­side DBAG funds — in well-posi­tio­ned medium-sized compa­nies with poten­tial. DBAG focu­ses on indus­trial sectors in which German SMEs are strong by inter­na­tio­nal stan­dards. An incre­asing propor­tion of equity invest­ments are in compa­nies in the new focus sectors of broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services/software and health­care. The long-term, value-enhan­cing entre­pre­neu­rial invest­ment approach makes DBAG a sought-after invest­ment part­ner in the German-spea­king region. The capi­tal mana­ged and advi­sed by the DBAG Group amounts to appro­xi­m­ately 2.5 billion euros.

News

Berlin — AImo­tive has closed a USD 20 million finan­cing round. The finan­cing round was led by Lead Ventures. Szeche­nyi Venture Fund and exis­ting inves­tors Prime Ventures, Samsung, Robert Bosch Venture Capi­tal, Inven­ture, Draper Asso­cia­tes and B Capi­tal Group also participated.

AImo­tive, active in the deve­lo­p­ment of soft­ware and other compon­ents for self-driving cars, will use the new capi­tal, among other things, for further inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion, espe­ci­ally in the key regi­ons of Munich, Germany and Detroit, USA.

Consul­tant AImo­tive: Vogel Heerma Waitz 
Sabine Röth, photo (part­ner)

About Vogel Heerma Waitz 
Vogel Heerma Waitz is a Berlin-based law firm specia­li­zing in growth capi­tal, tech­no­logy and media that has been in opera­tion since May 2014.

News

Güters­loh — The Swiss mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring company ROTZINGER GROUP AG has taken over the site in Viersen/North Rhine-West­pha­lia and a large part of the product port­fo­lio manu­fac­tu­red there from the pack­a­ging specia­list Synte­gon Tech­no­logy GmbH. The process and pack­a­ging tech­no­logy company was a divi­sion of Robert Bosch GmbH until 2019. The acqui­si­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant anti­trust authorities.

ROTZINGER intends to realign and sustain­ably deve­lop the Vier­sen site. The company is acqui­ring the port­fo­lios in the areas of filling and closing machi­nes as well as parts of the process tech­no­logy for bars and sugar confec­tion­ery as part of an asset deal. Excluded from the sale are the process plants for the produc­tion of jelly products, which Synte­gon will trans­fer to its subsi­diary Makat Candy Tech­no­logy GmbH.

ROTZINGER was compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed on the take­over by a team of BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte in Güters­loh, Detmold, Hano­ver, Pader­born and Biele­feld specia­li­zing in M&A tran­sac­tions under the leader­ship of part­ner Dr. Franz Tepper (photo) on corpo­rate law, labor law and IT law. In Switz­er­land, Dr. Max Nägeli of the law firm Probst Part­ner in Winter­thur advi­sed the purcha­ser. BRANDI and Probst Part­ner frequently work toge­ther in cross-border tran­sac­tions and are both foun­ding members of the law firm network PANGEA NET.

ROTZINGER GROUP AG in Kaiseraugst/Switzerland with its compa­nies DEMAUREX SA, ROTZINGER AG and TRANSVER AG was foun­ded in 1948 and is today a leading supplier of convey­ing, storage and product flow control systems for products in the choco­late, cookie, phar­maceu­ti­cal and other indus­tries. The systems are deve­lo­ped and manu­fac­tu­red at the Kaiser­augst plant and then assem­bled and commis­sio­ned at the customer’s site. The joint-stock company, which is run as a family busi­ness with appro­xi­m­ately 85 employees, is also a specia­list in feeding pack­a­ging machi­nes with products and trans­port­ing them away.

Synte­gon Tech­no­logy GmbH, head­quar­te­red in Waib­lin­gen/­Ba­den-Würt­tem­berg, is a global supplier of process and pack­a­ging tech­no­logy for the food and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries. After the take­over of Robert Bosch Pack­a­ging Tech­no­logy GmbH by the invest­ment company CVC Capi­tal Part­ners last year, the company had been rena­med Synte­gon Tech­no­logy. It employs around 6,100 people, around half of whom work in Germany. The company is repre­sen­ted at over 30 loca­ti­ons in more than 15 count­ries and gene­ra­ted sales of around 1.3 billion euros in 2019.

Synte­gon Tech­no­logy GmbH was repre­sen­ted by the Stutt­gart office of CMS Hasche Sigle under the leader­ship of Dr. Claus-Peter Fabian.

Advi­sors to ROTZINGER GROUP AG: BRANDI Attor­neys at Law
Dr: Franz Tepper, Part­ner (Lead, Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Dr. Cars­ten Chris­to­phery, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Eva-Maria Gott­schalk, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Björn Mai, Asso­ciate (Labor Law), Detmold
Dr. Oliver Ebert, Part­ner (Labor Law), Hanover
Dr. Chris­toph Rempe, Part­ner (IP/IT, Anti­trust Law), Bielefeld
Daniela Deifuß-Kruse, Part­ner (Envi­ron­men­tal Law), Paderborn

Probst Part­ner (Winter­thur, Switzerland)
Dr. Max Nägeli (Corpo­rate)

Advi­sors to Synte­gon Tech­no­logy GmbH: CMS Hasche Sigle, Stuttgart
Dr. Claus-Peter Fabian, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, Corporate/M&A)
Dr. Kai Wallisch, Coun­sel (Corporate/M&A)
Simone Phil­ipp, Senior Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)
Dr. Chris­tian Haell­migk, Part­ner (Anti­trust Law)
Malena Hansen, Asso­ciate (Anti­trust)

About BRANDI Rechtsanwälte
BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte is one of the leading medium-sized commer­cial law firms in West­pha­lia and Hano­ver with offices in Biele­feld, Detmold, Güters­loh, Hano­ver, Pader­born and Minden as well as coope­ra­tion offices in Paris and Beijing. More than 90 lawy­ers, 23 of whom are also nota­ries, advise compa­nies in all areas of natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness law and public law. BRANDI is a foun­ding member of the inter­na­tio­nal network PANGEA NET. For more infor­ma­tion about BRANDI Attor­neys at Law, visit www.brandi.net.

News

Munich — Career Part­ner GmbH has sold its stake in PROAKTIV Manage­ment GmbH as part of a manage­ment buy-out. Career part­ner was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by the commer­cial law firm Gütt Olk Feld­haus.

PROAKTIV Manage­ment was foun­ded in 1995 and is today a reco­gni­zed premium provi­der of in-house and open trai­ning in the areas of manage­ment, sales and commu­ni­ca­tion. The inter­na­tio­nal custo­mer base consists of market-leading compa­nies from indus­try, trade and services.

Career Part­ner is one of the leading full-service provi­ders of private higher educa­tion in Germany and the holding company of IUBH Inter­na­tio­nal Univer­sity of Applied Scien­ces. Career Part­ner is a port­fo­lio company of Oakley Capital.

Legal advi­sors Career Part­ner GmbH: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Adrian von Prit­t­witz (Part­ner, Lead), Dr. Sebas­tian Olk (Part­ner), Isabelle Vran­cken (Senior Asso­ciate), Ricarda Theis (Asso­ciate, all Corporate/M&A)

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

Grün­wald near Munich/London — SOLUTIO AG and PANTHEON have closed their second joint fund of funds SOLUTIO PREMIUM Private Equity VII with subscrip­tion commit­ments of EUR 553 million (final closing). This is another ten percent more than the prede­ces­sor fund SOLUTIO PREMIUM Private Equity VI, for which 500 million euros had been raised as of July 2017.

“The ten percent increase proves that the trend towards off-market corpo­rate invest­ments among insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors such as banks, insu­rance compa­nies and pension funds is conti­nuing,” said Robert Massing (photo), CEO of SOLUTIO AG. “The Corona crisis does not change this, on the contrary: the vast majo­rity of insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors keep the share of alter­na­tive assets in their port­fo­lios stable or even increase it, even in times of crisis. Thus, they bene­fit from the curr­ently tending lower entry prices for corpo­rate invest­ments due to the Corona pandemic.”

For the profes­sio­nal struc­tu­ring of the port­fo­lio, SOLUTIO AG again coope­ra­tes with its London-based joint venture part­ner PANTHEON, which with its know-how of more than 35 years and a mana­ged volume of more than 50 billion US dollars occu­p­ies a top posi­tion in this industry.

“After the great success of the previous program, it was obvious that we would conti­nue our coope­ra­tion with SOLUTIO for the bene­fit of our insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors,” said Ralph Günther, who is respon­si­ble for PANTHEON’s busi­ness in German-spea­king countries.

The stra­te­gic invest­ment program SOLUTIO PREMIUM Private Equity VII focu­ses on small and medium-sized target funds for corpo­rate acqui­si­ti­ons (buy-outs) in the core markets of Europe and the USA. For a balan­ced risk-return profile, funds from the fund of funds are inves­ted in both primary programs and secon­dary tran­sac­tions. The term is 13 years from first closing (July 2031) plus a three-time exten­sion option of one year each.

The succes­sor fund with the same stra­tegy is expec­ted to be laun­ched in the first half of 2021.

SOLUTIO AG
SOLUTIO AG, foun­ded in Munich in 1998, deve­lops inno­va­tive invest­ment concepts espe­ci­ally for the needs of German and Austrian insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors in the field of real assets. SOLUTIO initia­tes invest­ment concepts exclu­si­vely toge­ther with mana­gers who have a proven track record of above-average success. The company itself also parti­ci­pa­tes in all invest­ment concepts. Over the past 22 years, SOLUTIO AG and its joint venture part­ners have laun­ched 16 invest­ment programs in the asset clas­ses of private equity, infra­struc­ture and private debt with a total volume of 4.7 billion euros. www.solutio.ag

About PANTHEON
Pantheon is a leading global private markets fund inves­tor, inves­t­ing on behalf of over 600 insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors. These include public and private pension systems, insu­rance compa­nies and foun­da­ti­ons. The company was foun­ded in 1982 and has since become a renow­ned address for solu­ti­ons in primary and secon­dary invest­ments in non-listed assets across all phases and regi­ons. Our custo­mi­zed invest­ment solu­ti­ons include sepa­rate account, regio­nal primary fund, secon­dary, co-invest­ment, infra­struc­ture and real asset programs.

As of March 31, 2020, Pantheon over­sees $50.7 billion in assets*. The company curr­ently employs 340 people, inclu­ding 100 invest­ment profes­sio­nals, in offices in London, San Fran­cisco, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul**,Bogotá**, Tokyo and Dublin.

Pantheon, in addi­tion to senior members of the Pantheon team, is majo­rity owned by Affi­lia­ted Mana­gers Group Inc. (“AMG”). AMG is a New York Stock Exch­ange (NYSE) listed global asset manage­ment company with inte­rests in leading invest­ment manage­ment bouti­ques. The share­hol­der struc­ture, in which Pantheon’s manage­ment holds a signi­fi­cant stake, provi­des the basis for a long-term part­ner­ship and thus enables the manage­ment team to further deve­lop the business.

News

Paris/ Munich — Casdin Capi­tal, a New York-based invest­ment firm focu­sed on the life scien­ces and health­care indus­try, was advi­sed by Baker McKen­zie in leading the over­sub­scri­bed $50 million Series B fund­rai­sing exten­sion round for DNA Script. — Other inves­tors in the expan­ded Series B finan­cing round include Dana­her Life Scien­ces, Agilent Tech­no­lo­gies, Merck KGaA, Darm­stadt, Germany, M. Ventures, LSP Life Science Part­ners, Bpifrance Large Venture Fund and Illu­mina Ventures.

Proceeds from the expan­ded Series B finan­cing round will enable DNA Script to acce­le­rate the deve­lo­p­ment of its enzy­ma­tic DNA synthe­sis (EDS) plat­form tech­no­logy — speci­fi­cally to support the launch of the company’s SYNTAX™ DNA bench­top printer.

“With a cross-border team of specia­li­zed lawy­ers in the field of biotech­no­logy life scien­ces, we were able to bring the tran­sac­tion to a swift close toge­ther with our client,” commen­ted Bert­hold Hummel, lead corpo­rate part­ner in Munich.

Foun­ded in 2011, Casdin Capi­tal, LLC brings deep under­stan­ding, exper­tise and a long-term perspec­tive to finan­cing the next gene­ra­tion of life scien­ces inno­va­tion. Casdin Capi­tal specia­li­zes in the firm’s diagno­stics and mole­cu­lar infor­ma­tion port­fo­lio and has inves­ted in many of the leading pioneers, inclu­ding but not limi­ted to Foun­da­tion Medi­cine, Invi­tae, Adap­tive Biotech­no­lo­gies, Flati­ron Health and 23andMe.

DNA Script was foun­ded in Paris in 2014 and is the world leader in the produc­tion of de novo synthe­tic nucleic acids using an enzy­ma­tic tech­no­logy. The company’s goal is to acce­le­rate inno­va­tion in life scien­ces and tech­no­logy through rapid, afforda­ble and high-quality DNA synthe­sis. DNA Script’s approach takes advan­tage of nature’s billi­ons of years of evolu­tion in DNA synthe­sis to enable genome-scale synthesis.

Baker McKenzie’s Corpo­rate / M&A and Life Scien­ces team regu­larly advi­ses large phar­maceu­ti­cal, finan­cial inves­tor and biotech compa­nies on early stage dome­stic and inter­na­tio­nal health­care tran­sac­tions. Most recently, Baker McKen­zie advi­sed BioMed­Part­ners on its EUR 10.7 million Series A equity finan­cing in Tubu­lis, Cure­Vac on its stra­te­gic mRNA tech­no­logy colla­bo­ra­tion with GSK, LSP Life Science Part­ners on a USD 38.5 million Series B finan­cing in DNA Script, listed 4SC AG in a capi­tal increase and inter­na­tio­nal private place­ment, Gala­pa­gos in its 10-year global rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment colla­bo­ra­tion with Gilead, MODAG in a EUR 12 million Series A finan­cing, Hita­chi Chemi­cal Company, Tokyo, in its acqui­si­tion of German apceth Biopharma, Forbion as lead inves­tor in a EUR 17 mn. Series C equity finan­cing of Omei­cos Thera­peu­tics and in a USD 54 million Series A equity finan­cing of Gotham Thera­peu­tics Corpo­ra­tion, Mundi­pharma in the sale of its Limburg produc­tion, Cure­Vac AG in a colla­bo­ra­tion with Eli Lilly and Hill­house Capi­tal as co-inves­tor in the EUR 50 million Series C finan­cing of Hookipa Biotech.

Legal advi­sor Casdin Capi­tal: Baker McKenzie
Lead Corporate/M&A: Bert­hold Hummel, Foto (Part­ner, Munich), Gautier Valdi­guié (Asso­ciate, Paris)
Other lawy­ers invol­ved: Corporate/M&A: Matthieu Grol­lemund (Part­ner, Paris), Mada­lina-Geor­gi­ana Asan­dului (Asso­ciate, Paris)
Tax: Guil­laume Le Camus (Part­ner, Paris), Robin Gaulier (Senior Asso­ciate, Paris)
Employ­ment: Jere­mie Paubel (Part­ner, Paris), Roxane Raissi (Asso­ciate, Paris)

About Baker McKenzie
Baker McKen­zie advi­ses clients to successfully deal with the chal­lenges of globa­liza­tion. We solve complex legal problems across natio­nal borders and legal fields. Our unique culture — grown over 70 years — enables our 13,000 employees to under­stand local markets while opera­ting inter­na­tio­nally. We use the trus­ting and friendly coope­ra­tion in our inter­na­tio­nal network for the bene­fit of our clients.

In Germany, around 200 lawy­ers with proven profes­sio­nal exper­tise and inter­na­tio­nal expe­ri­ence repre­sent the inte­rests of their clients at the offices in Berlin, Düssel­dorf, Frankfurt/Main and Munich. As one of the leading German law firms, Baker McKen­zie advi­ses natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies and insti­tu­ti­ons in all areas of commer­cial law.

News

Essen/ Frank­furt a. Main - thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor, a leading global player in the market for eleva­tors and escala­tors (E&E), will operate as an inde­pen­dent company with new owner­ship struc­tures from today. All rele­vant regu­la­tory autho­ri­ties have uncon­di­tio­nally appro­ved the acqui­si­tion by Advent and Cinven. Working with the new owners as stra­te­gic and finan­cial part­ners will allow thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor to conti­nue its ambi­tious corpo­rate plans: to expand its strong market posi­tion and tech­no­lo­gi­cal market leadership.

With global opera­ti­ons and over 50,000 employees, thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor gene­ra­ted earnings of around eight billion euros in fiscal year 2018/2019. The most important busi­ness area is the main­ten­ance of around 1.4 million eleva­tors and escala­tors. This is ensu­red by 24,000 service tech­ni­ci­ans all over the globe.

The product port­fo­lio of thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor covers a wide range — from eleva­tor systems for resi­den­tial and commer­cial proper­ties to tech­no­lo­gi­cally sophisti­ca­ted, tailor-made solu­ti­ons for state-of-the-art high-rise buil­dings such as One World Trade Center in New York. In addi­tion to eleva­tor systems, the port­fo­lio also includes escala­tors and moving walks, passen­ger boar­ding bridges, stair and plat­form lifts, and indi­vi­dual service models for all products. All this adds up to a compre­hen­sive range of products and services for a broad spec­trum of urban mobility.

In the context of COVID-19 thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor once again demons­tra­tes a high level of crisis resi­li­ence. Thanks to a special focus on stable service busi­ness, a global presence, a dedi­ca­ted manage­ment team and a highly moti­va­ted work­force, work contin­ued even under diffi­cult condi­ti­ons. In system-rele­vant buil­dings, such as hospi­tals and public faci­li­ties, mobi­lity has thus been ensured.

The strong market posi­tion of thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor and its inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies convin­ced Advent and Cinven. Both are fami­liar with the company’s rele­vant growth markets and have alre­ady successfully inves­ted in 130 compa­nies in the indus­trial and busi­ness services sectors. The consor­tium shares a common invest­ment philo­so­phy: sustainable further growth of leading compa­nies. The focus is always on long-term value creation.

Ranjan Sen (photo), Mana­ging Part­ner and Head of Germany at Advent Inter­na­tio­nal, comm­ents: “We are deligh­ted to conti­nue support­ing thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor as an inde­pen­dent company. We see signi­fi­cant poten­tial to further expand our market posi­tion and intend to leverage our coll­ec­tive exper­tise and finan­cial resour­ces for further sustainable growth.”

Bruno Schick, Part­ner and Head of DACH and Emer­ging Europe at Cinven, adds: “In close part­ner­ship with manage­ment and employees we will further deve­lop thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor by inves­t­ing in orga­nic growth and targe­ted acqui­si­ti­ons. Our clear goal is to create resour­ces to further streng­then and expand thys­sen­krupp Elevator’s global presence — parti­cu­larly in Asia — through addi­tio­nal acqui­si­ti­ons, new and energy-effi­ci­ent products, and invest­ment in rese­arch & and development.”

Follo­wing the successful closing, thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor will relo­cate its head­quar­ters to the vici­nity of Düssel­dorf Airport. The move is sche­du­led to take place in the first quar­ter of 2021.

About thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor AG
With custo­mers in over 100 count­ries served by more than 50,000 employees, thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor achie­ved sales of around €8.0 billion in fiscal year 2018/2019. Over 1,000 loca­ti­ons around the globe form a dense sales and service network, ensu­ring opti­mum proxi­mity to custo­mers. thys­sen­krupp Eleva­tor has estab­lished itself as one of the world’s leading eleva­tor compa­nies since ente­ring the market 40 years ago and became inde­pen­dent in August 2020. The company’s most important busi­ness area is the service provi­ded by more than 24,000 tech­ni­ci­ans for around 1.4 million trans­port solu­ti­ons world­wide. The product port­fo­lio ranges from passen­ger and freight eleva­tors to modern, custo­mi­zed solu­ti­ons for modern high-rise buil­dings — such as the One World Trade Center in New York. In addi­tion to escala­tors, the port­fo­lio also includes moving walks, passen­ger boar­ding bridges, stair and plat­form lifts, and tail­o­red service solu­ti­ons such as MAX, the industry’s first predic­tive main­ten­ance solu­tion — cove­ring a broad spec­trum of urban mobility.

News

Hamburg — A team led by Dr. Jörg Schewe, Part­ner at Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek in Hamburg, provi­ded legal advice to Danish recy­cling company Scan­me­tals A/S and its inves­tor KIRK KAPITAL A/S on the acqui­si­tion of 85 percent of the shares in inde­pen­dent Scan­me­tals Deutsch­land GmbH. With the tran­sac­tion, Scan­me­tals A/S takes over a recy­cling plant in Germany and can increase its annual metal reco­very from 30,000 to 45,000 tons. KIRK KAPITAL A/S, mino­rity inves­tor in Scan­me­tals A/S, has supported the company and manage­ment in the transaction.

Scan­me­tals A/S is a recy­cling company foun­ded in 2002 based on sustainable tech­no­logy for opti­mal use of resour­ces. Through inno­va­tive and effec­tive solu­ti­ons, the recy­cling company reco­vers and refi­nes metal­lic waste from inci­ne­ra­tors. Scan­me­tals A/S has opera­ti­ons in Slagelse, Denmark and Birming­ham, UK.

The share­hol­ders of KIRK KAPITAL A/S are direct descen­dants of Ole Kirk Kris­ti­an­sen, the foun­der of LEGO, namely Gunhild Kirk Johan­sen (3rd gene­ra­tion), Casper Kirk Johan­sen (4th gene­ra­tion), Morten Kirk Johan­sen (4th gene­ra­tion) and Anders Kirk Johan­sen (4th gene­ra­tion). Since 2007, part of the Kirk Johan­sen family’s asset and invest­ment acti­vi­ties have been conso­li­da­ted in KIRK KAPITAL A/S.

Advi­sors to KIRK KAPITAL A/S / Scan­me­tals A/S: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Jörg Schewe (M&A/Corporate, Lead)
Chris­toph Proch­nau, LL.B. (M&A/Corporate, Due Diligence)
Fabian G. Gaffron (Tax)
Dr. Kai Erhardt (Corpo­rate Finance, Acqui­si­tion Financing)
Jana Maria Siemens, LL.B. (Labor Law, Due Diligence)
Katha­rina Waszc­zyn­ski (Commer­cial Contracts, Due Dili­gence), all Hamburg

News

Munich — The law firm Gütt Olk Feld­haus has advi­sed Scalable Capi­tal GmbH on its largest finan­cing round to date. Fresh capi­tal of €50 million was raised as part of the Series D finan­cing round. This brings the total finan­cing volume since Scalable Capi­tal was foun­ded to 116 million euros.

Scalable Capi­tal is the largest digi­tal asset mana­ger in Europe with over two billion euros in assets under manage­ment. In June 2020, Scalable Capi­tal also laun­ched a neo-broker, a digi­tal plat­form where custo­mers can trade stocks, ETFs and funds. The funds now raised will be used to expand Scalable Capital’s leading posi­tion as a digi­tal asset mana­ger and to further acce­le­rate growth in the brokerage and B2B business.

In addi­tion to a new inves­tor, exis­ting inves­tors Black­Rock, HV Holtz­brinck Ventures and Tengel­mann Venturesalso parti­ci­pa­ted in the finan­cing round.

Legal advi­sors to Scalable Capi­tal GmbH: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Adrian von Prit­t­witz, Photo (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Lead), Thomas Becker (Of Coun­sel, IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Isabelle Vran­cken (Senior Asso­ciate), Ricarda Theis (Asso­ciate, both Corpo­rate M&A)

MOOG: Marc Sälzer (Tax Law)
Inhouse: Dr. Alexis Dará­nyi (Chief Legal Offi­cer), Florian von Kampen (Senior Legal Counsel)

News

Munich — Baker McKen­zie advi­sed Cure­Vac AG on a stra­te­gic colla­bo­ra­tion agree­ment with Glax­oS­mit­h­Kline (GSK) to rese­arch, deve­lop, gene­rate and commer­cia­lize up to five mRNA-based vacci­nes and mono­clonal anti­bo­dies (mAbs) to combat infec­tious dise­ase patho­gens. The colla­bo­ra­tion comple­ments GSK’s exis­ting mRNA exper­tise with CureVac’s inte­gra­ted mRNA platform.

Further deve­lo­p­ment of mRNA-based vacci­nes and thera­pies could play a criti­cal role in miti­ga­ting future pande­mics. The two compa­nies are combi­ning their mRNA exper­tise to combat a wide range of infec­tious dise­ase patho­gens. These projects were speci­fi­cally selec­ted to take full advan­tage of this plat­form tech­no­logy, while also addres­sing unmet medi­cal needs and asso­cia­ted econo­mic burdens.

Cure­Vac is entit­led to payments for deve­lo­p­ment and regu­la­tory mile­sto­nes of up to EUR 320 million and for commer­cial mile­sto­nes of up to EUR 380 million. — In addi­tion, Cure­Vac recei­ves tiered royal­ties on product sales. In addi­tion, GSK will make a one-time payment of EUR 120 million and a refundable payment of EUR 30 million. The latter will be due as soon as CureVac’s indus­trial produc­tion faci­lity curr­ently under cons­truc­tion in Germany has recei­ved its GMP (Good Manu­fac­tu­ring Prac­tice) certi­fi­ca­tion from the rele­vant autho­ri­ties. Under the terms of the agree­ment, GSK will also make an equity invest­ment of EUR 150 million in Cure­Vac, repre­sen­ting just under 10% of CureVac’s share capital.

“We are very plea­sed to support Cure­Vac in this important colla­bo­ra­tion agree­ment with GSK, which brings toge­ther two world-class compa­nies to further deve­lop their mRNA-based vacci­nes and thera­pies to combat a wide range of infec­tious dise­ase agents,” commen­ted Dr. Constanze Ulmer-Eilfort (pictu­red), lead part­ner at Baker McKen­zie on the transaction.

Cure­Vac is a long-stan­ding client of Baker McKen­zie. Under the leader­ship of Dr. Constanze Ulmer-Eilfort, Baker McKen­zie advi­sed Cure­Vac on, among other things, the colla­bo­ra­tion agree­ments with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foun­da­tion and CEPI, and most recently on the stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Genmab A/S for the deve­lo­p­ment of mRNA-based anti­body thera­pies (Decem­ber 2019).

Legal advi­sor Cure­Vac AG: Baker McKenzie
Lead: IP: Dr. Constanze Ulmer-Eilfort, LL.M. (Part­ner, Munich)
IP: Julia Schie­ber (Senior Asso­ciate, Zurich), Andreas Jauch (Senior Asso­ciate, Frankfurt),
Anti­trust: Dr. Chris­tian Burholt (Part­ner, Berlin)
Pharma: Dr. Thilo Räpple (Part­ner, Frankfurt)

News

Ambi­enta SGR renews its Board of Direc­tors and nomi­na­tes Carla Ferrari (photo) as Presi­dent. After twelve years as Chair­man of the Board of Direc­tors, Anto­nio Segni hands over the mandate to Carla Ferrari. Alfredo Alta­villa has also been appoin­ted to the Board as a non-execu­tive direc­tor Ambi­enta SGR SpA (“Ambi­enta”), Europe’s largest sustaina­bi­lity-focu­sed invest­ment company, appoints Carla Ferrari as Presi­dent of the Board of Directors.

Carla Ferrari holds senior posi­ti­ons in a number of Italian blue chip finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons. Having previously served as a non-execu­tive direc­tor on Ambienta’s board from 2008 to 2012, Carla now takes over the role from Anto­nio Segni, who is leaving the board after twelve years of service. In addi­tion, Alfredo Alta­villa is appoin­ted to the Board as a non-execu­tive direc­tor. Alta­villa holds a number of key posi­ti­ons in leading Italian and inter­na­tio­nal indus­trial companies.

Nino Tron­chetti Provera, Mana­ging Part­ner and foun­der of Ambi­enta, stated: “I would like to thank the previous Board of Direc­tors for their excel­lent work. My special thanks go to Anto­nio Segni, who was Chair­man of the Board for twelve years and assu­med this role only a few months after Ambi­enta was foun­ded. At the same time, I welcome the return of Carla Ferrari and extend a warm welcome to Alfredo Alta­villa: I am sure that toge­ther we will achieve further important goals. I am very plea­sed to have a woman at the head of Ambienta’s Board of Direc­tors: this is the best start for the next three years, which will play a signi­fi­cant role for the company.”

About Ambi­enta
Ambi­enta is a sustaina­bi­lity-focu­sed asset mana­ger with AUM of appro­xi­m­ately €1.5 billion and a leader in apply­ing envi­ron­men­tal sustaina­bi­lity trends to invest­ments. Ambi­enta opera­tes from Milan, London and Dussel­dorf and focu­ses on invest­ments in private and public compa­nies driven by envi­ron­men­tal mega­trends. In the private equity markets, Ambi­enta mana­ges the largest pool of capi­tal for this stra­tegy in the world and has made thirty-eight invest­ments across Europe in the resource effi­ci­ency and envi­ron­men­tal sectors.

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