ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Munich — LUTZ | ABEL advi­ses Munich-based Alpha­Pet Ventures on both the acqui­si­tion of Healthfood24 and the rela­ted equity finan­cing (Series E). BMH Bräu­ti­gam advi­ses capi­ton on the acqui­si­tion of a stake in Alpha­Pet Ventures as part of the finan­cing round. In addi­tion to the new lead inves­tor capi­ton, Muzi­nich & Co. supports the acqui­si­tion of Healthfood24 with acqui­si­tion financing.

Alpha­Pet Ventures GmbH stands for the digi­ta­liza­tion of the pet market and the multi-chan­nel distri­bu­tion of premium pet food. Heathfood24 sets among other things with its in the premium dog food segment leading brand Wolfs­blut the dog food offers of the large, conven­tio­nal dog food manu­fac­tu­r­ers a species-appro­priate premium dog food against. Alpha­Pet Ventures and Healthfood24 have a long-stan­ding and successful busi­ness rela­ti­onship. With this acqui­si­tion, Alpha­Pet Ventures will consis­t­ently expand its posi­tion as a leading premium provi­der with multi-chan­nel distri­bu­tion. The company is posi­tio­ning itself as a strong player in the market with sales of almost three-digit milli­ons. This market posi­tion will also be further streng­the­ned at Euro­pean level through the acqui­si­tion of Healthfood24, ther­eby further estab­li­shing healthy pet food in the mainstream.

The private equity inves­tor capi­ton accom­pa­nies medium-sized compa­nies in the imple­men­ta­tion of their growth targets — as does Alpha­Pet Ventures. In the course of the tran­sac­tion, capi­ton and its fund capi­ton V will acquire 36% of the shares in Alpha­Pet Ventures, ther­eby finan­cing the acqui­si­tion. In addi­tion to capi­ton, Reimann Inves­tors and Venture Stars, among others, hold major stakes in Alpha­Pet Ventures.

The acqui­si­tion and the purchase of shares by capi­ton are still subject to appr­oval by foreign anti­trust authorities.

Advi­sors Alpha­Pet Ventures: LUTZ | ABEL
The advi­sory team around Dr. Marco Eick­mann and Phil­ipp Hoene (both M&A/VC, Munich) consists of Sebas­tian Sumal­vico (M&A/VC, Munich), Frank Hahn (M&A/VC, Hamburg), Dr. Marius Mann (Commer­cial, Stutt­gart), Dr. André Schmidt (IP/IT, Hamburg), Clau­dia Knuth (Labor Law, Hamburg), and Sebas­tian Schrei­ber (Real Estate, Hamburg).

Further legal advi­sors to Alpha­Pet Ventures: Luther, Chris­toph Schau­en­burg (Finance, Frank­furt a.M.) BRP Renaud und Part­ner, Dr. Martin Beutel­mann (Anti­trust, Stuttgart)

BMH BRÄUTIGAM advi­ses the lead inves­tor capi­ton on the invest­ment and acqui­si­tion. The advi­sory team consists of Dr. Patrick Auer­bach-Hohl, Dr. Matthias Rüping, Katha­rina Erbe, Janina Erich­sen, Raoul Moritz Nissen, Dr. Julian Schroe­der (all Venture Capi­tal), Dr. Andrea Reichert-Clauß, Dr. Manuel Holz­mann, Tina Schmidt, Dr. Sylko Wink­ler (all Private Equity ǀ Corporate/M&A).

Other advi­sors to capi­ton: CODEX Part­ners and MTA Part­ners (Commer­cial, Tech­no­logy), KPMG (Finan­cial), EY (Tax and Struc­tu­ring), AvS (Manage­ment Audit), Tauw (ESG), Ferber & Co. (Deal Advisory)

About LUTZ | ABEL
With almost 70 lawy­ers and offices in Munich, Hamburg, Stutt­gart and Berlin, the commer­cial law firm LUTZ | ABEL provi­des advice on all aspects of commer­cial law. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.lutzabel.com.

News

Munich — In a Series C finan­cing round, Munich-based startup Perso­nio raised $75 million. This brings the total invest­ment volume of the company, which was only foun­ded in 2015, to $130 million. Since the new invest­ment, the company has been valued at a total of $500 million — half­way to beco­ming a unicorn.

The finan­cing round was announ­ced back in Decem­ber, and has now been comple­ted. Leading this Series C round is Accel, an inter­na­tio­nal inves­tor with roots in Sili­con Valley. Accel has alre­ady inves­ted in compa­nies such as Slack and Face­book and helped strea­ming service Spotify go public.

In addi­tion to Accel, Lightspeed Venture Part­ners and Lars Dalgaard are also joining the HR soft­ware provi­der. Dalgaard is the foun­der and CEO of Success­fac­tors. He sold his cloud-based HR soft­ware to SAP in 2011 for $3.4 billion, but he is going private with Perso­nio. The Munich-based startup’s previous backers, Index Ventures, North­zone, Global Foun­ders Capi­tal and Pius Capi­tal, also parti­ci­pa­ted again in the funding round.

Demand from the inves­tor side was high
Actually, a new finan­cing round had been plan­ned for a much later date, Hanno Renner (photo), CEO and co-foun­der of Perso­nio, announ­ced. The invest­ment was only made because of the high demand from inves­tors. Howe­ver, he is very plea­sed to know that the finan­cing round has brought other such expe­ri­en­ced part­ners to the startup’s side.

The invest­ment is prima­rily inten­ded to further the inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion of the soft­ware provi­der. Curr­ently, Perso­nio has nearly 2,000 custo­mers in over 40 count­ries, accor­ding to the company. The company plans to have 700 employees at three sites by 2020.

News

Munich — YIELCO Invest­ments AG, a specia­list inves­tor in alter­na­tive invest­ments, has successfully further expan­ded its infra­struc­ture equity fund of funds stra­tegy and announ­ces the successful final subscrip­tion closing of the multi-mana­ger program YIELCO Infra­struk­tur II as well as the launch of two infra­struc­ture manda­tes tota­ling almost EUR 600 million. In addi­tion, YIELCO streng­thens its acti­vi­ties in Switz­er­land by opening a loca­tion in Pfäf­fi­kon (SZ) and gains another private markets expert for its Advi­sory Board.

YIELCO Invest­ments AG, a finan­cial services provi­der specia­li­zing in invest­ment solu­ti­ons (multi-mana­ger programs) in the infra­struc­ture, private debt and private equity sectors, announ­ced on Decem­ber 19, 2019 the final closing of its infra­struc­ture multi-mana­ger program “YIELCO Infra­struc­ture II” at approx. EUR 310 million was carried out. In addi­tion, two large insti­tu­tio­nal infra­struc­ture manda­tes of EUR 280 million were recently won, brin­ging YIELCO’s total new funds successfully raised for its infra­struc­ture stra­tegy to almost EUR 600 million.

For the follow-up program to the very successful first program concluded in Decem­ber 2016, the
infra­struc­ture fund of funds, a broad group of German and Swiss insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors was once again won over. With ten fund subscrip­ti­ons amoun­ting to approx. EUR 270 million, YIELCO Infra­struc­ture II is alre­ady in the final third of its commit­ment cycle. The fund of funds, which focu­ses prima­rily on Europe and the USA, will have a diver­si­fied port­fo­lio of approx. 12 fund holdings in mana­gers (some with rest­ric­ted access) and thus build up more than 150 under­ly­ing infra­struc­ture invest­ments. Invest­ments are broadly diver­si­fied globally across diffe­rent sectors, stra­te­gies and multi­ple commit­ment years. The invest­ment focus here is on brown­field and core+, with a prono­un­ced focus on small-mid market tran­sac­tions. The launch of the follow-up program YIELCO Infra­struc­ture III is plan­ned for the summer of 2020.

Uwe Fleisch­hauer, foun­ding part­ner and board member of YIELCO Invest­ments AG, comm­ents: “Both gene­ra­ti­ons of the YIELCO infra­struc­ture programs show a very plea­sing return deve­lo­p­ment that exceeds the origi­nal plans. Thanks to its many years of expe­ri­ence and broad rela­ti­onship networks, YIELCO has once again succee­ded in buil­ding up a port­fo­lio of high-quality fund mana­gers — despite incre­asing compe­ti­tion and access rest­ric­tions. YIELCO’s focus is on expe­ri­en­ced fund mana­gers who proac­tively imple­ment value enhance­ment measu­res at their port­fo­lio compa­nies, buy below market average and aim for mode­rate leverage. We thank our inves­tors for the trust they have placed in us and look forward to a long-term and successful partnership.”

In addi­tion, YIELCO announ­ces the geogra­phi­cal expan­sion of its acti­vi­ties into Switz­er­land. As of Janu­ary 20, 2020, YIELCO has opened an office in Pfäf­fi­kon (SZ) under the manage­ment of Mr. Marc Schulz. Marc Schulz joins YIELCO as a new member of the manage­ment team and was previously branch mana­ger of a Swiss univer­sal bank. Prior to that, he spent more than 10 years at the leading univer­sal bank in the Canton of Zurich, where he held a manage­ment posi­tion in the private client busi­ness. Dr. Peter Laib, Chair­man of the Super­vi­sory Board of YIELCO Invest­ments AG comm­ents: “We are plea­sed to now be able to support our Swiss inves­tors directly with a local team in the imple­men­ta­tion of their alter­na­tive invest­ment stra­te­gies. With Marc Schulz we streng­then oursel­ves with an expert with proven local finan­cial market expe­ri­ence of over 20 years.”

In addi­tion, the addi­tion of Ms. Tanja Gharavi to the YIELCO Indus­try Advi­sory Board was another high-profile addi­tion. Ms. Gharavi was most recently respon­si­ble for invest­ments at Hambur­ger Pensi­ons­ver­wal­tung (HPV) until 2019. Here, it deve­lo­ped and imple­men­ted an inno­va­tive invest­ment stra­tegy with a high propor­tion of private market invest­ments as early as 2001. Previously, Ms. Gharavi was respon­si­ble for mana­ging assets at C.H. Donner Bank, Metz­ler Invest and Beren­berg. Dr. Peter Laib, Chair­man of the Super­vi­sory Board of YIELCO Invest­ments AG, comm­ents: “With Ms. Gharavi we are gaining another expert with many years of expe­ri­ence in the field of capi­tal invest­ments and the private markets for the inter­na­tio­nal YIELCO Indus­try Advi­sory Board. The inten­sive exch­ange with the
members of the Advi­sory Board allows us to add addi­tio­nal value e.g. gene­rate in evalua­ting econo­mic condi­ti­ons and invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for our investors.”

About YIELCO Invest­ments AG
YIELCO is an inde­pen­dent, global, specia­li­zed inves­tor and service provi­der in the field of alter­na­tive invest­ments. As of Q1 2020, the company mana­ges over EUR 3.8 billion in capi­tal commit­ments from insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors and family offices for the infra­struc­ture, private debt and private equity segments. In the infra­struc­ture sector, YIELCO mana­ges around EUR 1.5 billion in inves­tor funds, mostly for invest­ments in the USA and Europe.

News

Frank­furt a. M., Munich — Bright Capi­tal supports the further growth of the family-run SieVa­Tek GmbH, the specia­list for online hire-purchase portals, with a long-term loan. In addi­tion, Bright Capi­tal toge­ther with HF Debt provi­ded unitran­che finan­cing for Family Trust Beteiligungsholding’s invest­ment in Dietsch Pols­ter­mö­bel and for DPK Deut­sche Privat­ka­pi­tal ’s invest­ment in GCM Gastro Concept Manage­ment GmbH and Wurst­teu­fel GmbH. All invest­ments were made from the 2nd Vintage Fund laun­ched in summer 2019. — The foun­der of Bright Capi­tal is Matthias Matthieu, who is respon­si­ble for deal gene­ra­tion and struc­tu­ring, port­fo­lio manage­ment and inves­tor rela­ti­ons. He is also a member of the Invest­ment Committee.

The owner-mana­ged SieVa­Tek GmbH, based in Wetz­lar, Germany, was foun­ded in 1986. SieVa­Tek offers a secure online-based payment model with the aim of provi­ding a bank-inde­pen­dent finan­cing plat­form for end custo­mers and opera­tes, among other things, the online portal Rent2BuyMusic.de. Rent2BuyMusic is the No. 1 install­ment plan portal with the most ongo­ing contracts in the music and event equip­ment sector. As the company conti­nues to grow and expand its online store offe­rings, Bright Capi­tal (Vintage 2) has provi­ded long-term financing.

The Dietsch Group, head­quar­te­red in Schmal­kal­den, Thurin­gia, is a fully inte­gra­ted uphols­te­red furni­ture manu­fac­tu­rer with around 200 employees cove­ring the entire value chain from design to frame cons­truc­tion to uphols­tery in one of Europe’s most modern uphols­te­red furni­ture produc­tion faci­li­ties. Today, the family-run company is known among end custo­mers and specia­list retail­ers for excel­lent value for money “Made in Germany”. — Bright Capi­tal (Vintage 2) and HF Debt jointly provi­ded acqui­si­tion finan­cing for the majo­rity stake from Munich-based inves­tor Family Trust. Family Trust has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in the tradi­tio­nal company as part of an early corpo­rate succession.

Bright Capi­tal provi­ded Krall­mann with a long-term loan repa­ya­ble at matu­rity. With the fresh capi­tal, Krall­mann was able to market its newly deve­lo­ped and inno­va­tive tech­no­logy and invest in the neces­sary auto­ma­tion and digi­ta­liza­tion. Krall­mann has deve­lo­ped into an inno­va­tion leader for Inte­gra­ted Metal-Plas­tic Injec­tion Molding (IMKS) and the asso­cia­ted mold making. In recent years, the Krall­mann Group has stra­te­gi­cally expan­ded the value chain and successfully comple­ted the evolu­tion from contract injec­tion molding to a market leader in process and product innovation.

About Bright Capital
We offer finan­cing solu­ti­ons and selec­ted equity invest­ments from a single source. Our focus is on smal­ler mid-sized compa­nies, which we believe have little access to alter­na­tive finan­cing. In doing so, we invest in all sectors. As part of our invest­ment stra­tegy, we can invest along the entire capi­tal struc­ture. The aim is to create substan­tial corpo­rate value with indi­vi­dual and custo­mi­zed investments.

Bright Capi­tal is a value-orien­ted, long-term inves­tor. We invest in compa­nies that gene­rate stable cash flows, have a robust market posi­tion and excel­lent manage­ment. Compa­nies should be leaders in their field in the German-spea­king region and show substan­tial growth poten­tial. Our target compa­nies are usually family- or owner-mana­ged, or are port­fo­lio compa­nies of invest­ment compa­nies. — We support compa­nies in all indus­tries. We can tailor the finan­cing and compen­sa­tion struc­ture to meet speci­fic capi­tal requi­re­ments and the company’s situation.

News

Paris/Frankfurt — With a volume of €3 billion, Ardian is laun­ching its largest private debt plat­form to date — meaning that the fourth gene­ra­tion of the private debt plat­form has signi­fi­cantly excee­ded its origi­nal target of €2.5 billion. The Private Debt unit was estab­lished in 2005 and provi­des finan­cing solu­ti­ons for mid-market compa­nies throug­hout Europe. Ardian’s Private Debt team has comple­ted more than 120 tran­sac­tions since the division’s incep­tion and mana­ges $7 billion in assets.

The latest fund has signi­fi­cantly excee­ded the origi­nal fund­rai­sing target of €2.5 billion, buil­ding on the success of the third gene­ra­tion fund, which raised €2 billion in 2015. The focus of the current plat­form remains on provi­ding flexi­ble and indi­vi­du­ally tail­o­red finan­cing solu­ti­ons for Euro­pean compa­nies. The offe­ring was also expan­ded to include so-called “stret­ched senior debt” in order to gain further market share in the M&A busi­ness and in compe­ti­tion with banks. Stret­ched senior debt is a hybrid finan­cing struc­ture that is prima­rily used in corpo­rate acqui­si­ti­ons and dispo­sals and combi­nes various loan tran­ches — simi­lar to unitran­che financing.

More than 90 inves­tors from 15 count­ries have provi­ded funding for the new plat­form, inclu­ding from Europe, Asia and North America. They include insu­rance compa­nies, pension funds, banks, foun­da­ti­ons and govern­ment orga­niza­ti­ons. In parti­cu­lar, the increased share of inves­tors from Asia and North America reflects Ardian’s global posi­tio­ning and diver­si­fied inves­tor base.

Vincent Gombault, Member of the Execu­tive Commit­tee and Global Head of Fund of Funds and Private Debt, said: “With our fifteen-year track record across four fund gene­ra­ti­ons, Ardian has clearly posi­tio­ned itself as one of the leading provi­ders of private debt to Euro­pean mid-market compa­nies. The successful fund­rai­sing is testa­ment to our expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment team, Ardian’s exten­sive asset manage­ment exper­tise and its global network. As a long-stan­ding active player in the private debt market across diffe­rent credit cycles, Ardian is very well posi­tio­ned to seize the oppor­tu­ni­ties arising with the incre­asing rele­vance of private debt in the global finan­cial market.”

Mark Brenke (photo), Head of Ardian Private Debt and Mana­ging Direc­toradded: “The recent fund­rai­sing high­lights the current momen­tum of Ardian Private Debt and the incre­asing attrac­ti­ve­ness of this asset class. Demand for finan­cing from dyna­mi­cally growing mid-market compa­nies in Europe conti­nues to grow. Based on our strong track-record, we will take advan­tage of oppor­tu­ni­ties presen­ted to us through the expan­ded plat­form in its offe­ring and gradu­ally pene­trate areas previously served exclu­si­vely by banks.”

Thanks to a conti­nuously growing team and diver­si­fied global deal flows, Ardian Private Debt has provi­ded more than one billion euros in finan­cing annu­ally over the past years. At the same time, the number of invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties under inten­sive review by Ardian has increased signi­fi­cantly. Ther­e­fore, the team acts very selec­tively and focu­ses its selec­tion process to realize only the best opportunities.

About Ardian
Ardian is one of the world’s leading inde­pen­dent invest­ment firms, mana­ging appro­xi­m­ately US$96 billion in assets on behalf of 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 640 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 appro­xi­m­ately 1,000 inves­tors in five invest­ment areas: Direct Funds, Funds of Funds, Infra­struc­ture, Private Debt and Real Estate.

News

Munich — A team led by Prof. Dr. Georg Streit advi­sed HANS IM GLÜCK Fran­chise GmbH on the sale of the Hans im Glück burger chain. The former majo­rity share­hol­der AML Invest Treu­hand­ge­sell­schaft mbH sold and trans­fer­red its stake in HANS IM GLÜCK Fran­chise GmbH to a group of inves­tors. This group of inves­tors includes GAB Grundstücks‑, Finanzierungs‑, Verwal­tungs- und Betei­li­gungs GmbH, which has alre­ady been a mino­rity share­hol­der, and the foun­ders of the Back­werk bakery chain, Dr. Dirk Schnei­der and Dr. Hans-Chris­tian Limmer. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

The new share­hol­ders want above all to streng­then and further expand the fran­chise system. The two current mana­ging direc­tors Johan­nes Bühler and Jens Hall­bauer will remain with HANS IM GLÜCK Fran­chise GmbH.
In the months leading up to the tran­sac­tion, the Heuking team was entrus­ted with legal support, parti­cu­larly with regard to corpo­rate and M&A, in the context of a complex situa­tion and was invol­ved in multi-laye­red negotiations.

HANS IM GLÜCK was foun­ded in 2010 by Thomas Hirsch­ber­ger in Munich and most recently held via his family holding AML Invest Treu­hand­ge­sell­schaft mbH. With 81 stores, the brand is on course for growth. In 2019, HANS IM GLÜCK Fran­chise GmbH recor­ded its stron­gest sales growth since its foun­ding, with more than 147 million euros in exter­nal sales.

Advi­sors to HANS IM GLÜCK Fran­chise GmbH: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Prof. Dr. Georg Streit (Lead Part­ner, Restructuring)
Dr. Kai Büch­ler (Restruc­tu­ring),
Dr. Stephan Degen (Tax), all Munich

News

Hamburg — Asto­rius successfully closed its private equity fund of funds Asto­rius Capi­tal PE Fonds IV (“ACF IV”) at the maxi­mum size of 81 million euros. The invest­ment focus is tradi­tio­nally on buyout and growth stra­te­gies in the Euro­pean midmarket.

“Asto­rius Capi­tal PE Fund IV is our largest private equity product for semi-profes­sio­nal inves­tors to date, making it one of the most successful place­ments in this segment in the German market,” said Julien Zornig (photo), part­ner at Asto­rius Capi­tal. In addi­tion to many new inves­tors, a large propor­tion of repeat custo­mers are now among the subscri­bers who imple­ment the model of gradual port­fo­lio buil­ding with Astorius.

The total volume of ACF IV of 81 million euros repres­ents the most successful fund­rai­sing in the company’s history to date. “The signi­fi­cant increase in volume but also the high propor­tion of repeat subscri­bers shows that we have firmly estab­lished oursel­ves in the market as a fund of funds specia­list,” adds Zornig.

Attrac­tive portfolio
“The port­fo­lio is alre­ady almost fully inves­ted with six target funds,” explains part­ner Thomas Wein­mann. In addi­tion to four coun­try funds and two Pan-Euro­pean funds, at least one more target fund will be linked to close the invest­ment. A number of corpo­rate invest­ments have alre­ady been acqui­red by the target funds, and Asto­rius expects to acquire around 70 corpo­rate invest­ments at peak.
“The market envi­ron­ment remains posi­tive for medium-sized company invest­ments. The past few years have been charac­te­ri­zed by stable, attrac­tive purchase price levels, which is reflec­ted in the plea­sing results of the prede­ces­sor funds,” says Weinmann.

Chal­len­ging inves­tor environment
In addi­tion to private indi­vi­du­als, smal­ler insti­tu­tio­nal custo­mers and foun­da­ti­ons were again attrac­ted as inves­tors. “We have contin­ued to focus on the needs of our direct custo­mers and part­ners and are constantly acting on the latest legal requi­re­ments” under­lines Julien Zornig. In addi­tion, Thomas Wein­mann empha­si­zes that “the trans­pa­rency crea­ted by Asto­rius and the insti­tu­tio­nal selec­tion process, which we are conti­nuously impro­ving, remain a decisive factor.”

About Asto­rius
Asto­rius was foun­ded in Hamburg in 2012 and is now one of the leading German provi­ders of private equity invest­ment solu­ti­ons for semi-profes­sio­nal clients. The invest­ment and wealth experts offer inves­tors the oppor­tu­nity to invest in funds of funds laun­ched by Asto­rius. More than 900 Euro­pean fund mana­gers are evalua­ted for this purpose with the help of a proprie­tary data­base in an insti­tu­tio­nal analy­sis process.

The Asto­rius funds of funds successfully laun­ched to date invest exclu­si­vely in high-growth medium-sized compa­nies in Europe. Asto­rius also advi­ses family offices on their private equity invest­ments and invest­ment stra­te­gies. In this fast-growing busi­ness segment, the wealth and invest­ment profes­sio­nals recently mana­ged an invest­ment volume of more than 650 million euros.

News

Munich Janu­ary 2020 — Munich-based medi­cal tech­no­logy company Mecu­ris GmbH has successfully comple­ted a new finan­cing round of €3.6 million. In addi­tion to the seed inves­tors Bayern Kapi­tal and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF), the inter­na­tio­nal invest­ment company Mulcan, the life science venture capi­tal inves­tor Vesa­lius Bioca­pi­tal and Sana Klini­ken AG, one of the top five hospi­tal asso­cia­ti­ons in Germany, are again on board.

A clear yes from the ortho­pe­dic tech­no­logy indus­try to digitization
The Munich-based start-up has set out to revo­lu­tio­nize ortho­pe­dic tech­no­logy. The Mecu­ris Solu­tion Plat­form is the start­ing point for the decisive change process. This online plat­form repres­ents a digi­tal work­shop with which pati­ent-speci­fic pros­the­ses and ortho­ses can be desi­gned quickly and easily and reali­zed using 3D prin­ting. The digi­tal process chain behind it enables ortho­pe­dic tech­ni­ci­ans and users to work toge­ther to create a device that is opti­mi­zed in terms of color, shape and function.
The primary goal at Mecu­ris was initi­ally to fami­lia­rize ortho­pe­dic tech­no­logy with the online plat­form and to digi­tize tradi­tio­nal craft­sman­ship — where reason­ably possi­ble and time-saving. The company came a great deal closer to achie­ving this goal last year:

“The deve­lo­p­ment of Mecu­ris into a provi­der of digi­tal algo­rithms is now clearly accepted by part­ners in ortho­pe­dic pati­ent care as a step into the future. In order to consis­t­ently conti­nue on this path and due to the mile­sto­nes achie­ved in 2019, all inves­tors in the Series A round have deci­ded, as plan­ned, to conti­nue to provide the company with the neces­sary resour­ces,” says indus­try expert Johan­nes Schnei­der-Litt­feld, who took over the chair­man­ship of the Mecu­ris Advi­sory Board in the middle of the year.

In 2020, the field of ortho­tics will also be digitally
Mecu­ris will use the funds both to increase its pene­tra­tion of the Euro­pean market and to expand its plat­form in ortho­tics, which is sche­du­led for the end of March. From then on, the Digi­tal Prosthe­tic Work­shop for the crea­tion of indi­vi­dual pros­the­ses will be supple­men­ted by the Digi­tal Ortho­tic Work­shop. This provi­des the ortho­tist with a simple, intui­tive and, above all, time-saving option for crea­ting ortho­ses comple­tely or using partial steps in a web-based workflow.

About Mecu­ris GmbH
Mecu­ris works closely with certi­fied ortho­tists (OTs) to bring ortho­tics & prosthe­tics into the digi­tal age. By bund­ling 3D tech­no­lo­gies in a digi­tal work­shop, the online-based Mecu­ris Solu­tion Plat­form , Mecu­ris OTs offers the possi­bi­lity to design custo­mi­zed ortho­ses & pros­the­ses in a cost- and time-saving way. This makes their daily work much easier. OTs are enab­led on the plat­form to adapt product ideas to speci­fic pati­ents without CAD design know­ledge and to realize design wishes toge­ther with the user. This impro­ves the quality of life of the users enorm­ously: they have the chance to quickly become active again and live their indi­vi­dua­lity. Thanks to CE marking and ISO certi­fi­ca­tion, the products crea­ted in the Mecu­ris digi­tal work­shop meet the highest safety stan­dards and are reim­bur­sed by all health insu­rance compa­nies in Germany.

News

Eschborn/Nuremberg, Janu­ary 2020 — Rödl & Part­ner has advi­sed Smart AdSer­ver (Smart), a port­fo­lio company of Cathay Capi­tal on the acqui­si­tion of the global demand side plat­form Liqu­idM. Prior to its acqui­si­tion by Smart, Liqu­idM was part of the Bertels­mann Group. The current mana­ging direc­tors Phil­ipp Simon and Thomas Hille will conti­nue to support the Berlin-based company in this capacity.

With the acqui­si­tion of Liqu­idM, Smart aims to acce­le­rate its product deve­lo­p­ment and ther­eby better align supply and demand. With the help of LiquidM’s sophisti­ca­ted tech­no­logy, adver­ti­sers and digi­tal publishers will be able to achieve grea­ter finan­cial and opera­tio­nal effi­ci­ency. They are provi­ded with a bran­ded and data secure envi­ron­ment through the provi­sion of deal manage­ment, audi­ence acti­va­tion and data control. This allows them to further expand their program­ma­tic adver­ti­sing busi­ness with consu­mer privacy as a cornerstone.

About Liqu­idM
Liqu­idM is a self-service demand side plat­form (DSP) opera­ting world­wide. It enables agen­cies, adver­ti­sers and trading desks to achieve their marke­ting goals using the power and effi­ci­ency of program­ma­tic adver­ti­sing. As a full-stack demand side provi­der, Liqu­idM offers compre­hen­sive campaign manage­ment capa­bi­li­ties. With a clean and intui­tive user inter­face, Liqu­idM simpli­fies the process of defi­ning, scaling, opti­mi­zing and editing adver­ti­sing campaigns. Foun­ded in 2013 in Berlin, the company is one of the first DSPs on the market with exten­sive exper­tise in mobile adver­ti­sing, a more tech­ni­cally complex envi­ron­ment than desk­top advertising.

About Smart
Smart is the leading inde­pen­dent adver­ti­sing mone­tiza­tion plat­form. The fully trans­pa­rent plat­form and the shared inte­rest approach enable premium publishers and brands to receive a fair share of the ad value at any time on their terms. The holi­stic archi­tec­ture effi­ci­ently dove­tails direct and program­ma­tic adver­ti­sing inven­tory and empowers market­ers, publishers and website opera­tors to take complete control of all marke­ting chan­nels. Smart works directly with more than 1,000 publishers world­wide. Inter­na­tio­nally, Smart can count Finan­cial Times, Groupe Marie Claire, Trac­Fone, Le Figaro, Lebon­coin, Altice Media Publi­cité and IMGUR among its clients. Global provi­des smart display, video, rich media, and native adver­ti­sing for over 50,000 websites and apps. In German-spea­king count­ries, Smart works with most of the top AGOF publishers. The company opera­tes twelve offices world­wide and has estab­lished itself as a leading player in buil­ding a trans­pa­rent and high-quality ecosystem.

Consul­tant Smart AdSer­ver: Rödl & Partner
Jochen Reis, Part­ner, Photo (Head of Tran­sac­tion Services), Esch­born, Over­all Project Manage­ment — Financial
Simon Nieder­mann, Senior Asso­ciate (Tran­sac­tion Services), Esch­born — Financial
Michael Wiehl, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A), Nurem­berg — Legal
Jens Linhardt, Senior Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A), Nurem­berg — Legal
Sebas­tian Dittrich, Senior Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A), Nurem­berg — Legal
Dr. Chris­toph Kurz­böck, Asso­ciate Part­ner (Labor Law) — Legal
Marta Wiśniewska, Senior Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A), Nurem­berg — Legal
Juliane Krafft, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A), Nurem­berg — Legal
Florian Kaiser, Part­ner (Tax Law), Nurem­berg — Tax
Dr. Ramona Christ, Asso­ciate (Tax Law), Nurem­berg — Tax

News

Berlin — Shell Ventures has announ­ced an invest­ment in Berlin-based digi­tal freight forwar­der Inst­aFreight. The company said it wanted to “help shape the future of the Euro­pean trans­port market”. Follo­wing the funding round, Inst­aFreight will coope­rate with the new backer in expan­ding its digi­tal offe­rings for freight opera­tors in Europe, he said, aiming to further acce­le­rate the digi­tiza­tion of road freight and the trans­for­ma­tion of the freight market.

Most recently, the New York hedge fund 683 Capi­tal had inves­ted a double-digit million sum in Inst­afreight toge­ther with the exis­ting inves­tors. Instafreight’s target group is B2B custo­mers who want to send indi­vi­dual pallets or complete truck­loads on their way. Photo Inst­aFreight (left to right): Markus J. Doetsch, Chief Tech­no­logy Offi­cer, Phil­ipp Ortwein, Co-Foun­der and Mana­ging Direc­tor, Maxi­mi­lian Schae­fer, Co-Foun­der and Mana­ging Director.

Conti­nue growth
The bottom line is that fleet opera­tors are offe­red a conve­ni­ent way to get the right deal, track their vehic­les as they trans­port goods across Europe, and get paid quickly and relia­bly. “The freight forwar­ding indus­try is alre­ady under­go­ing a profound trans­for­ma­tion, in which digi­tal approa­ches are beco­ming more successful and more preva­lent,” belie­ves Phil­ipp Ortwein, Co-Foun­der and Mana­ging Direc­tor of Inst­aFreight. The company said it intends to use the capi­tal raised to conti­nue its rapid growth, further improve its tech­no­logy and make its services available to even more ship­pers and freight carri­ers across Europe.

Colla­bo­ra­tion in the further deve­lo­p­ment of services
By part­ne­ring with Inst­aFreight, SHELL aims to help carri­ers opti­mize their utiliza­tion with matching busi­ness, become more profi­ta­ble and provide them with real-time visi­bi­lity. Jermaine Saal­tink, Venture Prin­ci­pal of Shell Ventures, was convin­ced by the manage­ment team and the rapid growth that the digi­tal freight forwar­der has achie­ved in a short time. The coope­ra­tion should be more than a one-time finan­cial invest­ment. The two compa­nies will work closely toge­ther on the further deve­lo­p­ment of services. The part­ner­ship opens up the oppor­tu­nity to deve­lop new mobi­lity solu­ti­ons as well as expand and scale exis­ting trans­por­ta­tion solu­ti­ons and drive growth in freight brokerage in inter­na­tio­nal markets, Shell Ventures believes.

About Inst­afreight: The digi­tal freight forwarder
Inst­aFreight sees itself as a digi­tal freight forwar­der for road freight in Europe. Foun­ded in 2016, the company repor­tedly employs more than 100 people across Europe and carries out more than 5,000 trans­ports per month. The digi­tal plat­form bund­les the cargo space of more than 10,000 freight compa­nies, which ship­pers can access.

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

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