ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Brussels — Belgian micro-mobi­lity start-up Cowboy (www.cowboy.com), maker of the epony­mous elec­tric design bike, has raised over €4.7 million in its first crowd­fun­ding campaign. The company thus excee­ded its funding target of €1.4 million by 340 percent, which was reached within just 12 minu­tes. Cowboy plans to use the funds to drive the micro-mobi­lity revo­lu­tion across Europe and improve trans­por­ta­tion in cities.

A total of 3155 inves­tors from 70 count­ries supported Cowboy via the crowd­fun­ding plat­form Crowd­cube (www.crowdcube.com) with an average of 1,510 euros. This makes the Belgi­ans’ campaign the most successful in the clean­tech sector that Crowd­cube has listed to date.

“The campaign has clearly excee­ded our expec­ta­ti­ons. Our origi­nal goal was to give our custo­mers and fans the chance to become part of our company and grow with us in the years to come. Howe­ver, it quickly became appa­rent that Cowboy was attrac­ting the atten­tion of many other inves­tors who wanted to be part of our micro-mobi­lity move­ment to posi­tively impact the future of cities,” said Adrien Roose, foun­der and CEO of Cowboy.

Cowboy raised funds of €13.2 million from inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors (inclu­ding Index Ventures, Tiger Global, and Hard­ware Club) in its Series A round in the fall of 2018. The first model of the elec­tric bike sold out in Belgium in a very short time last year. This spring, Cowboy laun­ched its second version and expan­ded to Germany, France, the Nether­lands, Austria, UK, Spain and Italy during the year. Compared to the previous year, Cowboy has grown fivefold.

In 2019 alone, Cowboy sold more than 5,000 bikes — 40 percent of which were sold in Germany, Cowboy’s largest market. The Cowboy commu­nity is made up of loyal fans of the brand and has alre­ady covered more than 3.4 million kilo­me­ters on the elec­tric bikes; 1.5 million kilo­me­ters of them by German Cowboy riders. The so-called “iPho­nes among e‑bikes” have won nume­rous awards and recei­ved posi­tive reviews in tests.

About cowboy
Cowboy is a Belgian company that deve­lops inno­va­tive elec­tric design bikes for urban riders. Cowboy’s main goal is to improve inner-city mobi­lity and get urba­ni­tes to their desti­na­ti­ons in a plea­sant, sustainable and effi­ci­ent way. Cowboy was foun­ded in 2017 by start-up entre­pre­neurs Adrien Roose, Karim Slaoui and Tanguy Goretti and is head­quar­te­red in the Belgian capi­tal Brussels. Cowboy is the winner of the Euro­bike 2017, the Red Dot Bicy­cle Design Award 2018 and the Red Dot “Best of the Best” award for the proto­type of the new 2019 model.

News

Hohen­lohe-Fran­ken, Janu­ary 2020 — The listed Japa­nese OSG Group has acqui­red the compe­ti­tor BASS from Hohen­lohe-Fran­ken. The seller of the shares in the BASS Group is the previous mana­ging part­ner. The Nieder­stet­ten-based company BASS thus beco­mes part of the Japa­nese OSG Group.

OSG and BASS are world leaders in thre­a­ding solu­ti­ons. Toge­ther, the compa­nies repre­sent more than 150 years of expe­ri­ence in the deve­lo­p­ment, produc­tion and distri­bu­tion of inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons for the manu­fac­tu­ring industry.

BASS GmbH & Co KG is a medium-sized family busi­ness. Since its foun­da­tion in 1947, BASS has been deve­lo­ping, manu­fac­tu­ring and distri­bu­ting high-precis­ion products for indus­trial thre­a­ding. The company’s custo­mer segments include prima­rily the auto­mo­tive and aero­space indus­tries, as well as the mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring and medi­cal tech­no­logy sectors.

Advi­sor BASS Group: P+P Pöllath + Partners 
Dr. Andrea von Drygal­ski, Photo (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner, M&A/PE, Munich)
Daniel Wied­mann (Part­ner, Anti­trust Law, Frankfurt)
Michaela Lenk (Asso­ciate, M&A/PE, Munich)

The share­hol­der of the BASS Group was also advi­sed in the area of tax by REVISA Treu­hand GmbH — Wirt­schafts­prü­fungs­ge­sell­schaft — (Stefan Schwarz, Dipl.-Betriebswirt (BA), Wirt­schafts­prü­fer und Steu­er­be­ra­ter, Neckarsulm).

News

Düssel­dorf — ARQIS accom­pa­nied the second finan­cing round at Neodi­gi­tal Versi­che­rung AG, a digi­tal property and casu­alty insurer from Neun­kir­chen, on the side of the exis­ting inves­tors, copa­rion and the Schnei­der­Gol­ling Group. In addi­tion to ALSTIN Capi­tal, Mr. Cars­ten Maschmeyer’s venture capi­tal fund (photo), Deut­sche Rück­ver­si­che­rung AG also parti­ci­pa­ted. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the amount of the investment.

Neodi­gi­tal was foun­ded in 2016 by Dirk Witt­ling and Stephen Voss as a consis­t­ently digi­ti­zed insu­rance company and was the first comple­tely digi­tal insu­rance company with a BaFin license in the German market. With market-leading digi­tal proces­ses and an indi­vi­du­ally confi­gura­ble insu­rance buil­ding block, Neodi­gi­tal offers the market an insu­rance-as-a-service model that is unpar­al­le­led in terms of modu­la­rity and perfor­mance. As an insurer, Neodi­gi­tal works with a high degree of auto­ma­tion in ongo­ing opera­ti­ons and claims proces­sing. But also through digi­tal end-to-end commu­ni­ca­tion, Neodi­gi­tal is a pioneer in a market that is often only orien­ted towards new busi­ness and recom­mends itself as an alter­na­tive to pure inven­tory manage­ment systems.
Market parti­ci­pants can use Neodi­gi­tal to quickly and easily deve­lop their own comple­tely digi­ti­zed insu­rance products and launch them on the market imme­dia­tely. In order to catch up digi­tally, the insu­rance indus­try in Germany will be even more depen­dent on digi­tal as-a-service solu­ti­ons in the future.

“We are very plea­sed that our comple­tely digi­tal approach has not only convin­ced custo­mers, sales part­ners and other insu­rance compa­nies, but that we have also been able to inspire new inves­tors with our unique insu­rance-as-a-service model,” explains Stephen Voss, Foun­der and Chief Marke­ting and Sales Offi­cer of Neodi­gi­tal. “The expan­ded group of inves­tors confirms the success of our end-to-end digi­tal busi­ness model and allows us — just one and a half years after ente­ring the market — to signi­fi­cantly expand our offering.”

Dr. Jörn-Chris­tian Schulze’s team regu­larly advi­ses both clients; toge­ther, for exam­ple, on their entry into Neodi­gi­tal. SG Group most recently on a dive­st­ment to Clark and copa­rion on nume­rous venture investments.

Advi­sor to the inves­tors Schnei­der­Gol­ling and copa­rion: ARQIS Rechts­an­wälte (Düssel­dorf)
Dr. Jörn-Chris­tian Schulze (lead), Nima Hanifi-Atash­gah, Kamil Flak (all Corporate/M&A), Dr. Mirjam Boche (M&A/insurance law)

About ARQIS
ARQIS is an inde­pen­dent busi­ness law firm opera­ting in Germany and Japan. The firm was foun­ded in 2006 at its current offices in Düssel­dorf, Munich and Tokyo. Around 45 profes­sio­nals advise dome­stic and foreign compa­nies at the highest level on the core issues of German and Japa­nese busi­ness law. The focus is on M&A, corpo­rate law, private equity, venture capi­tal, employ­ment law, private clients, intellec­tual property, liti­ga­tion as well as real estate law and tax law.

News

Paris/Frankfurt am Main, Janu­ary 2020 — Idin­vest Part­ners, the Euro­pean invest­ment company specia­li­zing in the SME segment, has finan­ced the acqui­si­tion of the two German IT specia­lists ComNet and MEHRWERK by the Borken-based Netgo Group of Compa­nies (Netgo) in the form of a unitran­che. Back in Octo­ber 2019, Idin­vest Part­ners had provi­ded unitran­che finan­cing for its invest­ment in Netgo through inde­pen­dent Dutch private equity invest­ment firm Water­land. Thus, shortly after Waterland’s entry, Netgo is alre­ady successfully imple­men­ting the jointly defi­ned buy-and-build stra­tegy, bene­fiting from the acqui­si­tion line provi­ded by Idin­vest Part­ners, which will also support further exter­nal growth. The closing of the tran­sac­tions to acquire the two compa­nies has now taken place.

ComNet, based in Würse­len (North Rhine-West­pha­lia), has been support­ing smal­ler compa­nies in parti­cu­lar in setting up IT infra­struc­ture since 1990. With 21 employees, the company serves around 200 custo­mers nati­on­wide and offers a wide range of services. — ComNet takes over the entire IT infra­struc­ture and the opera­tion of its custo­mers’ busi­ness-criti­cal appli­ca­ti­ons, inclu­ding all admi­nis­tra­tor acti­vi­ties, by means of its own, self-desi­gned high-perfor­mance data center (private cloud). A special feature are indus­try solu­tion packa­ges for tax consul­tants, audi­tors, lawy­ers, compa­nies, care faci­li­ties and medi­cal supply stores. The service and product port­fo­lio and the custo­mer struc­ture of Netgo and ComNet comple­ment each other. The aim of the part­ner­ship between Netgo and ComNet is to offer custo­mers of both compa­nies a broa­der range of IT solu­ti­ons and services.

Karls­ruhe-based MEHRWERK was foun­ded in 2008 and specia­li­zes in opti­mi­zing busi­ness proces­ses with the help of agile enter­prise soft­ware. With around 30 employees, the company advi­ses around 250 custo­mers of all sizes from the indus­trial, retail and service sectors on opti­mi­zing busi­ness proces­ses. These include, for exam­ple, IT-based supply chain manage­ment, SAP cloud and busi­ness analy­tics solu­ti­ons. MEHRWERK is an SAP Cloud Gold Part­ner and leading solu­tion provi­der in the DACH region for the Qlik data analy­sis plat­form. By inte­gra­ting MEHRWERK, the Netgo Group intends to further acce­le­rate its growth by pooling resources.

The Netgo group of compa­nies now has around 370 employees at 18 loca­ti­ons. The company advi­ses and supports custo­mers in the areas of server and storage systems, secu­rity solu­ti­ons, networks, IP tele­phony, virtua­liza­tion, data center and cloud services and deve­lops custo­mi­zed stra­te­gies and solu­ti­ons. With Waterland’s support, Netgo will conti­nue its ambi­tious stra­tegy of orga­nic and exter­nal growth, focu­sing not only on products in IT service manage­ment but also on Indus­try 4.0 and digitization.

Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs, Mana­ging Part­ner at Water­land, comm­ents on the group’s growth: “The two acqui­si­ti­ons are an excel­lent start to Netgo’s buy-and-build stra­tegy. We want to conso­li­date the frag­men­ted market for IT system houses, which is growing at around 10 percent per year, and imple­ment further part­ner­ships. As a growth inves­tor, it is essen­tial for us to have finan­cing part­ners like Idin­vest Part­ners on board when imple­men­ting such stra­te­gies, who can struc­ture and quickly imple­ment indi­vi­dual solutions.”

Five German private debt tran­sac­tions by Idin­vest Part­ners in 2019
In 2019, Idin­vest Part­ners was invol­ved in five tran­sac­tions in Germany:
In Febru­ary, the company finan­ced the acqui­si­tion of hotel opera­ting company GS Star by Auctus Capi­tal Partners.
Subse­quently, Idin­vest Part­ners provi­ded unitran­che finan­cing for two add-ons to the GS Star Group: the acqui­si­tion of the Rilano Group with seven four- and three-star hotels in Germany and Austria in March and Turicum Hotel Manage­ment GmbH with two hotels in Zurich and Bern in October.
Also in Octo­ber, the unitran­che finan­cing for Waterland’s invest­ment in Netgo .
In addi­tion, Idin­vest Part­ners parti­ci­pa­ted in the acqui­si­tion finan­cing for the purchase of LAP Laser Appli­ca­ti­ons by IK Invest­ment Part­ners in June.
Florian Zimmer­mann, Mana­ging Direc­tor and Head of Idin­vest Part­ners’ Frank­furt office, says: “The tran­sac­tions of this and last year show very well what Idin­vest Part­ners stands for. Growth is in our DNA as an inves­tor that finan­ces and supports inno­va­tion, invest­ment and expan­sion with a wide variety of instru­ments and funds in the areas of private debt, venture and growth capital.”

About Idin­vest Partners
Idin­vest Part­ners is a leading Euro­pean invest­ment firm focu­sed on the mid market. Curr­ently, Idin­vest Part­ners mana­ges assets of around €8 billion with more than 90 employees and has offices in Paris, Frank­furt, Madrid, Shang­hai and Seoul.

The company has three busi­ness units: Venture & Growth Capi­tal, Private Debt and Private Funds Group. The company was foun­ded in 1997 as part of the Alli­anz Group and has been inde­pen­dent since 2010. In Janu­ary 2018, Idin­vest Part­ners became part of the Eura­zeo Group. The merger crea­ted a leading global invest­ment company with €17.7 billion in assets under manage­ment (inclu­ding nearly €11.6 billion from invest­ment part­ners) inves­ted in a diver­si­fied port­fo­lio consis­ting of nearly 400 corpo­rate holdings.

News

Munich, Janu­ary 2020 — Afinum Achte Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH & Co KG, advi­sed by Afinum Manage­ment GmbH, indi­rectly acqui­res a majo­rity stake in Swiss Inter­con­nect Holding SA (“LEMCO PRECISION”). Toge­ther with entre­pre­neur and long-time CEO André Rezzo­nico, who will remain a mino­rity share­hol­der after the tran­sac­tion, Afinum aims to conti­nue the growth of recent years by expan­ding its busi­ness in core inter­na­tio­nal markets and broa­de­ning its product range to include even smal­ler diame­ter cont­acts. Photo (from left): Dr. Gernot Eisin­ger, Dr. Thomas Bühler, both Mana­ging Partners.

LEMCO PRECISION (www.lemco-precision.ch) manu­fac­tures cont­acts for data trans­mis­sion and current flow that are small in diame­ter, high in comple­xity and suita­ble for highly deman­ding appli­ca­tion envi­ron­ments. Because the company guaran­tees the highest quality and zero-defect tole­rance, the cont­acts are used in highly func­tion-criti­cal elec­tro­nics in areas such as commer­cial avia­tion, non-auto­mo­tive trans­por­ta­tion, aero­space, defense, tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, indus­trial and other appli­ca­ti­ons. Over the past two deca­des, the company has been able to build very stable rela­ti­onships with the major connec­tor manu­fac­tu­r­ers in North America and Europe. In addi­tion, acqui­si­ti­ons have been comple­ted and compe­ten­cies built up in recent years to gain complete control of the value chain, from the deve­lo­p­ment of a cont­act to surface treat­ment or various other addi­tio­nal services. The company holds a strong posi­tion in a market that is expec­ted to conti­nue to grow rapidly based on the trends of an incre­asing number of end-use appli­ca­ti­ons, an incre­asing density of elec­tro­nics per appli­ca­tion, and a surge in data traf­fic and power flow per elec­tro­nic equipment.

LEMCO PRECISION was foun­ded in 1965 and acqui­red in 1995 by CEO André Rezzo­nico toge­ther with a group of inves­tors. Head­quar­te­red in Monthey, French-spea­king Switz­er­land, the Group employs appro­xi­m­ately 235 people and will gene­rate sales of appro­xi­m­ately 56 MCHF in 2019. By focu­sing on an attrac­tive market segment and buil­ding up highly auto­ma­ted produc­tion faci­li­ties, the company has succee­ded in growing rapidly and profi­ta­bly in recent years. Afinum and André Rezzo­nico aim to address the next phase of growth by buil­ding on long-stan­ding custo­mer rela­ti­onships, streng­thening the inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness, expan­ding the product range to include small diame­ter cont­acts, and incre­asing the capa­city and effi­ci­ency of the produc­tion faci­li­ties in Switz­er­land as well as worldwide.

The invest­ment in LEMCO PRECISION is the eighth plat­form invest­ment of Afinum Achte Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH & Co KG.

About Afinum
Afinum is an inde­pen­dent invest­ment company owned by the manage­ment with offices in Munich, Zurich and Hong Kong, which specia­li­zes in invest­ments in successful medium-sized compa­nies in German-spea­king Europe.

News

Munich, Janu­ary 2020 - Bird & Bird LLP has advi­sed Israeli Matomy Media Group Ltd. on the sale of Munich-based Team Inter­net AG to London-based Central­Nic Group PLC.

The purchase price is US$ 48 million. A share of US$45 million will be paid in cash, and a further US$3 million in shares in the Central­Nic Group. The purchase price repres­ents 4.5 times Team Inter­net AG’s adjus­ted EBITDA for the trai­ling 12 months ended June 30, 2019 of $10.6 million.

Team Inter­net is a leading provi­der of domain name mone­tiza­tion services. As of Dec. 31, 2018, the AG repor­ted audi­ted net sales of $75.6 million and adjus­ted EBITDA of $14.2 million.

Matomy Media Group Ltd. was advi­sed by the follo­wing Bird & Bird attorneys:
Part­ner Stefan Münch, Coun­sel Michael Gass­ner and Asso­ciate Daniel Gloor all Corporate/ M&A, Munich.

About Bird & Bird
Bird & Bird is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm with over 1,300 lawy­ers in 30 offices in 20 count­ries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia Paci­fic and North America. In Germany, we are repre­sen­ted by more than 220 lawy­ers in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt, Hamburg and Munich and also have a presence in Berlin. We focus our consul­ting in parti­cu­lar on indus­trial sectors that are deve­lo­ping new tech­no­lo­gies and helping to shape digi­ta­liza­tion or are being chan­ged by it. Our attor­neys cover the full range of busi­ness and corpo­rate law, parti­cu­larly in areas where tech­no­logy, regu­la­tion and intellec­tual property play a special role. www.twobirds.com.

News

Frank­furt a.M. — McDer­mott advi­sed CWS-boco Inter­na­tio­nalGmbH on the acqui­si­tion of all shares in profi-con GmbH Conta­mi­na­tion Control inclu­ding its inter­na­tio­nal subsi­dia­ries. The seller is the private equity company Quar­tum Kapi­tal. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to the appr­oval of the German Fede­ral Cartel Office.

CWS-boco Inter­na­tio­nal GmbH is a wholly owned subsi­diary of Franz Haniel & Cie. GmbH based in Duisburg.

Profi-con, head­quar­te­red in Leip­zig and with bran­ches in Austria, Switz­er­land and Bulga­ria, is the leading full-service provi­der for clean­room clea­ning in sterile rooms in the phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­try, gene­tic engi­nee­ring, biotech­no­logy and medi­cal tech­no­logy, as well as the clea­ning of dust-free clean­rooms in microelec­tro­nics, semi­con­duc­tor tech­no­logy, opto­elec­tro­nics, auto­mo­tive and plas­tics technology.

Advi­sors to CWS-boco Inter­na­tio­nal GmbH: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frank­furt
Prof. Dr. Clemens Just, Photo (Lead, Corpo­rate), Dr. Heiko Kermer (Coun­sel, Tax), Norman Wasse, Niko­las Kout­sós (Coun­sel), Dr. Oliver Hahn­elt (all Corpo­rate), Daniel von Brevern (Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Alexa Ningel­gen (Corpo­rate, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Chris­tian Rolf (Labor); Asso­cia­tes: Isabelle Suzanne Müller, Mirjam Büsch (Düssel­dorf), Dr. Marion von Grön­heim, Tina Zeller, Victo­ria Huf (all Corpo­rate), Isabelle Kätzl­meier (IP, Munich).

About McDer­mott Will & Emery
McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm. With over 1,100 lawy­ers, we are repre­sen­ted in 20 loca­ti­ons world­wide: 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. There is a stra­te­gic alli­ance with MWE China Law Offices in Shang­hai. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP www.mwe.com

News

Frank­furt am Main/Amelinghausen — The fund German Equity Part­ners V (“GEP V” or the “Fund”), mana­ged by the inde­pen­dent German invest­ment company ECM Equity Capi­tal Manage­ment GmbH (“ECM”), has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in the envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy service provi­der SIS GmbH (“SIS”). SIS specia­li­zes in ther­mal off-gas clea­ning and degas­sing and is an inter­na­tio­nal leader in redu­cing emis­si­ons from vola­tile hydro­car­bons in the oil and gas indus­try through the use of mobile combus­tors. The company’s foun­der Guido Soyk will conti­nue to hold a signi­fi­cant stake in SIS and will lead the company into the next phase of its deve­lo­p­ment as mana­ging part­ner. As part of the tran­sac­tion, sales mana­ger Martin van der Veen will be appoin­ted as second mana­ging direc­tor. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose further details of the transaction.

Toge­ther with ECM, the company intends to invest in its further deve­lo­p­ment as well as the targe­ted expan­sion of its manage­ment and sales struc­tures in order to realize the full poten­tial of the solu­ti­ons offe­red by SIS in the exis­ting core market of the oil and gas indus­try and to deve­lop new oppor­tu­ni­ties in further inter­na­tio­nal markets as well as in the chemi­cal indus­try and shipping.

Envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy at the inter­face of occu­pa­tio­nal safety and climate protec­tion SIS was foun­ded in 2008, based in Ameling­hau­sen, with the aim of impro­ving occu­pa­tio­nal safety in the clea­ning of process plants and tanks. For this purpose, as well as for tempo­rary repla­ce­ment when requi­red by custo­mers, the company uses mobile and flexi­ble combus­tion cham­bers deve­lo­ped in-house, which help to avoid the emis­sion of vola­tile hydro­car­bons that are harmful to the envi­ron­ment and to health, as well as being highly flamma­ble. The mobile combus­tors are provi­ded in shifts with appro­priate skil­led person­nel and on-site service as well as comple­men­tary equip­ment as part of a fully inte­gra­ted and compre­hen­sive service and solu­tion offering.

Over the past five years, incre­asingly strin­gent emis­si­ons regu­la­tion as a result of the further deve­lo­p­ment of envi­ron­men­tal and climate policy has become a key driver of demons­tra­ted busi­ness growth. SIS custo­mers include leading global compa­nies in the oil, gas and chemi­cal indus­tries such as BASF, BP, Exxon Mobil, DowChe­mi­cal, Sabic, Shell and Total. Reali­zing growth oppor­tu­ni­ties in the core market and opening up the chemi­cal indus­try and ship­ping for SIS solu­ti­ons with ECM as an expe­ri­en­ced part­ner In Germany and the Nether­lands, SIS has a market-leading posi­tion in its previous core indus­try — the Euro­pean refi­nery indus­try. The company still sees considera­ble growth poten­tial here. In addi­tion, there are still great oppor­tu­ni­ties for the use of the solu­ti­ons offe­red by SIS, espe­ci­ally in France and Spain as well as other count­ries in Western Europe.

Another poten­ti­ally large target market is the Euro­pean chemi­cal indus­try, where SIS alre­ady has excel­lent refe­rence custo­mers in BASF and Dow Chemi­cal. In addi­tion, demand for SIS solu­ti­ons is also incre­asing in the ship­ping indus­try. The 15 largest seaports in Europe, as well as nume­rous inland ports, trans­port products that emit vola­tile hydro­car­bons on a large scale. With refe­rence projects in the ports of Rotter­dam, Wilhelms­ha­ven and Bilbao, SIS is excel­lently posi­tio­ned for further growth in this segment. ECM has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in support­ing growth and inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion stra­te­gies in medium-sized compa­nies, which has been proven with nume­rous invest­ments in a wide range of industries.

In part­ner­ship with ECM, SIS intends to expand its exis­ting manage­ment and sales struc­tures and make the tran­si­tion from an owner-mana­ged to a manage­ment-mana­ged company. The common goal is to syste­ma­ti­cally seize the growth oppor­tu­ni­ties that present them­sel­ves through a broa­der market approach in the future and targe­ted expan­sion into previously untap­ped sectors and count­ries. In addi­tion to stra­te­gic know-how, ECM also brings a long-stan­ding indus­try network to this part­ner­ship. Guido Soyk, foun­der and CEO of SIS, stated: “We are proud to have been able to deve­lop SIS into the leading company in an extre­mely inte­res­t­ing and incre­asingly rele­vant niche for the reduc­tion of emis­si­ons from fugi­tive hydro­car­bons. In order to fully realize the further growth poten­tial for our solu­ti­ons, we have been looking for a part­ner that fits our mid-sized iden­tity, but at the same time has proven that it can successfully accom­pany ‘hidden cham­pi­ons’ such as SIS on their way to the next stage of deve­lo­p­ment. We look forward to opening a new chap­ter in the history of SIS toge­ther with ECM.”

Alex­an­der Schön­born, Invest­ment Direc­tor at ECM, added: “SIS not only has an impres­sive product and service offe­ring, but also an outstan­ding market posi­tion. It is clear that demand for SIS solu­ti­ons will conti­nue to grow in the face of climate change and incre­asingly strin­gent regu­la­tion of hazar­dous emis­si­ons. Howe­ver, growing beyond a certain size and core market is often a chall­enge for foun­ders. As a growth part­ner for medium-sized compa­nies, we have alre­ady successfully accom­pa­nied this process many times and are plea­sed to support SIS on this path with our expe­ri­ence as well as our indus­try network.”

Advi­sors to ECM Equity: GEP V was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by Milbank (legal and struc­tu­ring), Andro­schin & Part­ner (market due dili­gence), Ebner Stolz (finance & tax) and Willis (insu­rance).

Alex­an­der Schön­born, Florian Kähler and Chris­toph Demers are respon­si­ble for the tran­sac­tion at ECM. SIS was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by CFC Corpo­rate Finance Contor and Dr. Thomas Bister (M&A and Legal).

About ECM Equity Capi­tal Manage­ment GmbH (“ECM”)
ECM is an inde­pen­dent invest­ment company based in Frank­furt am Main. ECM acted or acts as mana­ger respec­tively advi­sor of the equity funds German Equity Part­ners I‑V with an aggre­ga­ted equity of more than EUR 1 billion. The funds invest prima­rily in estab­lished, medium-sized compa­nies in the context of growth invest­ments and succes­sion arran­ge­ments as well as corpo­rate spin-offs. www.ecm.pe.de

About SIS GmbH (“SIS”)
SIS, head­quar­te­red in Ameling­hau­sen, Germany, is the inter­na­tio­nal market leader in the opera­tion of mobile ther­mal exhaust gas clea­ning systems and comple­men­tary equip­ment. The services and tech­no­lo­gies offe­red by SIS play a key role for custo­mers in redu­cing emis­si­ons (espe­ci­ally vola­tile hydro­car­bons). SIS helps them comply with even the stric­test envi­ron­men­tal regu­la­ti­ons. The port­fo­lio of mobile emis­sion control equip­ment is unique on the market in terms of size, quality and safety standards.

News

Munich — The law firm Gütt Olk Feld­haus advi­sed ARCUS Capi­tal AG on the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake toge­ther with BE Betei­li­gun­gen Fonds in Lässig GmbH. The former sole share­hol­ders retain an inte­rest in Lässig GmbH. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

Lässig GmbH, based in Baben­hau­sen near Aschaf­fen­burg (southern Hesse), is one of the market-leading suppli­ers of sustainable baby and children’s products. The company focu­ses parti­cu­larly on sustainable mate­ri­als and produc­tion proces­ses. The coll­ec­tions for parents, babies and child­ren are distri­bu­ted in over 50 countries.

ARCUS Capi­tal AG is a Munich-based inde­pen­dent invest­ment company focu­sing on majo­rity invest­ments in medium-sized family-owned compa­nies in the DACH region. The Lässig Manage­ment Team, consis­ting of the two foun­ders, Stefan Lässig and Clau­dia Lässig, as well as Karin Hein­rich, will syste­ma­ti­cally deve­lop Lässig GmbH toge­ther with ARCUS Capi­tal AG.

Legal advi­sors to ARCUS Capi­tal AG: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Dr. Sebas­tian Olk (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Lead M&A), Dr. Tilmann Gütt (Part­ner, Banking/Finance, Lead Banking/Finance), Thomas Becker (Of Coun­sel, IP/IT), Matthias Uelner (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Domi­nik Forst­ner (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), Chris­to­pher Ghabel (Senior Asso­ciate, Banking/Finance)
Alten­burg specia­list attor­neys for labor law, Munich: Andreas Ege (Labor Law)
Blom­stein, Berlin: Dr. Max Klasse (anti­trust law)

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

News

Berlin — The Cana­dian tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons company TELUS Inter­na­tio­nal (TELUS) is acqui­ring the outsour­cing service provi­der Compe­tence Call Center (CCC). The sellers are the invest­ment company Ardian and other share­hol­ders. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is still subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory appr­ovals and is expec­ted to take place early in the first quar­ter of 2020. P+P Pöllath + Part­ners provi­ded tax advice to TELUS in connec­tion with the transaction.

With more than 8,500 employees at 22 loca­ti­ons in 11 count­ries, Berlin-based CCC is one of the largest provi­ders of busi­ness process outsour­cing in Europe. The company specia­li­zes in busi­ness process outsour­cing and pre- and after-sale solu­ti­ons, as well as the imple­men­ta­tion and execu­tion of digi­tal commu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels. It was foun­ded in 1998 as a call center and now counts compa­nies from the tourism, trans­port and tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons indus­tries among its custo­mers, as well as energy suppli­ers, media provi­ders and finan­cial institutions.

TELUS Inter­na­tio­nal, a subsi­diary of Vancou­ver-based TELUS Corpo­ra­tion, is an IT services provi­der that designs and imple­ments digi­tal solu­ti­ons for the Inte­gra­ted Digi­tal Expe­ri­ence and Custo­mer Experience.

P+P Pöllath + Part­ners advi­sed TELUS with the follo­wing Frank­furt team:
Dr. Pia Dorf­muel­ler (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner, Tax Law)
Dr. Marco Otten­wäl­der (Coun­sel, Tax Law)
Stefan Wein­ber­ger (Asso­ciate, Tax Law)

News

Munich — The indus­trial holding company ADCURAM Group AG has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in the STEINEL Group, an inter­na­tio­nal supplier of sensors, sensor lights, hot-air devices and indus­trial compon­ents based in Herze­b­rock-Clar­holz, West­pha­lia. The seller is the family entre­pre­neur Ingo Stei­nel, who will conti­nue to be asso­cia­ted with the group through a signi­fi­cant share­hol­ding and as mana­ging direc­tor. The common goal is to inten­sify imple­men­ta­tion of the growth stra­tegy: further expan­sion of the trend area of buil­ding intel­li­gence and even grea­ter inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion. The tran­sac­tion, the details of which have been agreed not to be disc­lo­sed, was comple­ted at the end of Novem­ber 2019.

STEINEL, foun­ded in 1959 by Hein­rich Stei­nel, has evol­ved over the years from an origi­nal produ­cer of heating elements in elec­tri­cal appli­ances to one of the leading suppli­ers of presence, motion and multi-sensors, sensor lights as well as hot air and hot glue guns. The Group has been expe­ri­en­cing parti­cu­lar growth in recent years as a result of the incre­asing auto­ma­tion of buil­dings. Sensors from STEINEL are world leaders in intel­li­gent light­ing control and make a signi­fi­cant contri­bu­tion to redu­cing energy consump­tion. The latest systems in the field of “buil­ding intel­li­gence” are intel­li­gent solu­ti­ons for the effi­ci­ent use of office space, hotel rooms and also for support in care. Areas that the new part­ner ADCURAM also wants to focus on:

“Not only the deve­lo­p­ment of the motion detec­tor and the world’s first Sensor­Light are impres­sive mile­sto­nes for STEINEL. As a tech­no­logy and inno­va­tion leader, the company is excel­lently posi­tio­ned and has the best prere­qui­si­tes for further growth, espe­ci­ally in the field of Buil­ding Intel­li­gence. We are very much looking forward to a long-term colla­bo­ra­tion in a highly attrac­tive market,” explains ADCURAM Board Member Dr. Phil­ipp Gusinde. Ingo Stei­nel adds: “The conti­nua­tion of STEINEL’s success is very close to my heart. I am very happy to have found a part­ner in ADCURAM who thinks both entre­pre­neu­ri­ally and inno­va­tively and has a lot of expe­ri­ence in support­ing medium-sized compa­nies in the buil­ding-rela­ted segment. Toge­ther we will initiate the next growth steps.”

Over the course of Steinel’s corpo­rate history, more than 300 patents and designs have been regis­tered, resul­ting in more than 2,500 products for private and profes­sio­nal users as well as for indus­try and OEM manu­fac­tu­r­ers. Nume­rous appli­ca­ti­ons and solu­ti­ons were pionee­ring in their respec­tive indus­tries. In addi­tion to its head­quar­ters, STEINEL’s 1,500 employees work at five other sites in Leip­zig, Einsie­deln (Switz­er­land), the Czech Repu­blic, Roma­nia and the Repu­blic of Moldova. Sales in Europe and the USA are made through whole­sa­lers and retail­ers as well as to plan­ners, archi­tects and installers.

About ADCURAM
ADCURAM is a priva­tely owned indus­trial group. ADCURAM acqui­res compa­nies with poten­tial and deve­lops them actively and sustain­ably. For the future growth of the Group, the capi­tal-strong indus­trial holding company has a total of 300 million euros available for acqui­si­ti­ons. With the help of its own 40-strong team of experts, the indus­trial holding company conti­nues to deve­lop the port­fo­lio compa­nies stra­te­gi­cally and opera­tio­nally. Toge­ther, the group gene­ra­tes more than 400 million euros in sales with six holdings and over 2,500 employees worldwide.

ADCURAM sees itself as an entre­pre­neu­rial inves­tor and invests in succes­sion plans and corpo­rate spin-offs. www.adcuram.com

News

Antwerp (BE) / Marseille (FR) — In a Series B finan­cing round tota­ling $53 million, Gimv has increased its stake in ImCheck Thera­peu­tics, an emer­ging provi­der of onco­logy and auto­im­mune therapy solu­ti­ons based in France. The round is led by Pfizer Ventures (NYSE: PFE) and Bpifrance and will be joined by new inves­tors. In addi­tion to Gimv, exis­ting inves­tors Life Scien­ces Part­ners (LSP), Idin­vest Part­ners, Kurma Part­ners and Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund also parti­ci­pa­ted to a signi­fi­cant extent in the increase.

The Series B round funds will be used to finance initial clini­cal trials of ImCheck Thera­peu­tics’ first-in-class mono­clonal anti­body ICT01. For exam­ple, the broad pipe­line of immu­no­mo­du­la­tors for the so-called buty­ro­phi­lin super­fa­mily will be further expan­ded and new anti­body thera­pies in the field of immuno-onco­logy will be made available to clinics.

Bram Vanpa­rys, Part­ner at Gimv and respon­si­ble for the invest­ment on the Health & Care plat­form, says: “ImCheck has made signi­fi­cant progress since our invest­ment in the Series A round. As a result, we are plea­sed to have attrac­ted a number of new nota­ble inves­tors from the U.S. and Europe for the Series B round. Gimv’s signi­fi­cant invest­ment in this finan­cing round demons­tra­tes the poten­tial in ImCheck’s pipe­line of solu­ti­ons for the onco­logy and auto­im­mune therapy space.”

About GIMV
Gimv is a Euro­pean invest­ment company with almost 40 years of expe­ri­ence in private equity. The company is listed on Euron­ext Brussels, curr­ently mana­ges around EUR 1.2 billion and curr­ently invests in 50 port­fo­lio compa­nies, which toge­ther realize a turno­ver of more than EUR 2.5 billion and employ 14,000 people.

Gimv iden­ti­fies inno­va­tive, leading compa­nies with high growth poten­tial and supports them on their way to market leader­ship. Each of the four invest­ment plat­forms Connec­ted Consu­mer, Health & Care, Smart Indus­tries and Sustainable Cities is mana­ged by a dedi­ca­ted and compe­tent team, each based in Gimv’s home markets — Bene­lux, France and DACH — and supported by an exten­sive inter­na­tio­nal network of experts. www.gimv.com

News

Munich/Stockholm — AURELIUS Equity Oppor­tu­ni­ties SE & Co. KGaA (ISIN DE000A0JK2A8) (“AURELIUS”) has successfully comple­ted the sale of its subsi­diary Scan­di­na­vian Cosme­tics Group to Accent Equity 2017, a Scan­di­na­vian invest­ment fund.

Successful carve-out and trans­for­ma­tion into leading Nordic brand manage­ment company
Scan­di­na­vian Cosme­tics serves brand owners such as Coty, Clar­ins and Sensai as an exclu­sive value add distri­bu­tor for cosme­tic products in the Nordics. AURELIUS had acqui­red the busi­ness from Swiss Valora Group in Janu­ary 2016. The acqui­si­tion of the former Valora Trade Divi­sion consis­ted of FMCG acti­vi­ties (today port­fo­lio company Cona­xess Trade) and cosme­tics acti­vi­ties (today Scan­di­na­vian Cosme­tics Group), both mana­ged out of Switz­er­land at acqui­si­tion. After sepa­ra­ting both busi­nesses, estab­li­shing a stand-alone finan­cing struc­ture and imple­men­ting an inde­pen­dent manage­ment, an exten­sive trans­for­ma­tion program was imple­men­ted inclu­ding invest­ments in new warehouse manage­ment systems, the intro­duc­tion of a new KPI report­ing, a revi­sion of the exis­ting product range and cate­gory expan­sion. Major effi­ci­ency impro­ve­ment and busi­ness deve­lo­p­ment projects such as the deve­lo­p­ment of a new e‑commerce and online stra­tegy further drove the company’s growth. Scan­di­na­vian Cosme­tics Group’s stra­tegy towards one Nordic group drove an ambi­tious regio­nal expan­sion into the Danish and Finnish markets.

Acce­le­ra­ted growth through active M&A consolidation
In addi­tion to opera­tio­nal chan­ges, two stra­te­gic add-on acqui­si­ti­ons substan­ti­ally impro­ved the company’s presence as the largest manu­fac­tu­rer-inde­pen­dent luxury and consu­mer brand manage­ment company in the Nordics, leading to a 25 percent reve­nue increase. “Scan­di­na­vian cosme­tics has under­gone an exten­sive trans­for­ma­tion program,” said Florian Muth, Mana­ging Direc­tor at Aure­lius. “With the support of AURELIUS, the company has deve­lo­ped into a strong and leading market player. The tran­sac­tion clearly illus­tra­tes that our intense opera­tio­nal focus combi­ned with a dedi­ca­ted growth stra­tegy pays off.”

The buyer, Accent Equity, will support Scan­di­na­vian Cosme­tics in its next growth phase.

On this tran­sac­tion, AURELIUS was advi­sed by ABG Sundal Collier (M&A), PwC (Tran­sac­tion Services and Tax) and Vinge (Legal).

News

Berlin — Since its acqui­si­tion by capi­ton IV Fonds in 2013, KD Pharma has grown from a small company with single-digit reve­nues to one of the largest play­ers in the indus­try. KD Pharma Group is a leading global manu­fac­tu­rer of highly concen­tra­ted omega‑3 fatty acids used as an ingre­di­ent in phar­maceu­ti­cals and dietary supple­ments. — capi­ton initia­ted a GP-led single-asset secon­dary tran­sac­tion to secure a longer holding period and further growth capi­tal for its port­fo­lio company KD Pharma to finance the expec­ted signi­fi­cant growth poten­tial. The tran­sac­tion was heavily over­sub­scri­bed and capi­ton successfully comple­ted the fund­rai­sing for its new single-asset fund.

In the context of a compe­ti­tive bidding process, the tran­sac­tion gives the exis­ting inves­tors of the capi­ton IV fund the oppor­tu­nity to either sell their exis­ting stake in KD Pharma Group (in whole or in part) or to conti­nue it via a newly estab­lished conti­nua­tion fund and to parti­ci­pate in the high expec­ted value enhance­ment poten­tial. The tran­sac­tion also offers new inves­tors the oppor­tu­nity to parti­ci­pate in a very attrac­tive, fast-growing port­fo­lio company. Pantheon and Aber­deen Stan­dard Invest­ments join other renow­ned insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors as new prin­ci­pal investors.

capi­ton will conti­nue to manage KD Pharma as Gene­ral Part­ner under the new fund struc­ture after closing of the tran­sac­tion. capi­ton plans to expand its busi­ness both orga­ni­cally, through further inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and expan­sion of the product port­fo­lio on the basis of its current market leader­ship, and through targe­ted acqui­si­ti­ons. To this end, new debt finan­cing was secu­red in paral­lel with the se- condary transaction.

Advi­sors to capi­ton: PJT Park Hill (secon­dary advice), CMS Hasche Sigle, P+P Pöllath + Part­ners, Stephen­son Harwood (legal), EY (finance, tax, struc­ture), Roland Berger (commer­cial) and Duff & Phelps (fair­ness opinion).

The new inves­tors were advi­sed by Debe­voise & Plimp­ton, Hogan Lovells (legal) and Euclid Tran­sac­tional (S&I). The tran­sac­tion was nota­ri­zed at BMH Bräu­ti­gam.

News

Munich, London, Paris — Accor­ding to the latest Euro­pean Buy & Build Moni­tor from private equity firm Silver­fleet Capi­tal, Euro­pean buy & build acti­vity reached its highest level ever in the first half of 2019; this is largely due to increased acti­vity in Scan­di­na­vian count­ries. The Buy & Build Moni­tor counts 368 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons for the first half of 2019, up from 338 acqui­si­ti­ons in the first half of 2018. Buy & build acti­vity outper­for­med both mid-market M&A and Euro­pean buy-out indi­ces. Scan­di­na­via was the most active region, reco­ve­ring from a weak 2018. The United King­dom and Ireland recor­ded subdued perfor­mance compared with a more active over­all market. Perfor­mance of the DACH region was weak compared to the first half of 2018

The Buy & Build Moni­tor measu­res the global add-on acti­vi­ties of private equity-finan­ced compa­nies head­quar­te­red in Europe. For the first half of 2019, a preli­mi­nary figure1 of a total of 368 add-ons with a tran­sac­tion volume of EUR 2.4 billion was deter­mi­ned, which repres­ents an increase of 9% compared with 338 acqui­si­ti­ons in the first half of 2018. This is the highest value since Silver­fleet began recor­ding in 1998.

Eight add-ons with a tran­sac­tion volume of more than EUR 65 million were recor­ded in the first half of 2019, compared to nine add-ons of this size in the first half of 2018. Howe­ver, both the total volume of all tran­sac­tions (to 2.4 billion euros) and the average tran­sac­tion volume (to 70 million euros) declined2.

Buy & Build acti­vity exceeds mid-market M&A and Euro­pean buy-out indices
In recent years, the volume of Euro­pean add-on acqui­si­ti­ons has regu­larly lagged behind the mid-market M&A as well as the Euro­pean buy-out indi­ces. Howe­ver, there were seve­ral signs in the first half of 2019 that this trend could end, as the number of add-ons excee­ded both indexes.

Geogra­phi­cal­Trends
The most active region in the first half of 2019 was Scan­di­na­via, with 72 add-ons — a figure last recor­ded in the first half of 2017. The United King­dom and Ireland took second place with 58 add-ons. This marks a sharp decline compared with previous years and may be attri­bu­ta­ble to Brexit concerns, which could deter some compa­nies from pursuing a buy & build stra­tegy in this region.

There was a noti­ceable increase in add-on acti­vity in Eastern Europe, Southe­as­tern Europe, North America, and the Bene­lux count­ries. In compa­ri­son, the DACH region — normally one of the regi­ons with the highest Buy & Build acti­vity — recor­ded a poorer perfor­mance compared to the first half of 2018, possi­bly due to a more chal­len­ging over­all econo­mic situa­tion. The Iberian Penin­sula and the rest of the world (with the excep­tion of North America) also showed a decline in activity.

The obser­va­tion period also includes a buy & build tran­sac­tion by Silver­fleet Capi­tal: the port­fo­lio company Prefere Resins bought the mela­mine and para­form­alde­hyde divi­si­ons of the private equity-backed chemi­cals group INEOS. The leading group’s product compe­tence in phen­o­lic, amino and mela­mine resins, as well as high-quality deri­va­ti­ves of metha­nol (C1) chemis­try, has thus once again been signi­fi­cantly increased.

Recently, Silver­fleet supported the merger of Micro­gen and Touch­stone to create a leading tech­no­logy provi­der for the trust and corpo­rate services market. The merger is subject to the appr­oval of the compe­ti­tion autho­rity. The deal will appear in the next Buy & Build monitor.

Commen­ting on the findings, Gareth Whiley, Mana­ging Part­ner of Silver­fleet Capi­tal, said: “Add-on acti­vity in Europe in the first half of 2019 has reached its highest level since our survey began in 1998. Inte­res­t­ingly, it also shows that the previous synchro­niza­tion of add-on acti­vity with the hustle and bustle of the private equity and M&A markets may have come to an end for the time being — as the latter are show­ing signs of a down­turn in the first six months of 2019. Buy & build is ther­e­fore, in our view and espe­ci­ally in an uncer­tain envi­ron­ment, all the more a parti­cu­larly suita­ble value-add vehicle for private equity investors.”

The full report can be found here: https://www.silverfleetcapital.com/assets/filemanager/content/buy-and-build-monitor/2019H1_buy_and_build_report.pdf

The metho­do­logy
The data used in the Silver­fleet Buy & Build moni­tor is prepared by Merger­mar­ket. They exclu­si­vely include follow-on acqui­si­ti­ons of compa­nies where more than 30% of the equity is held by one or more private equity funds and where the plat­form company is based in Europe. The value of the acqui­si­ti­ons must exceed €5 million or the target company must have sales of at least €10 million to be included in the ranking. Data sets repor­ted by other repor­ters do not appear to have this mini­mum size thres­hold and are ther­e­fore not directly comparable.

One chall­enge here is always that data from the most recent quar­ter is often not complete. Smal­ler acqui­si­ti­ons in parti­cu­lar are not yet fully covered, and details may only become known after our analy­sis has been comple­ted. Ther­e­fore, a pro forma markup of 20% is applied to the figu­res for the first half of 2019 for this report in order to be able to make trend state­ments. Our analy­sis for the second half of 2018 indi­ca­tes that this is in line with the adjus­t­ment that would have been requi­red to accu­ra­tely esti­mate add-on acti­vity in the first half of the year.

Accor­din­gly, we have added a pro forma markup of 62 tran­sac­tions to the figu­res for the first half of 2019. Howe­ver, it is hardly possi­ble to draw detailed conclu­si­ons such as regio­nal break­downs from the pro forma figu­res — this report ther­e­fore does not include such figu­res. It should also be noted that seve­ral poten­ti­ally rele­vant tran­sac­tions were not included in the analy­sis because the percen­tage of equity held by the parti­ci­pa­ting plat­forms or add-on acqui­si­ti­ons was not published for them.

2 2.4 billion total tran­sac­tion value in only 35 tran­sac­tions where concrete figu­res were published (corre­sponds to a share of 11% of tran­sac­tions). The fluc­tua­ting average tran­sac­tion values are proba­bly due to the trend of not publi­shing corre­spon­ding figures.

About Silver­fleet Capital
Silver­fleet Capi­tal has been active as a private equity inves­tor in the Euro­pean mid-market for more than 30 years. The 32-strong invest­ment team works from Munich, London, Paris, Stock­holm and Amsterdam.

Ten invest­ments have alre­ady been made from the second inde­pen­dent fund closed in 2015 with a volume of 870 million euros: The Masai Clot­hing Company, a women’s fashion whole­sa­ler and retailer head­quar­te­red in Denmark; Coven­tya, a French deve­lo­per of specialty chemi­cals; Sigma Compon­ents, a UK-based manu­fac­tu­rer of precis­ion compon­ents for civil avia­tion; Life­time Trai­ning, a UK-based provi­der of trai­ning programs; Pumpen­fa­brik Wangen, a Germany-based manu­fac­tu­rer of specialty pumps; Riviera Travel, a UK-based opera­tor of escor­ted group tours and crui­ses; 7days, a German supplier of medi­cal work­wear; Prefere Resins, a leading phen­o­lic and amino resin manu­fac­tu­rer in Europe; CARE Ferti­lity, a leading opera­tor of ferti­lity clinics in the UK; and BOA Puri­fied & Flexi­ble Solu­ti­ons, a leading desi­gner and manu­fac­tu­rer of custom high purity metal tubing for criti­cal indus­trial applications.

Silver­fleet Capi­tal also main­ta­ins an invest­ment team focu­sed on smal­ler middle-market compa­nies that has alre­ady made two successful invest­ments: STAXS Conta­mi­na­tion Control Experts, a leading supplier of clean­room supplies in the Bene­lux (closed in Janu­ary 2019), and Micro­gen Finan­cial Systems, a leading provi­der of trust and fund admi­nis­tra­tion soft­ware for the trust and corpo­rate services industry.

News

Munich — Munich-based start-up Price f(x) secu­res another EUR 23m in an expan­sion of its Series B finan­cing round. The round was led by Digi­tal + Part­ners and Bain & Company. Talis Capi­tal also parti­ci­pa­ted again. LUTZ | ABEL accom­pa­nies Price f(x) in the exten­sion — as alre­ady in the previous finan­cing round.

Foun­ded in Munich in 2011, the start-up offers a modu­lar SaaS solu­tion for opti­mi­zing price manage­ment (PO&M) and pricing (CPQ) for busi­nesses of all sizes. The expan­ded funding was led by Digi­tal + Part­ners, a Euro­pean B2B tech­no­logy inves­tor, and manage­ment consul­ting firm Bain & Company. Talis Capi­tal, the initial inves­tor in the Series A round, also made a further invest­ment, brin­ging the total invest­ment in Series B to EUR 48 million.

With the support of the inves­tors, Price f(x) 2020 would like to focus more on the further deve­lo­p­ment of the plat­form func­tions, expand the func­tion­a­li­ties, bring more products to the market and also deal more inten­si­vely with sales and marke­ting. The company conti­nues to anti­ci­pate steady inter­na­tio­nal growth — also on a coope­ra­tive as well as stra­te­gic level. Accor­ding to the company’s own infor­ma­tion, the value of the company has alre­ady tripled in the last 12 months. In the current finan­cing round, Price f(x) was again accom­pa­nied by the VC experts from LUTZ | ABEL. In addi­tion to Dr. Bern­hard Noreisch, Jan-Phil­ipp Kunz provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice.

Advi­sor Price f(x): AG LUTZ | ABEL Rechts­an­walts PartG mbB (Corpo­rate Law, Venture Capi­tal / M&A)
Dr. Bern­hard Noreisch, LL.M. (Part­ner), Jan-Phil­lip Kunz, LL.M.

News

Hamburg/Borken/Karlsruhe — Only two weeks after the announce­ment of the take­over of the IT company ComNet, the next step follows at netgo. The Group acqui­res 100 percent of the shares in Mehr­werk AG, head­quar­te­red in Karls­ruhe. MEHRWERK specia­li­zes in opti­mi­zing busi­ness proces­ses with the help of agile enter­prise soft­ware. The foun­ders Ralf Feul­ner, Claus Litz and Clemens Schmidt will conti­nue to manage MEHRWERK as mana­ging direc­tors and will in future hold a stake in the netgo Group via the manage­ment invest­ment company. Second add-on for netgo Group since Water­land Private Equity joined the company.

Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs (photo), Mana­ging Part­ner at Water­landcomm­ents on the second addi­tion within a short time: “For netgo, this tran­sac­tion is the second company in a very short time after our entry as a growth inves­tor. This shows: The buy-and-build stra­tegy with compa­nies whose service port­fo­lio comple­ments netgo’s is working. We will conti­nue to grow with netgo.”

MEHRWERK was foun­ded in 2008 as a vendor-inde­pen­dent IT service provi­der for agile and user-friendly add-on solu­ti­ons for SAP users. Today, the fast-growing company with around 30 employees serves around 250 custo­mers of all sizes from the indus­trial, retail and service sectors. As an IT gene­ral contrac­tor, MEHRWERK advi­ses on the basis of proven, user-friendly soft­ware in the opti­miza­tion of busi­ness proces­ses, for exam­ple in IT-supported supply chain manage­ment as well as on SAP Cloud and busi­ness analy­tics solu­ti­ons (busi­ness intel­li­gence and process mining based on the Qlik plat­form). This focus is paying off: The Karls­ruhe-based company is an SAP Cloud Gold Part­ner and the leading solu­tion provi­der in the DACH region for the Qlik data analy­sis plat­form. In addi­tion to products from well-known manu­fac­tu­r­ers, MEHRWERK also offers solu­ti­ons deve­lo­ped in-house: The MPM Process­Mi­ning soft­ware, which is used by medium-sized compa­nies as well as DAX corpo­ra­ti­ons, enables the analy­sis of busi­ness processes.

The inte­gra­tion of MEHRWERK streng­thens the netgo Group’s product and service port­fo­lio. “We are very plea­sed to add MEHRWERK, a leading specia­list for soft­ware-based busi­ness process opti­miza­tion, to our group. In addi­tion to solu­ti­ons and products from well-known manu­fac­tu­r­ers, the process mining solu­tion deve­lo­ped in-house in parti­cu­lar enjoys an excel­lent repu­ta­tion and offers high added value. For us and our custo­mers, MEHRWERK’s products are an ideal addi­tion to our service port­fo­lio. At the same time, MEHRWERK is able to further acce­le­rate its own growth by bund­ling resour­ces and lever­aging netgo’s exper­tise,” explains netgo Mana­ging Direc­tor Bene­dikt Kisner.

netgo was foun­ded in 2007 by Bene­dikt Kisner and Patrick Kruse as an IT system house in Borken (North Rhine-West­pha­lia) and has grown at an above-average rate in recent years, both orga­ni­cally and through the successful acqui­si­tion of other IT houses. Just a few days ago, netgo announ­ced that it had acqui­red the IT system house ComNet from Würse­len (North Rhine-Westphalia).

The netgo group of compa­nies, with around 370 employees at 18 loca­ti­ons, offers a broad range of consul­ting, products and services in the busi­ness areas of Hosting & Storage, IT Infra­struc­ture, IT Secu­rity, Commu­ni­ca­tion & Messa­ging, IoT & Analy­tics paired with custo­mi­zed custo­mer solu­ti­ons. Toge­ther with its custo­mers, netgo deve­lops indi­vi­dual IT stra­te­gies and can draw on many years of expe­ri­ence in all forms of IT opera­tion — on-premise, private cloud and public cloud. Due to this broad range of services, netgo acts as a so-called one-stop store for its more than 3,000 custo­mers throug­hout Germany. The port­fo­lio of services is to be further expan­ded through targe­ted acquisitions.

Ralf Feul­ner, foun­der and CEO of MEHRWERK, summa­ri­zes the advan­ta­ges for his company: “With the support of the netgo Group, we will in future be able to posi­tion oursel­ves even better in terms of content, orga­niza­tion and sales as part of our corpo­rate stra­tegy, and to serve our custo­mers holi­sti­cally, for exam­ple as part of mana­ged services.”

 

News

Geneva/ Tel-Aviv — Tel-Aviv based venture capi­tal firm Crescendo Venture Part­ners is laun­ching its new VC fund plan­ned to raise $80 million-$100 million. The new fund has comple­ted its first closing and is plan­ning to have its final closing in the first half of 2020. The fund is mana­ged by a group of seaso­ned venture capi­ta­lists with over 75 years of cumu­la­tive expe­ri­ence on both sides of the table, part­ne­ring with the Switz­er­land based Crescendo Group, which mana­ges client assets in excess of USD 3 billi­ons of dollars from across its eight offices in Geneva, London, Guern­sey, New York, Miami, Madrid, Hong Kong, Monte­vi­deo and most recently Nassau. — Crescendo has a long track record of inves­t­ing in as well as mana­ging attrac­tive and unique private market invest­ment solu­ti­ons inclu­ding, but not limi­ted to venture capital.

The fund will invest in early stage Israeli soft­ware start­ups in fields such as big data, AI and machine lear­ning with an empha­sis on soft­ware that trans­forms tradi­tio­nal sectors such as agri­cul­ture, educa­tion, cons­truc­tion, health­care and indus­try. The Fund began opera­ti­ons during 2019 and has alre­ady made its first invest­ment when it led the A round of Light­ico, an Israeli startup that has deve­lo­ped an auto­ma­tion solu­tion for the last mile of the custo­mer jour­ney in cont­act centers.

Crescendo Venture Part­ners is led by Zvi Schech­ter, Dr. Yuval Avni and Tal Mizrahi, form­erly part­ners at Giza Venture Capi­tal, toge­ther with Mark Kavel­a­ars. Zvi Schech­ter is an early pioneer in Israel’s venture capi­tal indus­try and was the co-foun­der of Giza Venture Capi­tal in the 90s. Schech­ter led invest­ments in ground­brea­king compa­nies, inclu­ding compa­nies which comple­ted successful exits, such as Tele­gate, Cyota and Soluto. He also led invest­ments in growing compa­nies, like WalkMe, one of Israel’s fore­most ‘unicorn’ start­ups, where Zvi was invol­ved since the company’s incep­tion. Dr. Yuval Avni served as a part­ner at Giza Venture Capi­tal in Israel and in Giza’s over­seas funds. During 2015–2019 he mana­ged Beta-O2, a startup company he successfully led to a turn­around and to sustained growth. Prior to beco­ming an inves­tor, Dr. Avni had been a surgeon and a graduate of the Tech­nion Medi­cal School. In recent years he has been a visi­ting lectu­rer on entre­pre­neur­ship and fund­rai­sing at the Tech­nion and Tel Aviv Univer­sity. Tal Mizrahi also served as a part­ner in Giza and has over 20 years of expe­ri­ence in invest­ments, finance and the legal aspects of venture funds in Israel and abroad and high-tech compa­nies. Prior to joining Giza, Tal served as VP Finance at PortAut­ho­rity, which was acqui­red by Websense for appro­xi­m­ately $100 million. Mark Kavel­a­ars is a venture part­ner in the fund and brings with him over 20 years of mana­ge­rial expe­ri­ence in tech, marke­ting and invest­ments. Kavel­a­ars is a mana­ging part­ner and co-foun­der, at Swan­laab Venture Factory, Spain, a €60 million venture capi­tal fund inves­t­ing in inno­va­tive Spanish companies.

Dr. Yuval Avni, mana­ging gene­ral part­ner at Crescendo Venture Part­ners, notes: “Despite the huge poten­tial of start­ups in early stages, there is a gap between the finan­cing needs of these compa­nies and the amounts inves­tors actually invest in this stage. Crescendo will bridge this gap, with its team that will propose to entre­pre­neurs a combi­na­tion of expe­ri­ence in invest­ment and manage­ment of start­ups, along with a broad network of connec­tions with compa­nies and inves­tors in Europe, Latin America and Asia who are inte­res­ted in inves­t­ing in Israeli soft­ware compa­nies.” Avni added that “as a team that accu­mu­la­ted expe­ri­ence in invest­ments and also in manage­ment of start­ups, we under­stand the entrepreneur’s view­point, take a profes­sio­nal and friendly atti­tude towards entre­pre­neurs and make quick decis­i­ons regar­ding compa­nies we encounter.”

Zvi Schech­ter, gene­ral part­ner at Crescendo Venture Part­ners, adds: “We are curr­ently riding on the posi­tive momen­tum of the cycle for Israeli start­ups. We are constantly meeting with excep­tio­nal entre­pre­neurs with great ideas who can create a real trans­for­ma­tion in a wide range of tradi­tio­nal indus­tries in various sectors. Crescendo will place at the dispo­sal of those entre­pre­neurs a combi­na­tion of capi­tal, busi­ness expe­ri­ence and a network of global cont­acts with poten­tial custo­mers, part­ners and inves­tors from around the world, who are year­ning to connect and coope­rate with inno­va­tive start­ups from Israel.”

Photo caption: Crescendo Venture Part­ners’ leading team from left to right — Mana­ging Gene­ral Part­ner Dr. Yuval Avni, Gene­ral Part­ners Zvi Schech­ter and Tal Mizrahi

News

Hamburg / Hünfeld — IK Invest­ment Part­ners (“IK”) announ­ced today that the IK VIII Fund has signed an agree­ment to acquire Ondal Holding GmbH (“Ondal” or “the Company”) from funds advi­sed by Capvis. Ondal is a leading ODM (“Origi­nal Design Manu­fac­tu­rer”) manu­fac­tu­rer of stret­cher systems for the medi­cal equip­ment sector, mainly used in opera­ting rooms and inten­sive care units.

Ondal was foun­ded in 1945 and has since become the world’s leading supplier of stret­cher systems for medi­cal use. With its inno­va­tive and diver­si­fied product port­fo­lio used in opera­ting rooms, inten­sive care units, and diagno­stic and imaging faci­li­ties, Ondal sets the global quality stan­dard for relia­bi­lity, func­tion­a­lity, and hand­ling. Products manu­fac­tu­red by Ondal are inter­na­tio­nally certi­fied and appro­ved for use in a variety of regu­la­ted markets. The company, which is head­quar­te­red in Hünfeld and has more than 500 employees, opera­tes three produc­tion faci­li­ties in Germany, the USA and China.

Bernd Fabian, CEO of Ondal, said: “With our high-quality systems, we ensure the mobi­lity and avai­la­bi­lity of medi­cal equip­ment, crea­ting opti­mal working condi­ti­ons. On this basis, we have built up long-stan­ding rela­ti­onships with inter­na­tio­nally active blue chip compa­nies. The team at IK is the ideal part­ner for the next phase of our deve­lo­p­ment due to their exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the medi­cal tech­no­logy market, and shares our posi­tive assess­ment of our company’s growth pros­pects. We would like to take this oppor­tu­nity to thank Capvis for its support over the past years.”

Anders Peters­son, Part­ner at IK Invest­ment Part­ners, added: “Ondal is the world’s leading plat­form for medi­cal weara­ble systems with an excel­lent repu­ta­tion as a relia­ble and stra­te­gic part­ner to medi­cal tech­no­logy compa­nies. We look forward to working with manage­ment to further deve­lop the company’s strong market posi­tion as a tech­no­logy leader in its product segment.”

With Ondal, the mid-cap fund IK VIII acqui­res its fourth invest­ment in the current year. Over­all, this is the fifte­enth acqui­si­tion announ­ced since the fund’s incep­tion. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the finan­cial details of the transaction.

Parties and advi­sors invol­ved in the transaction:

IK Invest­ment Part­ners: Anders Peters­son, Adrian Tanski, Daniel-Vito Günther
Finan­cial Advi­sor Buyer: Quar­ton (Konstan­tin Schön­born, Rolf Holtmann)
Stra­te­gic Due Dili­gence Buyer: Alva­rez & Marsal (Georg Hochleitner)
Finan­cial Due Dili­gence Buyer: Eight Advi­sory (Michael Wahl)
Legal Advi­sor Buyer: Renzen­brink & Part­ner (Ulf Renzenbrink)
Capvis: Eric Trüeb, Leif-Niklas Fanter
Finan­cial Advi­sor Seller: William Blair (Phil­ipp Mohr, Eike Dickmann)
Legal Advi­sor Seller: Henge­ler Müller (Daniel Wiegand)

About Ondal Medi­cal Systems
Ondal is one of the world’s leading desi­gners and manu­fac­tu­r­ers of medi­cal weara­ble systems that support move­ment, carry loads and provide light, gas or data to medi­cal equip­ment. www.ondal.de

About IK Invest­ment Partners
IK Invest­ment Part­ners is a Euro­pean private equity firm with an invest­ment focus on the Nordic count­ries, the DACH region and France/Benelux. Since 1989, IK has laun­ched funds with a cumu­la­tive equity volume of more than 10 billion euros and inves­ted in more than 130 Euro­pean compa­nies. The IK Funds support compa­nies with signi­fi­cant growth poten­tial and their manage­ment teams in deve­lo­ping busi­ness models for the future, streng­thening the compa­nies’ market posi­tion and thus crea­ting outstan­ding long-term deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial. www.ikinvest.com

News

Florence — Deda­lus Group, a company majo­rity-owned by Ardian and active inter­na­tio­nally in the clini­cal health­care soft­ware sector, announ­ces today that it has submit­ted a firm offer and ente­red into exclu­sive nego­tia­ti­ons to acquire part of Agfa-Gevaert’s health­care soft­ware busi­ness (the “Busi­ness”).

The Busi­ness, which gene­ra­tes around 260 million euros of reve­nues, consists of the Health­care Infor­ma­tion Solu­ti­ons and Inte­gra­ted Care acti­vi­ties, as well as the Imaging IT acti­vi­ties to the extent that these acti­vi­ties are tightly inte­gra­ted into the Health­care Infor­ma­tion Solu­ti­ons acti­vi­ties. This is the case mainly in the DACH region, France and Brazil.

With a total turno­ver of 470 million euros, the tran­sac­tion would create the Euro­pean leader in the health­care soft­ware sector with a focus on the hospi­tal segment. The combi­ned group would have a presence in over 30 count­ries and would hold a leader­ship posi­tion in Italy, Germany and France.

“The acqui­si­tion would give an important boost to the Euro­pean conso­li­da­tion of the hospi­tal soft­ware sector” — says Gior­gio Moretti, Chair­man of Deda­lus Holding. “The need to have a Euro­pean opera­tor in a sector with very high R&D invest­ments is a guaran­tee for the entire Euro­pean health­care system to be able to count on products and tech­no­lo­gies that have now become essen­tial to reduce clini­cal risk, increase the quality of care and service to the pati­ent and opti­mize the growing costs for taxpay­ers, due to the many factors that are putting the budgets of all count­ries under finan­cial stress. It would be a tran­sac­tion that would create the pan-Euro­pean leader in the health­care soft­ware sector and with a focus in the three largest count­ries of conti­nen­tal Europe. The group would have about 3,500 employees and the compe­ten­ces to deve­lop an inno­va­tive plat­form of products for an indus­try which needs to improve effi­ci­ency and inte­gra­ted solutions”.

“We inves­ted in Deda­lus in 2016 to acce­le­rate the growth of the company in Europe start­ing from France, since we knew that the group had all the charac­te­ristics to be able to compete successfully in its sector on a global scale,” decla­res Yann Chare­ton, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Ardian Buyout in Italy. “Deda­lus’ role in the conso­li­da­tion process of the clini­cal soft­ware indus­try in Europe will enable the crea­tion of a player able to compete inter­na­tio­nally in a busi­ness, which is criti­cal for citi­zens and count­ries. This acqui­si­tion in the health­care tech­no­logy space under­pins ARDIAN’s stra­tegy to support tran­si­ti­ons of compa­nies into undis­pu­ted leaders in their respec­tive markets, widening their offe­ring and geogra­phic reach with trans­for­ma­tio­nal build-ups.”

Deda­lus — Advisors:
M&A Advi­sor: BNP Pari­bas, UBS, Banca IMI
Legal Advi­sor: Clif­ford Chance
Commer­cial Due Dili­gence: EY Parthe­non
Finan­cial, Tax, Opera­tio­nal Due Dili­gence: KPMG
Tech­no­logy Due Dili­gence: Tech Economy
Debt Advi­sory: Roth­schild

About Deda­lus
Foun­ded in 1990 in Florence, Deda­lus, with over 2,000 employees, of which 1,200 in Italy, 550 in France and teams in 25 count­ries, is an inter­na­tio­nal indus­trial group in the health­care soft­ware indus­try specia­li­zed in the segment of diagno­stic and clini­cal manage­ment solu­ti­ons (HCIS), GPs and Primary care manage­ment, Inter­ope­ra­bi­lity and Popu­la­tion health management.

In 2016, the Euro­pean Private Equity Fund ARDIAN acqui­red the 60% of the Deda­lus Group boos­ting its inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion and streng­thening the R&D acti­vi­ties, which is now compo­sed by more than 600 people.

Today, Deda­lus exploits the full func­tional coverage of all ICT needs of any health­care system, not limi­ted to hospi­tal systems, both public and private. In the last three years, Deda­lus has totally rene­wed its offe­ring, by addres­sing the state of art of para­digm in terms of tech­no­logy and func­tion­a­li­ties to anti­ci­pate the evolu­tion of the clini­cal prac­tice at the base of the change manage­ment of diffe­rent health­care system that in many count­ries are rethin­king their orga­niza­ti­ons. — With more than 130 million euros of reve­nues in Italy, more than 60 million euros in France and globally more than 210 million euros. Deda­lus is one of the leading global play­ers in the sector and holds a leading posi­tion in Europe. www.dedalus.eu

About Agfa-Gaevert
The Agfa-Gevaert Group deve­lops, manu­fac­tures and distri­bu­tes an exten­sive range of analo­gue and digi­tal imaging systems and IT solu­ti­ons, mainly for the prin­ting indus­try and the health­care sector, as well as for speci­fic indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons. Agfa’s head­quar­ters and parent company are loca­ted in Mortsel, Belgium. — The Agfa-Gevaert Group achie­ved a turno­ver of 2,247 million euros in 2018. www.agfa.com

News

Dassow, Neumüns­ter, Seebach/ Nagold — The GPE Group with loca­ti­ons in Dassow, Neumüns­ter and Seebach, a specia­list for systems and compon­ents with a focus on medi­cal tech­no­logy, has acqui­red the NICOLAY Group of compa­nies based in Nagold. The total group gene­ra­tes sales of appro­xi­m­ately € 85 million. — The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the anti­trust autho­ri­ties. The seller and buyer have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price. The tran­sac­tion will be finan­ced from the capi­ton V fund.

NICOLAY’s core compe­tence is the deve­lo­p­ment and manu­fac­ture of products in the field of non-inva­sive pati­ent moni­to­ring. The product range extends from exis­ting in-house deve­lo­p­ments that can be indi­vi­du­ally adapted to tailor-made solu­ti­ons accor­ding to custo­mer-speci­fic requi­re­ments. “The compa­nies NICOLAY and GPE comple­ment each other excel­lently in their diffe­rent compe­ten­cies. With this acqui­si­tion, we can better meet the incre­asing demand in the market for complex parts and compon­ents from a single source,” says CEO of GPE Group Steven Anderson.

“With GPE, we have gained a stra­te­gic part­ner who shares with us the same values of quality and custo­mer orien­ta­tion” adds Dr. Chris­tof Muz, Mana­ging Direc­tor of NICOLAY. In addi­tion to mana­ging the NICOLAY sites, Dr. Muz will also assume over­all respon­si­bi­lity for the tech­ni­cal area of all sites as Chief Tech­ni­cal Offi­cer (CTO) in the GPE.

Advi­sors capi­ton and GPE: Roland Berger (Commer­cial), KPMG (Finan­cial), EY (Tax), CMS (Legal), AvS (Manage­ment Audit) and Tauw (ESG) advised.

About Capi­ton AG
capi­ton AG capi­ton is an inde­pen­dent, owner-mana­ged private equity company mana­ging a total fund volume of over € 1.0 billion. Curr­ently, 11 medium-sized compa­nies are in capi­ton AG’s invest­ment port­fo­lio. capi­ton accom­pa­nies manage­ment buy-outs and growth finan­cing for estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies as an equity partner.

News

Munich/ Frank­furt a. Main — The German offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP have recor­ded strong growth in the current finan­cial year and are on track to set a new reve­nue record. The Munich loca­tion in parti­cu­lar attrac­ted atten­tion this year with a 20% growth rate.

Dr. Ansgar Wimber (photo) also elec­ted part­ner of the firm effec­tive Janu­ary 1, 2020. Dr. Wimber is a part­ner in the private equity prac­tice in the firm’s Frank­furt office and advi­ses on cross-border tran­sac­tions. Most recently, he advi­sed Advent Inter­na­tio­nal and Noval­pina Capi­tal, among others, on various tran­sac­tions. “With the elec­tion of Dr. Wimber as Part­ner and the appoint­ment of a total of six lawy­ers at the Munich and Frank­furt offices as Coun­sel, Weil is excel­lently posi­tio­ned to conti­nue its high growth rate in the future,” said Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt, Mana­ging Part­ner of the German offices.

To accom­mo­date this signi­fi­cant growth, the follo­wing attor­neys have been appoin­ted as Coun­sel effec­tive Janu­ary 1, 2020:
* Manuel-Peter Fringer (Private Equity, Munich)
* Thomas Zimmer­mann (Finance, Munich)
* Benja­min Rapp (Tax, Munich)
* Dr. Konstan­tin Hoppe (Liti­ga­tion, Munich)
* Svenja Wach­tel (Liti­ga­tion, Munich)
* Konrad v. Buch­waldt (Corpo­rate, Frankfurt).

Signi­fi­cant manda­tes which the firm has advi­sed on this year and which have contri­bu­ted signi­fi­cantly to its success include advi­sing Upfield (prin­ci­pal share­hol­der KKR) on the acqui­si­tion of Arivia, KKR on the acqui­si­tion of heidel­pay from AnaCap, TCV on its invest­ment in Flix­Bus, Apax Digi­tal on its invest­ment in Signa­vio, Noval­pina Capi­tal on its take private and squeeze out of Olym­pic Enter­tain­ment Group.

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

News

Frank­furt am Main/ Mark­grö­nin­gen — Kälte Eckert GmbH, a port­fo­lio company of VR Equi­typ­art­ner based in Mark­grö­nin­gen (Ludwigs­burg district), is acqui­ring a majo­rity stake in Günther Kälte­tech­nik in an add-on tran­sac­tion. The seller of the shares is Jörg Günther, previously sole share­hol­der and mana­ging direc­tor. He will remain on board unch­an­ged after the closing of the tran­sac­tion, and the company name will be contin­ued. With the acqui­si­tion, Kälte Eckert plans to drive growth, expand its service network and recruit quali­fied employees. In addi­tion, Günther Kälte­tech­nik has specia­li­zed know-how in the field of special plant engi­nee­ring. In the future, Kälte Eckert’s exper­tise in the field of natu­ral refri­ger­ants will help Günther Kälte­tech­nik to offer new products and services to exis­ting custo­mers and to tap into new custo­mer groups.

Günther Kälte­tech­nik, based in Plüder­hau­sen (Rems-Murr district), was foun­ded in 1965 and is a refri­ge­ra­tion plant manu­fac­tu­rer focu­sing on the cate­ring and food sector. With 15 employees, the company offers all services rela­ted to assem­bly and instal­la­tion as well as for service and main­ten­ance of refri­ge­ra­tion systems. At the same time, Günther Kälte­tech­nik has been on a strong growth course for years, with an annual growth rate of around 10 percent.

VR Equi­typ­art­ner had acqui­red a majo­rity stake in Kälte Eckert GmbH in August 2017 to support further growth as part of a plat­form stra­tegy. The long-estab­lished company, which was foun­ded in 1966 and has around 50 employees, is to act as a plat­form for further acqui­si­ti­ons in the dyna­mic refri­ge­ra­tion equip­ment market, which is domi­na­ted by medium-sized compa­nies. Kälte Eckert, run by brot­hers Michael and Holger Eckert, specia­li­zes in special plant engi­nee­ring for commer­cial refri­ge­ra­tion with a focus on commer­cial kitchens, indus­try and air condi­tio­ning. In addi­tion, the company is the nati­on­wide tech­no­logy leader in the field of alter­na­tive ecolo­gi­cal coolants. Custo­mers include major corpo­ra­ti­ons such as Daim­ler, UniCre­dit and LBBW.

Chris­tian Futter­lieb (photo), Mana­ging Direc­tor at VR Equi­typ­art­ner, says: “The invest­ment in Günther Kälte­tech­nik is a successful first step in consis­t­ently imple­men­ting our plat­form stra­tegy with Kälte Eckert. Toge­ther, we will further deve­lop the two compa­nies through know­ledge trans­fers and expand know-how in the areas of special plant engi­nee­ring and natu­ral refrigerants.”

Michael Eckert, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Kälte Eckertadds: “We are very plea­sed to be joining a part­ner whose culture and range of services are an excel­lent fit for us. Günther Kälte­tech­nik is charac­te­ri­zed by excel­lently trai­ned employees and loyal regu­lar custo­mers. On our growth course, we want to promote the employees and give long-term perspec­ti­ves in this exci­ting future market.”

Jörg Günther, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Günther Kälte­tech­nik, comm­ents: “Our part­ner­ship is a logi­cal step. Since the first cont­act with Mr. Eckert, a strong rela­ti­onship of mutual trust has deve­lo­ped. Toge­ther we can now offer a wider range of products and services. In addi­tion, we are expan­ding the service network as well as the coverage of on-call services, which will bene­fit all customers.”

VR Equi­typ­art­ner GmbH at a glance
VR Equi­typ­art­ner is one of the leading equity finan­ciers in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land. The company supports medium-sized family busi­nesses in a goal-orien­ted manner and with deca­des of expe­ri­ence in the stra­te­gic solu­tion of complex finan­cing issues. Invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties include growth and expan­sion finan­cing, corpo­rate succes­sion or share­hol­der chan­ges. VR Equi­typ­art­ner offers majo­rity and mino­rity invest­ments as well as mezza­nine finan­cing. As a subsi­diary of DZ BANK, the central insti­tu­tion of the coope­ra­tive banks in Germany, VR Equi­typ­art­ner consis­t­ently puts the sustaina­bi­lity of corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment ahead of short-term exit thin­king. VR Equitypartner’s port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses around 100 commit­ments with an invest­ment volume of EUR 500 million. www.vrep.de.

Refri­ge­ra­tion Eckert at a glance
Kälte Eckert GmbH specia­li­zes in special plant engi­nee­ring for commer­cial refri­ge­ra­tion with a focus on indus­trial kitchens, indus­trial refri­ge­ra­tion and air condi­tio­ning. In addi­tion, the company is the nati­on­wide tech­no­logy leader in the field of alter­na­tive ecolo­gi­cal coolants. Custo­mers include major corpo­ra­ti­ons such as Daim­ler, UniCre­dit and LBBW. Foun­ded in 1966 by Horst Eckert, the company is now mana­ged by his sons Michael Eckert and Holger Eckert.

Consul­ting firms invol­ved in the tran­sac­tion by VR Equitypartner:

Legal: HEUKING KÜHN LÜER WOJTEK, Stutt­gart, with Dr. Rainer Hersch­lein and Char­lotte Schmitt
Finan­cial & Tax: Helmer & Part­ner, Heiden­heim, with Dr. Rüdi­ger Frieß
M&A (Cold Eckert): BENTEN Capi­tal, Stutt­gart, with Ulrich Praßler

News

Frank­furt a.M. - McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed nyxmo LAB GmbH on the sale of its stake in flux.connect GmbH. The acqui­rer is Bene­fi­cio Invest GmbH.

flux.connect GmbH has deve­lo­ped the server or cloud-based plat­form “flux.connect”. This enables commu­ni­ca­tion between connec­ted devices such as POS systems, booking plat­forms or POS payment termi­nals and provi­ders of addi­tio­nal services. This means, for exam­ple, that POS payment tran­sac­tion termi­nals can also be control­led by a cash regis­ter system (termi­nal cash regis­ter inte­gra­tion) or booking system.

nyxmo LAB, based in Munich, Germany, deve­lops soft­ware for point-of-sale solu­ti­ons such as card and online payment, loyalty and digi­tal cash code systems.

The team led by part­ner Dr. Michael Cziesla has recently advi­sed on a number of tech tran­sac­tions, most recently Invest­corp on the acqui­si­tion of a stake in Content­serv Group.

Advi­sors to nyxmo LAB: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frank­furt a.M.
Dr. Michael Cziesla, Photo (lead), Norman Wasse, LL.M. (both Corporate/M&A), Dr. Heiko Kermer (Coun­sel, Tax Law), Marion von Grön­heim (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery
McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm. With over 1,100 lawy­ers, we are repre­sen­ted in 20 loca­ti­ons world­wide: 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. There is a stra­te­gic alli­ance with MWE China Law Offices in Shang­hai. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP www.mwe.com

News

Hamburg — Proven­tis Part­ners has supported the owner of Europe’s largest online retailer for golf equip­ment Golf Versand Hanno­ver GmbH (“all4golf”) as exclu­sive M&A advi­sor in its succes­sion plan­ning. The owner of Golf Versand Hanno­ver GmbH has sold the company to Afinum Achte Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft mbH & Co KG, advi­sed by Munich-based Afinum Manage­ment GmbH. As part of the tran­sac­tion, Afinum is acqui­ring a stake in Europe’s largest online retailer of golf equip­ment, which opera­tes under the brand name “all4golf” in e‑commerce as well as with a branch in its main and logi­stics center in Hanover.

Stefan Kirste, owner of all4golf, will conti­nue to lead the company as mana­ging direc­tor after the tran­sac­tion and, toge­ther with Afinum, drive the company’s further expan­sion. Proven­tis Part­ners’ role Proven­tis Part­ners acted as exclu­sive M&A advi­sor to Mr. Kirste in the prepa­ra­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of the tran­sac­tion. In addi­tion to the complete docu­men­ta­tion, Proven­tis iden­ti­fied a selec­tion of estab­lished inves­tors as part­ners for all4golf and guided them through a struc­tu­red dive­st­ment process, coor­di­na­ted the due dili­gence and accom­pa­nied the contract nego­tia­ti­ons up to the closing of the transaction.

Legal advice from: KSB INTAX, led by Fried­rich Graf zu Ortenburg.

“With Proven­tis Part­ners, I had an advi­sor at my side who supported me in the best possi­ble way during the imple­men­ta­tion of my company succes­sion,” notes Stefan Kirste. “Ulrich Schnei­der and his team plan­ned the project in detail and imple­men­ted it strin­gently, while at the same time demons­t­ra­ting a great deal of tact in deal­ing with my orga­niza­tion. With Afinum, we were thus able to find a part­ner who shares my vision for all4golf and with whom I can now tackle the next phase of the company’s deve­lo­p­ment, a task I am very much looking forward to!”

About all4golf
all4golf (www.all4golf.de) is Europe’s largest e‑commerce company for golfing supplies. This leading market posi­tion is reflec­ted in the exten­sive range of more than 20,000 items, which covers the entire range of golf equip­ment, clot­hing and access­ories. In addi­tion to the online store, the store in the main and logi­stics center in Hano­ver offers one of the largest ranges of golf products in Germany on an area of over 500 square meters, in addi­tion to a fitting center. Since the acqui­si­tion of “Stephan Moll Golf Versand” in 1997, Mr. Kirste has grown the busi­ness from a clas­sic mail order company to a leading e‑commerce provi­der and the clear market leader in the golf segment, with a strong posi­tion across all cate­go­ries and an estab­lished private label. The far-sigh­ted­ness of this stra­te­gic decis­ion, taken at the begin­ning of the 2000s, is reflec­ted in parti­cu­lar in the growth achie­ved in every single finan­cial year since the beginning.

About Afinum
Afinum is an inde­pen­dent invest­ment company that invests in successful medium-sized compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries. Afinum curr­ently mana­ges funds with a volume of around EUR 1 billion in equity. Afinum has been an active inves­tor in medium-sized compa­nies for 19 years and has carried out over 70 tran­sac­tions during this time, the vast majo­rity of which (>90%) in connec­tion with family businesses/out of start-up situa­tions, whether with further parti­ci­pa­tion and active manage­ment of the foun­ders or a complete sale as part of a company succes­sion. Afinum’s invest­ment profes­sio­nals have a total of more than 200 years of private equity tran­sac­tion expe­ri­ence and have successfully accom­pa­nied nume­rous compa­nies on their growth path during this time.

About Proven­tis Partners
Proven­tis Part­ners is a part­ner-led M&A consul­tancy whose clients include a majo­rity of medium-sized family busi­nesses, group subsi­dia­ries and private equity funds. With 30 M&A consul­tants, Proven­tis Part­ners is active in the sectors Indus­tri­als, Busi­ness Services, Consu­mer & Retail, TMT, Health­care and Energy and covers the German-spea­king region with offices in Hamburg, Colo­gne, Munich and Zurich. Exclu­sive member­ship in Mergers Alli­ance — the inter­na­tio­nal part­ner­ship of leading M&A specia­lists — allows Proven­tis Part­ners market coverage in 30 of the world’s leading count­ries. The 20 members of the Mergers Alli­ance, with over 200 M&A profes­sio­nals, provide Proven­tis Part­ners, and ther­e­fore its clients, with unique access to local markets in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa.

News

Frank­furt a.Main — The inter­na­tio­nal law firm Good­win has provi­ded legal and tax advice to Slate Asset Manage­ment L.P. on the acqui­si­tion of two addi­tio­nal food port­fo­lios in Germany. The port­fo­lios consist of a total of 37 super­mar­kets and retail parks in eleven German states with a leasable area of around 75,000 square meters. Slate is acqui­ring the port­fo­lios through its subsi­dia­ries in two asset deals. The purcha­ses are the seventh and eighth package purcha­ses in 2019.

Slate Asset Manage­ment L.P. is a leading real estate invest­ment plat­form with more than six billion CAD in assets under manage­ment. Since ente­ring the market in Decem­ber 2016, Slate has made 15 port­fo­lio acqui­si­ti­ons in Germany. The port­fo­lio under manage­ment in Germany now compri­ses 249 proper­ties with a gross leasable area of around 432,000 square meters. Tenants are predo­mi­nantly large food retail­ers such as Edeka, REWE, Lidl and Aldi.

Good­win has advi­sed Slate Asset Manage­ment on all tran­sac­tions in the German market over the past three years, with Frank­furt real estate part­ner Marc Bohne and senior asso­ciate Matthias Rüdt from Collen­berg as lead partners.

Advi­sor Slate Asset Manage­ment L.P.: Good­win, Frank­furt a.M.
Marc Bohne, Photo (Part­ner), Matthias Rüdt von Collen­berg (Senior Asso­ciate, both Lead, Real Estate), Heiko Penn­dorf (Part­ner, Tax), Martin Prokoph (Part­ner, Private Equity), Andreas Mallin (Coun­sel, Finance), Felix Krue­ger (Coun­sel, Tax), Chris­to­pher Jeschor (Asso­ciate) and Nicole Schlink (Senior Para­le­gal, both Real Estate)

News

Frank­furt a. Main — A Gleiss Lutz team advi­sed Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs­ge­sell­schaft AG (DBAG) on the finan­cing of the acqui­si­tion of Carton­plast Group (Carton­plast). In a lever­a­ged buyout, DBAG Fund VII, which is advi­sed by DBAG, has acqui­red the majo­rity of shares in Carton­plast from the London-based finan­cial inves­tor Stir­ling Square Capi­tal Part­ners.

Finan­cing was provi­ded through a so-called first out/last out unitran­che, supple­men­ted by a super senior opera­ting line of credit. With a total volume of appro­xi­m­ately EUR 200,000,000, the finan­cing repres­ents one of the largest unitran­che finan­cings in the German market.

DBAG Fund VII has been inves­t­ing in medium-sized compa­nies, prima­rily in German-spea­king count­ries, since Decem­ber 2016. Carton­plast is DBAG Fund VII’s eighth invest­ment in total and the third for which its top-up fund is also used.

Carton­plast was foun­ded in 1985. The company prima­rily rents reusable and recy­clable plas­tic liners for trans­port­ing glass bott­les, cans and other glass or PET contai­ners for food to the manu­fac­tu­r­ers of these contai­ners. In addi­tion to its head­quar­ters in Diet­zen­bach, Carton­plast has 16 other loca­ti­ons — abroad, espe­ci­ally in Western and Central Europe, Turkey,
Russia, Brazil and South Africa. In 2018, the company gene­ra­ted sales of around 80 million euros; around three quar­ters of this was attri­bu­ta­ble to the plas­tic layer pad rental business.

Advi­sor DBAG: Gleiss Lutz
Frank Schlo­b­ach (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner), Patrick Reuter, Dr. Jan-Alex­an­der Lange, Teresa
Bald­win (all Finance, Frankfurt).

News

Aschaf­fen­burg - Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek advi­sed the share­hol­ders of vtours on the sale to Hotel­plan Group. vtours GmbH in Aschaf­fen­burg and vtours inter­na­tio­nal AG in Switz­er­land will conti­nue to operate inde­pendently. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price. The tran­sac­tion was comple­ted on Novem­ber 12, 2019.

The merger will enable vtours to expand not only in the DACH region, but also across Europe, and to bene­fit from shared tech­no­lo­gi­cal exper­tise. The appro­xi­m­ately 150 employees in Germany and Switz­er­land will be taken over. The office in Aschaf­fen­burg will be retai­ned, while the offices in Glatt­brugg, Switz­er­land, will be inte­gra­ted into the Hotel­plan Group headquarters.

vtours GmbH was foun­ded in 2004 and is one of the leading dyna­mic tour opera­tors in the German-spea­king region. The Swiss vtours inter­na­tio­nal AG was foun­ded in 2015 and is a sister company of vtours GmbH. Vtours offers package tours, city breaks and round trips. The tour operator’s port­fo­lio includes more than 7,000 hotels in 195 desti­na­ti­ons world­wide. The travel offers are distri­bu­ted via statio­nary travel agen­cies, Inter­net portals and the company’s website. The total annual turno­ver of vtours tour opera­tors is over EUR 400 million.

Advi­sor to vtours: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Jörg aus der Fünten (Lead Part­ner, Corporate/M&A), Cologne
Dr. Marc Scheu­ne­mann, LL.M. (Tax Law), Düsseldorf
Dr. Rainer Velte (Anti­trust Law), Düsseldorf
Stefan Wester­heide, LL.M. oec (Corporate/M&A), Cologne
Beatrice Stange, LL.M. (anti­trust law), Düsseldorf
Prof. Dr. Martin Reufels (Labor Law), Cologne

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