ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

London, Munich — Oakley Capi­tal Private Equity (“Oakley”), a leading Euro­pean private equity firm focu­sed on the mid-market segment, today announ­ced the opening of its Munich office. With this step, the invest­ment company under­lines the importance of the DACH region for its invest­ment activities.

The new office will be led by Dr. Ralf Schrem­per, Part­ner at Oakley Capi­tal. He joined Oakley in 2017 and has more than 15 years of M&A and corpo­rate invest­ment expe­ri­ence. Ralf Schrem­per is supported by a German-spea­king invest­ment team with exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the sectors in which Oakley specia­li­zes — consu­mer, educa­tion and TMT (tech­no­logy, media and telecommunications).

The office opening unders­cores Oakley’s successful invest­ment history in the German-spea­king region. Oakley’s current German invest­ments include Schü­ler­hilfe, a leading provi­der of profes­sio­nal tuto­ring services, and Career Part­ner Group, one of the leading full-service provi­ders of work­force deve­lo­p­ment and private higher education.

In the past, Oakley held stakes in the online dating plat­form Parship Elite and the online consu­mer portal Veri­vox, among others. These invest­ments were sold in 2018.

The Munich office will support Oakley’s stra­tegy to conti­nue to invest in mid-sized compa­nies in Western Europe and deli­ver conti­nuous value crea­tion through an exten­sive network of inter­na­tio­nal entre­pre­neurs and indus­try experts.

Ralf Schrem­per, Part­ner at Oakley Capi­tal: “We are deligh­ted to open Oakley’s first office outside the UK in Munich. As a growth inves­tor, there are a number of attrac­tive invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for us in Germany in our prefer­red sectors of Consu­mer, Educa­tion and TMT. With our new office in Munich, we are now ideally posi­tio­ned to realize further attrac­tive invest­ments in the DACH region.”

Peter Dubens, Mana­ging Part­ner and Co-Foun­der of Oakley Capi­tal, added: “Opening an office in Germany is a logi­cal step for Oakley, which will further streng­then our ability to create value through targe­ted invest­ments. We have alre­ady achie­ved signi­fi­cant success in the DACH region. With the opening of the new office, we intend to conti­nue on this path of success.”

About Oakley Capi­tal Private Equity L.P..
Oakley Capi­tal Private Equity L.P. and its succes­sor funds, Oakley Capi­tal Private Equity II and Oakley Capi­tal Private Equity III, are non-traded, mid-market focu­sed private equity funds whose objec­tive is to realize signi­fi­cant long-term capi­tal appre­cia­tion for their inves­tors. Oakley Capi­tal has 1.5 billion euros under manage­ment. The funds’ invest­ment stra­tegy focu­ses on corpo­rate invest­ments in indus­tries that offer the poten­tial for growth, conso­li­da­tion and perfor­mance improvement.

News

Munich — Munich-based startup BLICKFELD is deve­lo­ping sensors for self-driving cars — and has recei­ved milli­ons in new funding. Sensors are the basis for auto­no­mous cars. They make the vehic­les “see” by scan­ning the envi­ron­ment and provi­ding 3D images. The Munich-based startup Blick­feld promi­ses to offer a parti­cu­larly afforda­ble vari­ant. To do this, the startup relies on sili­con structures.

Recently, the company foun­ded in 2017 by Mathias Müller, Florian Petit and Rolf Wojtech (photo from left to right) recei­ved new money. The exis­ting inves­tors, Flix­bus inves­tor Unter­neh­mer­Tum Venture Capi­tal Part­ners, Fluxu­nit, the invest­ment arm of light­ing manu­fac­tu­rer Osram, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) and Tengel­mann Ventures have increased their invest­ment to 8.5 million euros. In a first round they had given 3.6 million euros.

The fresh capi­tal is to be used, among other things, for series produc­tion, which will start next year. The plan is to deli­ver “seve­ral hundred” sensors to custo­mers in the first half of 2019 as part of the initial pilot series, he said. The startup explains that it is curr­ently nego­tia­ting with major auto­mo­tive suppli­ers, among others. How much the first sensors produ­ced by Euro­pean manu­fac­tu­r­ers will cost has not yet been deter­mi­ned, they say. In the long term, the price should drop to a few hundred euros.
www.blickfeld.com

News

Wupper­tal — GESCO AG, listed in the Prime Stan­dard, has taken over Sommer & Strass­bur­ger GmbH & Co KG, Bretten. Foun­ded in 1973, the company designs and manu­fac­tures process plants, espe­ci­ally for the phar­maceu­ti­cal, food, water tech­no­logy and chemi­cal industries.

As a high-end stain­less steel proces­sor, Sommer & Strass­bur­ger has posi­tio­ned itself as a tech­no­lo­gi­cally leading supplier in the rele­vant custo­mer indus­tries with its own brands Asep­tra­Line, Filtra­Line and Membra­Line for process vessels, filter and membrane housings. At the ACHEMA trade fair in June 2018, the company also presen­ted the Resi­Line product line, a new type of corro­sion-resistant membrane housing made of poly­mer-coated stain­less steel for the passage of subs­tances with a high salt or chlo­rine content, for example.

GESCO AG takes over 100 % of the shares, the owner Michael Hilpp remains active in the company as mana­ging direc­tor. With around 125 employees, Sommer & Strass­bur­ger gene­ra­tes sales of just under €20 million. Within GESCO Group, the company is allo­ca­ted to the Produc­tion Process Tech­no­logy segment. The acqui­si­tion is subject to appr­oval by the anti­trust authorities.

Sommer & Strass­bur­ger has deca­des of expe­ri­ence, inten­sive mate­ri­als know-how and its own system deve­lo­p­ment. The company has the process engi­nee­ring exper­tise to under­stand its custo­mers’ proces­ses and deve­lop func­tion­ally relia­ble solu­ti­ons. A high level of verti­cal inte­gra­tion, inclu­ding in-house surface treat­ment, offers high-end quality for the respec­tive custo­mer industries.

Michael Hilpp: “In order to ensure the success and contin­ued exis­tence of my company, I have trans­fer­red it to an indus­trial group. In doing so, GESCO, as a long-term orien­ted owner, secu­res my succes­sion and actively supports me with its indus­trial exper­tise in the next growth steps. My company reta­ins its inde­pen­dence and at the same time bene­fits from the support of GESCO AG as well as from the exch­ange with its sister compa­nies — an ideal constel­la­tion in my opinion.”

Ralph Rumberg, Spokes­man of the Execu­tive Board of GESCO AG: “Sommer & Strass­bur­ger has consis­t­ently deve­lo­ped from a contract manu­fac­tu­rer to a focu­sed supplier with its own product range over the past 20 years. The company serves deman­ding custo­mers in attrac­tive markets with high-quality tech­no­logy — all in all, a true hidden cham­pion that is an excel­lent fit for GESCO Group. We look forward to inte­gra­ting Sommer & Strass­bur­ger quickly and actively deve­lo­ping it further toge­ther with Mr. Hilpp.”

About GESCO
GESCO AG is an indus­trial group with market and tech­no­logy leading compa­nies in the capi­tal goods indus­try with a focus on produc­tion process tech­no­logy, resource tech­no­logy, health and infra­struc­ture tech­no­logy and mobi­lity tech­no­logy. As a company listed in the Prime Stan­dard, GESCO AG gives private and insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors access to a port­fo­lio of hidden cham­pi­ons in the German indus­trial SME sector.

News

Munich — With Buil­ding Radar, ASTUTIA Ventures welco­mes a new company to its port­fo­lio. The Munich-based start-up offers a B2B plat­form for cons­truc­tion projects that allows suppli­ers and service provi­ders to search projects world­wide and iden­tify them at an early stage. In real time, Buil­ding Radar provi­des multi-laye­red data and infor­ma­tion across all design and cons­truc­tion phases, inclu­ding satel­lite imagery, analy­tics and indus­try trends. “We are looking forward to working with the foun­ders Paul Indin­ger and Leopold Neuerbur,” said Bene­dict Roden­stock (photo), foun­der and mana­ging direc­tor of ASTUTIA Ventures.

The Buil­ding Radar data analy­tics plat­form allows compa­nies to find out about all cons­truc­tion projects near them or around the world, track your compe­ti­tors’ next moves, or evaluate new stra­te­gic part­ner­ships. The satel­lite-assis­ted search algo­rithm makes it possi­ble to disco­ver new cons­truc­tion projects months earlier than compe­ti­tors, to verify data on projects (e.g. cons­truc­tion phase or buil­ding size) and to perform intel­li­gent real-time analy­ses, for exam­ple on indus­try trends.

About ASTUTIA Ventures
As an owner-mana­ged, inde­pen­dent invest­ment company, ASTUTIA Ventures has been inves­t­ing in inno­va­tive compa­nies with outstan­ding growth poten­tial for 10 years now. Our focus is on the Inter­net and digi­tal media. We offer foun­ders and compa­nies in the early growth phase venture capi­tal, a top-class inter­na­tio­nal network and cross-indus­try know-how for successful development.

News

Leip­zig — c‑LEcta, a leading global biotech­no­logy company focu­sed on enzyme engi­nee­ring and appli­ca­ti­ons in regu­la­ted markets such as the food and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries, has closed a finan­cing round with Capri­corn Venture Part­ners and the invest­ment company bm|t. The capi­tal increase provi­des the company with growth capi­tal as well as valuable access to an inter­na­tio­nal network.

c‑LEcta alre­ady has a diver­si­fied share­hol­der struc­ture. In addi­tion to the foun­der Dr. Marc Stru­halla, private inves­tors from the indus­try and German insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, the company has now been able to expand its circle of share­hol­ders with two new inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors. The lead inves­tor Capri­corn Venture Part­ners is an inde­pen­dent, inter­na­tio­nally orien­ted invest­ment company based in Leuven (Belgium). Capri­corn invests in inno­va­tive, tech­no­logy-driven compa­nies and has a multi­di­sci­pli­nary team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers. As part of the finan­cing round, Capri­corn parti­ci­pa­ted through two funds, Capri­corn Sustainable Chemis­try Fund NV and Quest for Growth NV.

The German invest­ment company bm|t invests in high-growth tech­no­logy compa­nies led by teams of entre­pre­neurs. bm|t inves­ted via MFT Mittel­stands-Fonds Thürin­gen GmbH & Co. KG. The new capi­tal will be used in parti­cu­lar to finance the appr­oval, market launch and scaling of products from the project pipe­line on a commer­cial scale, the further deve­lo­p­ment of the pipe­line and the expan­sion of inter­na­tio­nal sales.

Ludwig Goris, Invest­ment Mana­ger of Capri­corn, explains the invest­ment in c‑LEcta: “We see that global mega­trends and chal­lenges in human nutri­tion are paving the way for indus­trial biotech compa­nies like c‑LEcta. Since its incep­tion, c‑LEcta has built a remar­kable track record in tech­no­logy and product deve­lo­p­ment and has been able to vali­date this with a growing custo­mer base of leading phar­maceu­ti­cal, chemi­cal and food ingre­di­ent compa­nies. In addi­tion, the highly quali­fied team in Leip­zig convin­ced us.

Foun­der and CEO Dr. Marc Stru­halla and his moti­va­ted team have crea­ted a great company that is at an attrac­tive inflec­tion point where the current product pipe­line provi­des the foun­da­tion for an acce­le­ra­ted growth trajec­tory. We are proud to be instru­men­tal in this funding round and to contri­bute to c‑LEcta’s success.”

Kevin Reeder, CEO of bm|t (Photo), adds: “bm|t, which has an exten­sive life scien­ces port­fo­lio, is very opti­mi­stic about the invest­ment in c‑LEcta. We were very impres­sed by the strong team, the successful deve­lo­p­ment and the compel­ling product pipe­line. We believe c‑LEcta is well posi­tio­ned to tran­si­tion into a large biotech­no­logy company.” The two new inves­tors expand the group of share­hol­ders, which previously included the follo­wing inves­tors: SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment mbH, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds Manage­ment GmbH, KfW Banken­gruppe, Dr. Marc Stru­halla, Warning Betei­li­gungs GmbH, Dr. Bader Betei­li­gungs GmbH and Arthur Stein­metzBetei­li­gungs GmbH.

In order to streng­then the manage­ment as well as the execu­tive board and to support the targe­ted growth, Thomas Pfaadt (45) has recently been appoin­ted CFO at c‑LEcta. He enri­ches the company with his expe­ri­ence in corpo­rate finance and M&A. Previously, Thomas Pfaadt worked for a private, owner-opera­ted opera­tor of reha­bi­li­ta­tion clinics and for a family-owned inte­gra­ted health­care group. He also gained expe­ri­ence as an invest­ment banker and consul­tant focu­sed on the health­care indus­try. Thomas Pfaadt comm­ents on what attracts him to c‑LEcta: “c‑LEcta is a young, lean and dyna­mic company and at the same time a global player. We are addres­sing the major chal­lenges of modern human nutri­tion. A growing popu­la­tion and an incre­asing demand for healthy, natu­ral foods require solu­ti­ons through enzyme tech­no­lo­gies that the chemi­cal indus­try cannot provide. We are plea­sed to have attrac­ted the two new inves­tors to further deve­lop our company and seize the oppor­tu­ni­ties that present themselves.”

c‑LEcta is a fully inte­gra­ted biotech­no­logy company focu­sed on enzyme engi­nee­ring and biopro­cess deve­lo­p­ment for regu­la­ted markets such as the food and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries. c‑LEcta is based in Leip­zig and curr­ently employs around 60 people. The company is broadly posi­tio­ned and covers a large part of the value chain: the rese­arch and engi­nee­ring of enzy­mes through to commer­cial produc­tion as well as the manu­fac­ture of other high-quality biotech­no­lo­gi­cal products are part of c‑LEcta’s service reper­toire — either as in-house deve­lo­p­ments or in close coope­ra­tion with indus­trial part­ners. c‑LEcta has comple­ted more than 30 enzyme engi­nee­ring projects in the last 5 years with a success rate of >90%. Just a few weeks ago, c‑LEcta became the first company to announce a major breakth­rough in a process to mass produce a plant-based sweete­ner with a sugar-like flavor. In addi­tion, two other products with high market poten­tial are at an advan­ced stage of deve­lo­p­ment and the project pipe­line includes seve­ral promi­sing candi­da­tes for the multi-billion euro food ingre­di­ent market. The finan­cing is inten­ded to enable c‑LEcta to grow stron­gly and to

About c‑LEcta
c‑LEcta is a fully inte­gra­ted biotech­no­logy company focu­sed on enzyme engi­nee­ring and biopro­cess deve­lo­p­ment for regu­la­ted markets such as the food and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries. c‑LEcta is based in Leip­zig and curr­ently employs around 60 people. The company is broadly posi­tio­ned and covers a large part of the value chain: the rese­arch and engi­nee­ring of enzy­mes through to commer­cial produc­tion as well as the manu­fac­ture of other high-quality biotech­no­lo­gi­cal products are part of c‑LEcta’s service reper­toire — either as in-house deve­lo­p­ments or in close coope­ra­tion with indus­trial part­ners. c‑LEcta has comple­ted more than 30 enzyme engi­nee­ring projects in the last 5 years with a success rate of >90%. Just a few weeks ago, c‑LEcta became the first company to announce a major breakth­rough in a process to mass produce a plant-based sweete­ner with a sugar-like flavor. In addi­tion, two other products with high market poten­tial are at an advan­ced stage of deve­lo­p­ment and the project pipe­line includes seve­ral promi­sing candi­da­tes for the multi-billion euro food ingre­di­ent market. The funding is expec­ted to enable c‑LEcta to grow stron­gly and lift food ingre­di­ents out of the project pipe­line and into commer­cial produc­tion scale.

CEO Dr. Marc Stru­halla explains the core tech­no­logy of c‑LEcta and the capi­tal increase: “The perfor­mance requi­re­ments for enzy­mes used in indus­trial proces­ses are in most cases very speci­fic and diffe­rent from natu­rally occur­ring vari­ants. Enzy­mes ther­e­fore need to be adapted to indus­trial condi­ti­ons by enzyme engi­nee­ring and c‑LEcta has one of the most effi­ci­ent tech­no­logy plat­forms in this field. For enzyme opti­miza­tion as well as for the deve­lo­p­ment of arti­fi­cial enzyme acti­vi­ties, we use proprie­tary methods inspi­red by nature. The indus­trial appli­ca­tion of these tech­no­lo­gies holds great market poten­tial. The strong finan­cial base and valuable inter­na­tio­nal network we have gained through this finan­cing round now gives us the oppor­tu­nity to exploit the full poten­tial of our tech­no­lo­gies and our people. With Capri­corn Venture Part­ners and bm|t, we were able to bring on board two active inves­tors who can contri­bute signi­fi­cantly to our inter­na­tio­nal growth ambi­ti­ons. I am all the more plea­sed that Thomas Pfaadt will support us as our new CFO. Our goal is for c‑LEcta’s tech­no­lo­gies to be used in many things in ever­y­day life in the future.”

About Capri­corn Venture Partners
Capri­corn Venture Part­ners is an inde­pen­dent Euro­pean mana­ger of venture capi­tal and equity funds inves­t­ing in inno­va­tive Euro­pean compa­nies with a compe­ti­tive tech­no­lo­gi­cal advan­tage. It is based in Leuven (Belgium) and is licen­sed by the FSMA (Finan­cial Services and Markets Autho­rity in Belgium).

About bm|t
Erfurt-based bm|t betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment thürin­gen gmbh (bm|t) is the largest growth inves­tor in Thurin­gia. bm|t invests in inno­va­tive compa­nies with high growth poten­tial in all indus­tries and phases of the company life cycle.

About c‑LEcta
c‑LEcta is a fully inte­gra­ted, world-leading biotech­no­logy company focu­sed on enzyme engi­nee­ring and biopro­cess deve­lo­p­ment for regu­la­ted markets such as the food and phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­tries. The Leip­zig-based company has estab­lished itself as a leading provi­der in the realiza­tion of high-quality biotech­no­lo­gi­cal products, whether in in-house deve­lo­p­ments or in close coope­ra­tion with indus­try. c‑LEcta curr­ently employs around 60 people.

c‑LEcta deli­vers cost-effi­ci­ent and sustainable produc­tion proces­ses that open up new markets and enable better pene­tra­tion of exis­ting markets. The company excels in the rapid and effi­ci­ent deve­lo­p­ment of best-in-class biotech solu­ti­ons and the successful launch and commer­cia­liza­tion of the resul­ting products. This allows c‑LEcta to unleash the unique poten­tial of its core tech­no­lo­gies. c‑LEcta alre­ady has more than 10 successfully marke­ted, high-quality, indus­trial biotech products.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Gründerfonds(HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups with growth poten­tial. With a total volume of 892.5 million euros distri­bu­ted over three funds (272 million euros Fund I, 304 million euros Fund II, 316.5 million euros Fund III) and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has alre­ady supported 506 start-ups since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and startup experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the soft­ware, media and Inter­net sectors, as well as hard­ware, auto­ma­tion, health­care, chemi­cals and life scien­ces. More than €1.8 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in over 1,300 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. The fund has also successfully sold shares in more than 90 companies.

News

Frank­furt am Main — ALANTRA advi­sed United Digi­tal Group (UDG), a leading German digi­tal marke­ting agency, on the sale of its perfor­mance marke­ting divi­sion (M&PM) to Omni­com Media Group Germany GmbH. ALANTRA’s Frank­furt team supported UDG toge­ther with ALANTRA’s US TMT (Tech­no­logy, Media and Tele­coms) specia­lists in the imple­men­ta­tion of this stra­te­gic decis­ion. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant compe­ti­tion authorities.

As part of a struc­tu­red sales process, the ALANTRA team presen­ted the M&PM divi­sion to the world’s leading agency networks and consul­tancies as well as finan­cial inves­tors. The successful dive­st­ment unders­cores ALANTRA’s exten­sive expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in the digi­tal agency, digi­tal consul­ting and digi­tal marke­ting market, which is worth around $300 billion world­wide. This is ALANTRA’s third tran­sac­tion in this sector in Germany and the fifte­enth world­wide in the past five years. After the dives­ti­ture, M&PM will conti­nue to provide perfor­mance marke­ting services to UDG through a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Omni­com Media Group.

Marcus H. Starke, CEO of UDG United Digi­tal Group, said: “We are deligh­ted to have found the ideal new owner for M&PM in Omni­com Media Group. ALANTRA’s inte­gra­ted global team has been a valued part­ner in this process and has deli­vered on each of the objec­ti­ves we defi­ned for this mandate. ALANTRA’s deep indus­try exper­tise, successful posi­tio­ning of M&PM, and estab­lished rela­ti­onships with poten­tial acqui­rers clearly set them apart from the compe­ti­tion. UDG and M&PM’s manage­ment are extre­mely plea­sed with the outcome of the transaction.”

UDG’s M&PM divi­sion is one of the last remai­ning large and focu­sed perfor­mance marke­ting provi­ders and a premium part­ner of Google in Germany. It takes an inte­gra­ted approach to compre­hen­sive perfor­mance marke­ting solu­ti­ons with a focus on SEO, SEA, affi­liate, social media adver­ti­sing and digi­tal analy­tics. M&PM employs more than 150 people at three loca­ti­ons in Germany.

About Alan­tra
Alan­tra is a global invest­ment banking and asset manage­ment firm focu­sed on the mid-market segment with offices in Europe, the US, Asia and Latin America.
With over 300 experts, the Invest­ment Banking unit provi­des inde­pen­dent advice on M&A, corpo­rate finance, loan port­fo­lios and capi­tal market transactions.
The Asset Manage­ment unit mana­ges assets of around four billion euros in the asset clas­ses private equity, active funds, private debt, real estate and wealth management.

The successful dive­st­ment unders­cores ALANTRA’s exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the digi­tal agency, digi­tal consul­ting and digi­tal marke­ting market, which is worth around $300 billion world­wide. This is ALANTRA’s third tran­sac­tion in this sector in Germany and the fifte­enth world­wide in the past five years.

News

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) successfully comple­tes its invest­ment in Clean­part Group GmbH (Clean­part). It is selling its shares to Mitsu­bi­shi Chemi­cals Corpo­ra­tion (MCC), a Japa­nese conglo­me­rate that includes Shin­ryo, a compe­ti­tor of Clean­part. DBAG Fund VI, which is advi­sed by DBAG, and Clean­part Manage­ment are also selling their shares. Corre­spon­ding agree­ments were signed in August; their execu­tion is still subject to the appr­oval of the anti­trust autho­ri­ties. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close within the next three months. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

Clean­part (www.cleanpart.com) is a service company for the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try. The company services process-criti­cal compon­ents of machi­nes used predo­mi­nantly in the produc­tion of logic chips, memory chips and simi­lar compon­ents. These compon­ents must be regu­larly decon­ta­mi­na­ted, clea­ned and recoa­ted to meet the extreme clean­li­ness and perfor­mance requi­re­ments in the chip manu­fac­tu­r­ers’ produc­tion process. Compon­ents are serviced at the company’s own sites, which are loca­ted close to major custo­mers in Germany, France and the USA. The company employs 420 people; in 2017 Clean­part turned over just under 50 million euros.

DBAG and DBAG Fund VI had inves­ted in Clean­part in April 2015 as part of a succes­sion solu­tion for the family-owned company. In addi­tion to the regu­la­tion of the succes­sion, the tech­no­lo­gi­cal further deve­lo­p­ment as well as the focus on the busi­ness with the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try were objec­ti­ves of the invest­ment. For this reason, the company’s second busi­ness area, Health­care, was sold to a stra­te­gic buyer last year after a very successful deve­lo­p­ment. Despite the sale of the health care busi­ness, sales and the number of employees are signi­fi­cantly higher today than at the begin­ning of the investment.

“Clean­part is in a better posi­tion today than it was in 2015, for exam­ple due to the invest­ments that have been made in new tech­no­lo­gies in recent years in order to be able to serve parti­cu­larly deman­ding custo­mers,” said Tors­ten Grede, spokes­man for the DBAG Manage­ment Board; “the company has the best prere­qui­si­tes for deve­lo­ping well under its new owner.”

Commen­ting on the change of owner­ship,Dr. Udo Nothel­fer, Chair­man of Cleanpart’s Manage­ment Board, said, “MCC is the ideal part­ner for us and a good port of call, as both compa­nies comple­ment each other tech­no­lo­gi­cally and geogra­phi­cally.” Like Clean­part, MCC subsi­diary Shin­ryo is a service provi­der for the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try with a simi­lar port­fo­lio. Howe­ver, Shin­ryo mainly provi­des its services for other process steps in the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try. In addi­tion, the company is only active in Japan, Taiwan and China — precis­ely those regi­ons that Clean­part does not serve. Clean­part, in turn, will contri­bute its Ameri­can sites to the colla­bo­ra­tion in addi­tion to its Euro­pean busi­ness and will be able to leverage Shinryo’s strong market presence in Asia in the future. Toge­ther, Clean­part and Shin­ryo will be able to bene­fit from an expan­ded service port­fo­lio, such as Cleanpart’s mate­ri­als-speci­fic engi­nee­ring services and its offe­ring of indi­vi­dual compon­ents for its custo­mers’ machines.

The closing of the invest­ment in Clean­part is the second sale of a company from the DBAG Fund VI port­fo­lio. The fund had struc­tu­red eleven manage­ment buyouts between 2013 and 2016.

The portion of the proceeds from the sale now agreed upon attri­bu­ta­ble to DBAG exceeds the carry­ing amount of the invest­ment in the IFRS inte­rim finan­cial state­ments as of June 30, 2018. Although the dispo­sal will ther­e­fore result in a further contri­bu­tion to conso­li­da­ted earnings in the fourth quar­ter of 2017/2018, which ends on Septem­ber 30, 2018, the contri­bu­tion was predo­mi­nantly included in the fore­cast for the 2017/2018 conso­li­da­ted earnings of Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, which ther­e­fore remains unch­an­ged in view of the conti­nuing uncer­tain­ties regar­ding other factors influen­cing conso­li­da­ted earnings.

About DBAG
Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, a listed company, initia­tes closed-end private equity funds and invests along­side DBAG funds in well-posi­tio­ned medium-sized compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial. DBAG focu­ses on indus­trial sectors in which German SMEs are parti­cu­larly strong by inter­na­tio­nal stan­dards. With this expe­ri­ence, know-how and equity, it streng­thens the port­fo­lio compa­nies in imple­men­ting a long-term, value-enhan­cing corpo­rate stra­tegy. The entre­pre­neu­rial invest­ment approach makes DBAG a sought-after invest­ment part­ner in the German-spea­king region. The capi­tal mana­ged and advi­sed by the DBAG Group amounts to appro­xi­m­ately 1.8 billion euros.

News

Leverkusen/ Düssel­dorf — Bayer has signed an agree­ment with LEO Pharma for the sale of Bayer’s global prescrip­tion derma­to­logy busi­ness. The port­fo­lio to be acqui­red includes bran­ded prescrip­tion products for the topi­cal treat­ment of acne, fungal skin infec­tions and rosacea, as well as a range of topi­cal stero­ids with annual sales of over EUR 280 million (2017).

LEO Pharma will acquire the world­wide product rights except for Afgha­ni­stan and Paki­stan and will take over the sales and marke­ting orga­niza­tion in 14 count­ries as well as a produc­tion faci­lity in Segrate, Italy. In total, around 450 employees will trans­fer to LEO Pharma as part of the tran­sac­tion. The acqui­si­tion is subject to the fulfill­ment of custo­mary closing condi­ti­ons, inclu­ding clearance by the compe­ti­tion authorities.

Advi­sors to Bayer: Henge­ler Muel­ler advi­ses Bayer on the transaction
The part­ners Dr. Chris­tian Wentrup (photo ) and Dr. Matthias Hent­zen (both lead, M&A/Corporate), Dr. Thors­ten Mäger (Anti­trust) (all Düssel­dorf) as well as Coun­sel Dr. Gunther Wagner (Tax, Munich) and Asso­cia­tes PD Dr. Gerrit Forst, Dr. Florian Hass­ner and Richard Suer­mann (all M&A/Corporate, Düssel­dorf) are active.

News

Bonn, Munich — As the first seed inves­tor in the Munich-based fintech startup givve, HTGF sells its shares to the French, inter­na­tio­nally opera­ting, Up group in a multi-million exit.
Foun­ded in 2010, the sale will give the startup a much larger deve­lo­p­ment oppor­tu­nity in the finan­cial services sector. As a tech­no­lo­gi­cal market leader, givve has been able to gene­rate enorm­ous value deve­lo­p­ment and win well-known custo­mers since 2016.

givve: More than 250,000 card users in Germany
Fintech givve is alre­ady estab­lished in the employee loyalty market in Germany: More than 6,000 corpo­rate custo­mers use the givve cards. This works like a prepaid card that employ­ers can use to reward their employees while also enjoy­ing tax bene­fits for non-cash bene­fits. There are alre­ady more than 250,000 card users in Germany.

Up group offers loyalty programs, incen­tive and payment solu­ti­ons, among others. The Up group employs more than 3,400 people. The parent company is a cooperative.

givve tech­no­logy: machine lear­ning and auto­ma­ted payment processing
Above all, the inte­gra­tion at the Up group offers givve grea­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties for deve­lo­p­ment. The tech­no­logy deve­lo­ped in-house by givve includes auto­ma­ted payment auction matching proces­ses that save staff capa­city in payment proces­sing. Moreo­ver, these proces­ses are constantly impro­ving through machine learning.

Until now, givve tech­no­logy has only been used in the area of employee reten­tion. The Up group offers a much wider range of services, which opens up a grea­ter variety of possi­ble applications.

Up goup: New stra­te­gic investor
The acqui­si­tion by the Up group will not change anything for givve custo­mers for the time being. And the brand will also be retai­ned for the time being.

Patrick Löff­ler, Co-Foun­der and CEO of givve: “We could­n’t think of a better stra­te­gic inves­tor than the Up group. Not only do they under­stand our busi­ness very well, they are also active in far more busi­ness areas than we are. givve will bene­fit greatly from this large network and the exper­tise it provides.”

HTGF: Seed inves­tor reco­gni­zes technology’s poten­tial early on
HTGF reco­gni­zed the promi­sing FinTech tech­no­logy in givve at an early stage and sees the FinTech and block­chain sector as an incre­asingly signi­fi­cant and growing market with high deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial in the future.

Jens Baum­gärt­ner, Invest­ment Mana­ger of HTGF: “The foun­ding team has always convin­ced through the conti­nuous pursuit of long-term and stra­te­gic busi­ness goals. The tran­sac­tion comes at exactly the right time and opens up enorm­ous oppor­tu­ni­ties for the team to grow even faster with their mature technology.”

About givve
The company was foun­ded in 2010 by Patrick Löff­ler (CEO) and Alex­an­der Klai­ber (CTO). The givve prepaid credit card is the most flexi­ble voucher in the world and can be used at more than 30 million accep­tance points around the globe.

As a mone­tary addi­tio­nal bene­fit from the employer, the givve prepaid credit card is a smart way to increase wages. Compa­nies have the option of provi­ding their employees with tax-free bene­fits in kind amoun­ting to 44 euros. With the givve card, which can be desi­gned in the company’s corpo­rate design, employees can use this amount as they wish. Thus, givve offers compa­nies an advan­ced and sustainable tool for employee reten­tion and moti­va­tion as well as for incre­asing employer attrac­ti­ve­ness and is employee moti­va­tion that pays off. www.givve.com

About Up group
Up connects people, compa­nies and regi­ons by deve­lo­ping manage­ment, rela­ti­onship and tran­sac­tion plat­forms. Up deve­lops inte­gra­ted solu­ti­ons that meet the needs of diffe­rent part­ners, custo­mers and users. Up faci­li­ta­tes access to food, culture, leisure, educa­tion, home care, social assis­tance, expense manage­ment, and incen­tive and loyalty systems through its solu­ti­ons. With 3,465 employees and opera­ti­ons in 19 count­ries, Up is present in the daily lives of 26.6 million people world­wide. In 2017, total sales amoun­ted to 494 million euros. Up is an inde­pen­dent group whose parent company is a coope­ra­tive and parti­ci­pa­tory company. www.up.coop

News

Frank­furt a. M. ‑The High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) invests a high six-figure amount in the rapid control engi­nee­ring startup Ineco­sys. Ineco­sys GmbH supports its custo­mers in the imple­men­ta­tion of embedded projects through the Rapid Series Deve­lo­p­ment plat­form (RSD). Rese­arch and pre-deve­lo­p­ment results are gene­ra­ted in a conti­nuous and agile process on Rapid Control Proto-Typing systems and then trans­fer­red to the requi­re­ments of the final series product. As a result, custo­mers achieve signi­fi­cantly acce­le­ra­ted time to market while redu­cing over­all deve­lo­p­ment costs.

Acce­le­ra­ted deve­lo­p­ment with lower embedded hard­ware costs Agility, acce­le­ra­ted time-to-market and digi­ta­liza­tion are just a few of the chal­lenges facing compa­nies today. Ineco­sys GmbH supports its custo­mers in the imple­men­ta­tion of embedded projects and offers with RSD a plat­form to reduce over­all project costs and acce­le­rate the time to market. The range of services offe­red by Ineco­sys GmbH extends from the provi­sion of the plat­form and the imple­men­ta­tion of the process to deve­lo­p­ment services and series produc­tion. So far, Ineco­sys has mainly coun­ted compa­nies from the auto­mo­tive sector among its well-known customers.

Deve­lo­p­ment of the plat­form and addres­sing new markets
With the seed invest­ment, HTGF is finan­cing the deve­lo­p­ment of the RSD process and the under­ly­ing embedded hard­ware. With this new plat­form, addi­tio­nal custo­mers from the mecha­ni­cal and plant engi­nee­ring, produc­tion, energy and cons­truc­tion machi­nery sectors will be addres­sed in addi­tion to exis­ting customers.

“Our custo­mers deve­lop very complex and cost-inten­sive devices and systems in small quan­ti­ties and have high demands on the under­ly­ing control units. Often, howe­ver, without having suffi­ci­ent deve­lo­p­ment resour­ces of their own available for this,” says Thomas Zimmer one of the mana­ging direc­tors of Ineco­sys. “We support our custo­mers with our tools and process in the deve­lo­p­ment of embedded compon­ents and complete systems,” Zimmer added. The aim is to quickly and easily trans­fer the know-how from rese­arch and pre-deve­lo­p­ment to series deve­lo­p­ment, thus offe­ring the custo­mer the afore­men­tio­ned time and cost advantages.

Gregor Haidl, Invest­ment Mana­ger of HTGF, adds: “The skills and profes­sio­na­lism of the team in combi­na­tion with a good product idea and posi­tive refe­ren­ces from previous custo­mer projects have convin­ced us. Ineco­sys GmbH’s end-to-end rapid series deve­lo­p­ment plat­form provi­des an important corner­stone for auto­ma­ting ECU deve­lo­p­ment, which is still very manual in some cases, in the future.”

About Ineco­sys
Ineco­sys GmbH was foun­ded in 2014 by three PhD students from the Chair of Combus­tion Engi­nes at the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich. The foun­ders brought their exper­tise in test bench control and rapid control proto­ty­p­ing to the company during ECU deve­lo­p­ment. Self-finan­ced, Ineco­sys GmbH worked in the field of rese­arch and pre-deve­lo­p­ment for various well-known custo­mers. Alre­ady, their custo­mers have been able to achieve signi­fi­cant time and cost advan­ta­ges by using rapid control proto­ty­p­ing during the early stages of product deve­lo­p­ment. www.inecosys.de

About High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF)
The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start­ups with growth poten­tial. With a total volume of 892.5 million euros distri­bu­ted across three funds (272 million euros Fund I, 304 million euros Fund II, 316.5 million euros Fund III) and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has alre­ady shaped 500 start­ups into compa­nies since 2005. His team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and startup experts accom­pa­nies the deve­lo­p­ment of the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the soft­ware, media and Inter­net sectors, as well as hard­ware, auto­ma­tion, health care, chemi­cals and life scien­ces. More than €1.5 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in over 1,200 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. The fund has successfully sold shares in more than 90 companies.

Inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the busi­ness enter­pri­ses ALTANA, BASF, Bay- er, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim, B.Braun, Robert Bosch, BÜFA, CEWE, Deut­sche Post DHL, Dräger, Dril­lisch AG, EVONIK, EWE AG, Haniel, Hettich, Knauf, Körber, LANXESS, media + more venture Betei­li­gungs GmbH & Co. KG, PHOENIX CONTACT, Post­bank, QIAGEN, RWE Gene­ra­tion SE, SAP, Schufa, Schwarz Gruppe, STIHL, Thüga, Vector Infor­ma­tik, WACKER and Wilh. Werhahn KG.
www.high-tech-gruenderfonds.de

News

Mohnheim/ Frank­furt a. M. — UCB S.A. has sold its subsi­diary UCB Innere Medi­zin to Para­gon Part­ners. DC Advi­sory advi­sed UCB S.A. on the transaction.

UCB Inn ere Medi­zin (“Inter­nal Medi­cine”), which has been opera­ting as an inde­pen­dent busi­ness unit of UCB since March 2016, has been successfully marke­ting drugs in the field of cardio­vas­cu­lar and respi­ra­tory dise­a­ses in Germany for many years and is mainly known among gene­ral prac­ti­tio­ners and specia­lists in inter­nal medicine.

In line with its global stra­tegy, the sale of Inter­nal Medi­cine will enable UCB to focus on its core busi­ness in neuro­logy, immu­no­logy as well as bone dise­a­ses to provide the best solu­ti­ons for people with severe chro­nic diseases.

Para­gon Part­ners(“Para­gon”) will acquire Inter­nal Medi­cine and its entire staff of appro­xi­m­ately 200 employees and will operate Inter­nal Medi­cine as an inde­pen­dent company. Para­gon intends to conti­nue its successful busi­ness model and stra­te­gic orien­ta­tion, as well as to further deve­lop and expand its busi­ness. Inter­nal Medi­cine will operate under a new name, which will be announ­ced shortly after the tran­sac­tion closes. The company’s head­quar­ters will remain the “Crea­tive Campus” in Monheim am Rhein.

“I am convin­ced that Para­gon is the ideal choice to drive the deve­lo­p­ment of inter­nal medi­cine. I would like to thank the entire team for the work they have done at UCB and wish ever­yone every success in the new era as a comple­tely inde­pen­dent orga­niza­tion,” said Johan­nes Leuchs, Head of Estab­lished Brands UCB. “We are grateful for UCB’s contri­bu­tion to the success of inter­nal medi­cine. Now we look forward to joining the Para­gon family. This is an exci­ting oppor­tu­nity for Inter­nal Medi­cine and its employees,” added Karl­heinz Gast, CEO of Inter­nal Medi­cine. “We see great poten­tial for Inter­nal Medi­cine and look forward to the next stage,” confirmed Dr. Edin Hadzic, Mana­ging Part­ner at Para­gon. “We have confi­dence in Mr. Gast and his team and are exci­ted to conti­nue to grow the company together.”

Through its local presence in Europe, Asia and the US, DC Advi­sory was able to successfully orchest­rate a selec­tive auction process. “We are very plea­sed to have found a suita­ble part­ner for Inter­nal Medi­cine and wish Karl­heinz Gast and his team all the best for the next growth phase of Inter­nal Medi­cine,” expres­sed Dr. Wolf­gang Kazmie­row­ski, Mana­ging Direc­tor at DC Advi­sory.

Subject to anti­trust clearance, the tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to be comple­ted by the end of Septem­ber 2018. Both parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the transaction.

About DC Advisory
We advise our clients on all aspects of company acqui­si­ti­ons and sales. In addi­tion, we provide ongo­ing support to company owners and mana­gers in deve­lo­ping and imple­men­ting their busi­ness stra­tegy to help their compa­nies achieve opti­mal growth. Our exten­sive expe­ri­ence and indus­try know­ledge, as well as our sound judgment, provide our clients with real compe­ti­tive advan­ta­ges. www.dcadvisory.com

News

Frank­furt am Main — The current indus­try survey conduc­ted by Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) on the subject of secon­dary buyouts produ­ced the follo­wing result: a) Secon­dary buyouts are attrac­tive despite lower expec­ted returns, b) there is a strong focus on buy-and-build stra­te­gies and internationalization.

The deve­lo­p­ment of new custo­mer groups and busi­ness areas as well as the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of the busi­ness are the most promi­sing value levers for private equity compa­nies when they acquire a medium-sized company as a second finan­cial inves­tor. Howe­ver, even in times of stron­gly deve­lo­ped know­ledge of various value enhance­ment stra­te­gies, the return poten­tial of so-called secon­dary and tertiary buy-outs is lower than when a finan­cial inves­tor invests in a company for the first time. This is shown by the 6th Midmar­ket Private Equity Moni­tor, for which FINANCE maga­zine surveys invest­ment mana­gers of around 50 private equity houses opera­ting in Germany every six months on behalf of Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) on trends in the German midmar­ket segment.

Nearly four out of five experts (79 percent) said in the latest survey that secon­dary and tertiary buyouts in the midmar­ket promise lower returns than prima­ries — compa­nies that have not previously been owned by another private equity firm. Nevert­hel­ess, such tran­sac­tions are expe­ri­en­cing an upswing: last year, in more than half of the buyouts in the German SME sector (19 out of 35 tran­sac­tions), finan­cial inves­tors were active on both sides, i.e. as sellers and as buyers; this is a new record.

In view of the fact that more and more capi­tal from insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors is looking for invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, thus incre­asing compe­ti­tion for invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, the high propor­tion of secon­da­ries is hardly surpri­sing. “Such tran­sac­tions have long been estab­lished and are also accepted by the inves­tors in our funds,” says Tors­ten Grede (photo), Spokes­man of the Board of Manage­ment of Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG; “they are a sign of the incre­asing matu­rity of the German private equity market and defi­ni­tely offer advan­ta­ges,” Grede conti­nues. “Tran­sac­tions between finan­cial inves­tors are often easier to struc­ture because both part­ners know the market prac­ti­ces. Manage­ment has alre­ady proven its entre­pre­neu­rial exper­tise and has gained expe­ri­ence with corpo­rate gover­nance, which a private equity part­ner brings to the table.”

85 percent of those now surveyed said that prior to a Secon­dary, opera­tio­nal control had alre­ady been impro­ved in the company through KPI-based report­ing. 64 percent observe that working capi­tal has been redu­ced. Costs in procu­re­ment are also alre­ady being redu­ced in the Primary, accor­ding to the majority.

Nevert­hel­ess, there remain suffi­ci­ent start­ing points for the second or even the third finan­cial inves­tor to deve­lop the compa­nies further. Stra­te­gies that used to be common, such as finan­cial engi­nee­ring or split­ting up compa­nies, have long since ceased to play a decisive role anyway. “An incre­asing number of private equity firms have a stron­ger focus on more complex value crea­tion stra­te­gies,” said DBAG board spokes­man Grede.

Three quar­ters see the grea­test poten­tial for value enhance­ment in SME follow-up invest­ments in expan­sion into new custo­mer groups and busi­ness areas. 67 percent also cite the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of the busi­ness as a value lever that is parti­cu­larly well suited to secon­da­ries. In addi­tion, 48 percent said they often still needed to inte­grate add-on acqui­si­ti­ons made under the aegis of the first private equity partner.

A look at the recur­ring ques­ti­ons shows that the vast majo­rity of houses in middle-market private equity also gene­rally rely on buy-and-build stra­te­gies. At 79 percent, this conti­nues to be by far the most highly rated value enhance­ment method — regard­less of whether it is an initial or follow-on invest­ment. Private equity inves­tors bene­fit from the fact that there are still many highly frag­men­ted markets, espe­ci­ally in the midmar­ket, in which strong market leaders with high profi­ta­bi­lity can be estab­lished through acqui­si­ti­ons in a rela­tively short time. When acqui­si­ti­ons of smal­ler compa­nies are made at lower valua­tions, the price of the entire tran­sac­tion can be redu­ced in this way: “This is also a response to the price deve­lo­p­ment we have seen in recent years,” comm­ents CEO Grede, “and is repre­sen­ta­tive of the private equity industry’s ability to adapt to chan­ging market conditions.”

The longi­tu­di­nal data of the survey also show that, irre­spec­tive of the tran­sac­tion type, inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion (curr­ently by 52 percent of respond­ents) and the stra­te­gic expan­sion of addi­tio­nal busi­nesses and services (46 percent) conti­nue to be conside­red attrac­tive, even among compa­nies that have alre­ady been in the hands of an invest­ment company.

Nevert­hel­ess, prima­ries conti­nue to offer the most start­ing points for initia­ting stra­te­gic further deve­lo­p­ment and reali­zing value enhance­ment poten­tial. “Those who can close as many such tran­sac­tions as possi­ble will have an advan­tage over their compe­ti­tors,” says board spokes­man Grede. DBAG has struc­tu­red five buyouts in the past twelve months. Four of them were Prima-ries, in which the respec­tive company foun­ders were the sale­s­peo­ple. The fifth new invest­ment concer­ned a company that had previously been in the hands of other finan­cial investors.

About Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG
Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, a listed company, initia­tes closed-end private equity funds and invests along­side DBAG funds in well-posi­tio­ned medium-sized compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial. DBAG focu­ses on indus­trial sectors in which German SMEs are parti­cu­larly strong by inter­na­tio­nal stan­dards. With this expe­ri­ence, know-how and equity, it streng­thens the port­fo­lio compa­nies in imple­men­ting a long-term, value-enhan­cing corpo­rate stra­tegy. The entre­pre­neu­rial invest­ment approach makes DBAG a sought-after invest­ment part­ner in the German-spea­king region. The capi­tal mana­ged and advi­sed by the DBAG Group amounts to appro­xi­m­ately 1.8 billion euros.

News

Frankfurt/Munich — Digi­tal+ Part­ners, the specia­list in growth capi­tal for the bene­fit of fast-growing tech­no­logy compa­nies, has successfully closed a signi­fi­cant growth fund for B2B tech­no­logy compa­nies with a sum of €350 million. Digi­tal+ Part­ners thus signi­fi­cantly excee­ded the origi­nal target volume of €300 million and reached the hard cap. Digi­tal+ Part­ners will thus make an important contri­bu­tion to closing the growth capi­tal gap in Germany and the DACH region.

The fund successfully intro­du­ces an important asset class for growth finan­cing of compa­nies with proven tech­no­lo­gies to the German market, as Digi­tal+ Part­ners can invest up to €50 million each, inclu­ding follow-on finan­cing, in young and high-growth “busi­ness-to-busi­ness” (B2B) compa­nies from the indus­trial and finan­cial services sectors.

Port­fo­lio alre­ady includes six attrac­tive growth compa­nies The fund invests in compa­nies that are active in the attrac­tive B2B market segment and are deve­lo­ping promi­sing tech­no­lo­gies in the areas of Inter­net of Things (IoT), data analy­tics or arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. “We support young inno­va­tive compa­nies that have the poten­tial to trans­form core indus­tries,” says Patrick Beitel (photo 5th from right), one of the four foun­ding part­ners of Digi­tal+ Part­ners and adds: “Germany has an excel­lent tech­no­logy ecosys­tem for a B2B tech­no­logy growth fund with strong compa­nies, high rese­arch spen­ding and inno­va­tive rese­arch alli­ances. We want to leverage these growth oppor­tu­ni­ties for promi­sing tech­no­logy compa­nies and our investors.”

“We see great poten­tial in finan­cing more mature German tech­no­logy start-ups,” explains Thomas Jetter (photo 3rd from left), also a foun­ding part­ner of Digi­tal+ Part­ners. “Growth finan­cing remains under­de­ve­lo­ped in Germany. We esti­mate the finan­cing gap at more than one billion euros per year. Venture and growth inves­tors in the USA invest around 60 times as much money in young tech­no­logy compa­nies as compa­ra­ble inves­tors in Germany,” adds Axel Krie­ger (photo 2nd from left), also a foun­ding part­ner of Digi­tal+ Part­ners.

Digi­tal+ Part­ners targets over 500 out of seve­ral thousand growth compa­nies each year and compre­hen­si­vely analy­zes around 100 compa­nies. “We finance young compa­nies that have func­tio­ning busi­ness models, inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies and rapid growth, and alre­ady have a broad custo­mer base,” says Dirk Schmücking (photo 7th from right), also a foun­ding part­ner.

Digi­tal+ Part­ners has alre­ady inves­ted over €60 million in six investments:
— Star­mind, an Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence-based cloud plat­form for the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of experts and know­ledge docu­men­ta­tion in companies;
— riskme­thods, a SaaS solu­tion for enter­prise risk manage­ment of inter­na­tio­nal supply chains;
— NavVis, an inno­va­tive provi­der for the digi­tiza­tion of indus­trial inte­ri­ors and the crea­tion of “digi­tal twins”;
— moving­i­mage, a leading SaaS provi­der of a video plat­form for compa­nies for the effi­ci­ent manage­ment and distri­bu­tion of moving images;
- order­bird, a leading provi­der of cloud-based payments soft­ware in the hos- pita­lity segment;
— Cell­con­trol, a “machine vision” plat­form to prevent cell phone distrac­tion in work proces­ses and vehicle guidance.

The growth capi­tal specia­list not only provi­des equity capi­tal, but also its know-how and network through close coope­ra­tion with foun­ders, inves­tors and other compa­nies. Digi­tal+ Part­ners thus helps its port­fo­lio compa­nies to profes­sio­na­lize and scale, for exam­ple as a spar­ring part­ner for buil­ding profes­sio­nal proces­ses for HR manage­ment and recrui­ting as well as sales and tech­no­logy development.

The fund’s inves­tors include leading insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors and tech­no­logy compa­nies as well as tech­no­logy-savvy family offices from Germany, Europe, the USA and Asia. The Euro­pean Invest­ment Fund (EIF) and KfW also parti­ci­pa­ted in the fund. The funds inves­ted by the EIF and KfW come from the Euro­pean Reco­very and Recon­s­truc­tion Program (ERP). EIF funds also come from LfA — Gesell­schaft für Vermö­gens­ver­wal­tung mbH and from the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) supported by the Euro­pean Union in the form of the Euro­pean Fund for Stra­te­gic Invest­ments (EFSI), the core of the Invest­ment Plan for Europe.

Digi­tal+ Part­ners has a strong network of indus­try and tech­no­logy experts Digi­tal+ Part­ners was foun­ded in July 2015 by the expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment, finance, indus­try and stra­tegy experts Patrick Beitel, Thomas Jetter, Axel Krie­ger and Dirk Schmücking. The foun­ding part­ners have excel­lent inter­na­tio­nal networks in the areas of digi­tiza­tion of tradi­tio­nal indus­trial sectors and the finan­cial indus­try. The company is supported by indus­try part­ners who have exten­sive expe­ri­ence in scaling tech­no­logy compa­nies. Further­more, the company is advi­sed by an Advi­sory Board consis­ting of expe­ri­en­ced profes­sio­nals from the fields of finan­cial services, tech­no­logy and strategy.

About Digi­tal+ Partners
Digi­tal+ Part­ners is a specia­list in growth capi­tal for fast-growing tech­no­logy compa­nies for B2B solu­ti­ons in the indus­trial and finan­cial services sectors in Germany and inter­na­tio­nally. Digi­tal+ Part­ners plays an important role in the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion of core German indus­tries. In addi­tion to provi­ding growth capi­tal, Digi­tal+ Part­ners brings exten­sive exper­tise to best support its port­fo­lio compa­nies in imple­men­ting their growth trajec­tory. www.dplus.partners

News

Basel, Switzerland/Berlin, Germany — German-Swiss PropTech company Allt­hings closes its Series A finan­cing with 13.7 million Swiss francs. In addi­tion to lead inves­tors Early­bird, Idin­vest andKing­s­tone Capi­tal Part­ners, exis­ting inves­tors Crea­thor Ventures, Tech­no­logy Funds as well as current advi­sors are parti­ci­pa­ting. The capi­tal will be used to further deve­lop the plat­form and drive expan­sion within Europe.

Allt­hings trans­forms buil­dings into digi­tal products. The plat­form gives buil­ding users access to digi­tal services that make ever­y­day life easier, connect people and improve commu­ni­ca­tion. Property owners bene­fit from unpre­ce­den­ted trans­pa­rency in buil­dings, neigh­bor­hoods and entire port­fo­lios. Thanks to the modu­lar and open struc­ture of the Allt­hings plat­form, third-party services can be inte­gra­ted at will, as in an app store for buildings.

“The real estate indus­try is just start­ing to adapt to the digi­tal age and holds great poten­tial. Allt­hings inte­gra­tes all parties such as owners, asset mana­gers, property mana­gers, service provi­ders and tenants on one plat­form. This funda­men­tally impro­ves value crea­tion and enables the real estate sector to make data-driven decis­i­ons,” said Dr. Fabian Heile­mann, Part­ner at Earlybird.

“One way to make cities smar­ter is to start with the buil­dings. Connec­ting all parties of a buil­ding and offe­ring a variety of digi­tal services increa­ses the quality of life and work. This is what Allt­hings does very successfully and ther­e­fore fits perfectly into our smart city stra­tegy,” says Matthieu Bonamy, senior invest­ment direc­tor at Idinvest.

Curr­ently, more than 100 medium to large real estate compa­nies in Switz­er­land, Germany, Austria, France, Portu­gal and the Nether­lands use the plat­form as part of their digi­tiza­tion stra­tegy. “Just as in other indus­tries before, property owners now want to take control and manage the rela­ti­onship with their custo­mers. We help them do that in a scalable and modu­lar way. With our new inves­tors, we are taking the next steps on our jour­ney — for a better life in buil­dings,” said Marc Beer­mann, COO and co-foun­der of Allthings.

About Allt­hings
Allt­hings trans­forms buil­dings into digi­tal products. The company was foun­ded in Basel in 2013 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich and has loca­ti­ons in Basel, Berlin, Frank­furt am Main and Frei­burg im Breis­gau. The 60-member team aims to improve indoor living in a sustainable way. A digi­tal pioneer in the indus­try, Allt­hings has won nume­rous awards and counts some of Europe’s largest real estate compa­nies among its clients. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.allthings.me.

About Early­bird
Early­bird is a venture capi­tal inves­tor focu­sed on tech­no­logy compa­nies in Europe. Foun­ded in 1997, the capi­tal provi­der focu­ses on invest­ments in various growth phases of corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment and offers its port­fo­lio compa­nies not only finan­cial resour­ces, but also stra­te­gic and opera­tio­nal support as well as access to an inter­na­tio­nal network and the capi­tal market. Early­bird mana­ges funds in the areas of digi­tal tech­no­lo­gies in Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in Health Technologies.
With over €1 billion in capi­tal under manage­ment, seven IPOs and 22 trade sales, Early­bird is one of the most expe­ri­en­ced and successful Euro­pean venture capi­ta­lists. www.earlybird.com

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 Dubai. The company has three busi­ness units: Private Funds Group, Private Debt and Venture & Growth Capi­tal. The company was foun­ded in 1997 as part of the Alli­anz Group and has been inde­pen­dent since 2010. In Janu­ary 2018, Idin­vest Part­ners merged with Eura­zeo. The merger has crea­ted a leading invest­ment company in Europe and North America with 15 billion euros in assets under manage­ment. www.idinvest.com.

About King­s­tone Capi­tal Partners
King­s­tone Capi­tal Part­ners GmbH (KCP) is an inde­pen­dent and family-owned real estate invest­ment manage­ment & PropTech invest­ment company. KCP offers its inves­tors a “one-stop-shop” solu­tion for Euro­pean real estate invest­ments (focus on Germany as well as CEE). King­s­tone Capi­tal Part­ners is also an active inves­tor and advi­sor in the PropTech start-up space in Europe and the US. KCP takes a pro-active share­hol­der approach and supports ventures with cont­acts, real estate exper­tise and access to decis­ion makers in the industry.

About Crea­thor Ventures
Crea­thor Ventures invests in tech­no­logy-driven, high-growth compa­nies at all stages of their deve­lo­p­ment, parti­cu­larly in the areas of Specia­li­zed Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Advan­ced Indus­try Tech and Enab­ling Plat­forms. The regio­nal focus is on Germany, Switz­er­land, Austria, France and Scan­di­na­via. From its offices in Bad Homburg and Zurich, the 17-strong team curr­ently actively supports more than 30 tech and life science compa­nies in their company set-up and growth as well as their inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion. The manage­ment team consists of the Mana­ging Part­ners Dr. Gert Köhler, Karl­heinz Schme­lig and Cédric Köhler as well as the Part­ners Chris­tian Leikert, Dr. Chris­tian Weiss and Chris­tian Weni­ger. It has been successfully inves­t­ing in start­ups for over 30 years and has taken over 20 compa­nies to inter­na­tio­nal stock exch­an­ges during this time. Crea­thor Ventures curr­ently mana­ges a fund volume of over 230 million euros. As the largest fund inves­tor, manage­ment unders­cores its entre­pre­neu­rial focus. www.creathor.com.

News

Frank­furt a. M. / Neuss — The Frank­furt, Munich and U.S. offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP have advi­sed Advent Inter­na­tio­nal and Culligan Inter­na­tio­nal on the acqui­si­tion of the Neuss-based Aqua Vital Group from Halder Betei­li­gungs­be­ra­tung GmbH. Halder had acqui­red the stake in the leading German water dispen­ser supplier Aqua Vital in 2013. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

U.S.-based Culligan Inter­na­tio­nal is one of the world’s leading provi­ders of water treat­ment solu­ti­ons and a port­fo­lio company of Advent International.

Advi­sors to Advent Inter­na­tio­nal and Culligan Inter­na­tio­nal: Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
The Weil tran­sac­tion team was led by Frank­furt Corpo­rate Part­ners Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt and Stephan Grauke and Asso­ciate Dr. Ansgar Wimber (Corpo­rate, Munich) and supported by Part­ners Dr. Kamyar Abrar (Anti­trust, Munich), Alli­son Liff (Finance, New York), Ramona Nee (Corpo­rate, Boston) and Asso­cia­tes Dr. Michael Lamsa, Julian Schwa­ne­beck (both Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), Alex­an­der Pfef­fer­ler (Corpo­rate, Munich), Aurel Hille, Simone Hagen (both Anti­trust, Frank­furt), Thomas Zimmer­mann (Finance, Munich), Benja­min Rapp (Tax, Munich) as well as Vero­nica Bonham­gre­gory (Finance, Dallas) and Ashley Simms (Finance, Sili­con Valley).
Halder Betei­li­gungs­be­ra­tung GmbH was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by the Frank­furt office of CMS Hasche Sigle, led by Dr. Oliver Wolfgramm.

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

News

Hamburg — The Danish Heart­land A/S, holding company of one of the largest Euro­pean clot­hing compa­nies, Best­sel­ler A/S, joins ABOUT YOU as a new inves­tor. The invest­ment is being made as part of a capi­tal increase of around 300 million US dollars and on the basis of a company valua­tion of ABOUT YOU of over one billion US dollars. This makes the fast-growing fashion tech start-up of the Otto Group the first so-called unicorn from Hamburg.

The finan­cing round of around 300 million US dollars is largely based on the invest­ment by Heart­land A/S, which is acqui­ring a double-digit share in ABOUT YOU. The previous share­hol­ders German Media Pool and Seven Ventures as well as the three ABOUT YOU mana­ging direc­tors Tarek Müller, Sebas­tian Betz and Hannes Wiese (photo from right: obs/About You GmbH/Johannes Arlt) are also parti­ci­pa­ting in the capi­tal increase. Benja­min Otto, forma­tive part­ner and member of the Super­vi­sory Board of the Otto Group, and his sister remain mino­rity share­hol­ders with their Gesell­schaft für Handels­be­tei­li­gun­gen mbH (GfH). Although the Otto Group remains the largest share­hol­der in ABOUT YOU, it will manage the fashion tech company as an invest­ment company in the future. ABOUT YOU now intends to use the addi­tio­nal capi­tal for the further expan­sion of the company.

Inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP has advi­sed the Otto Group on Heart­land A/S ’ invest­ment in ABOUT YOU, the Otto Group’s fashion tech start-up.

ABOUT YOU is conside­red one of the fastest growing fashion tech start-ups in Europe. For fiscal 2018/2019, the company expects sales to increase from 283 million euros to 450 to 480 million euros. ABOUT YOU intends to use the addi­tio­nal capi­tal for further expansion.

The plan­ned parti­ci­pa­tion of Heart­land A/S in ABOUT YOU is subject to the appr­oval of the anti­trust authorities.

The Milbank team led by Norbert Rieger and Sebas­tian Heim provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice to the Otto Group on corpo­rate, tax, anti­trust and finan­cial aspects of the transaction.

About ABOUT YOU
ABOUT YOU digi­ti­zes the clas­sic shop­ping trip and crea­tes a perso­na­li­zed shop­ping expe­ri­ence on the smart­phone. By adap­ting to each customer’s indi­vi­dual style, the online store crea­tes a store that is unique to all custo­mers, display­ing only rele­vant products and outfit sugges­ti­ons. At ABOUT YOU, the focus is on the custo­mer and through this, an infi­nite number of diffe­rent perso­na­li­ties who find their expres­sion through fashion and are supported by ABOUT YOU. Women and men between 20 and 49 years of age will find on aboutyou.de, in addi­tion to the versa­tile inspi­ra­tion, an assort­ment with more than 150,000 artic­les from over 1,000 brands. With more than 10 million monthly active custo­mers, ABOUT YOU is one of the largest fashion and life­style plat­forms in Europe. The fashion tech company gene­ra­ted sales of €283 million in 2017/18, and sales of €450–480 million are expec­ted for the current fiscal year, repre­sen­ting an annual tran­sac­tion volume of more than €1.6 billion. ABOUT YOU GmbH was foun­ded in 2014 as a subsi­diary of the Otto Group and is now part of the Group port­fo­lio. The manage­ment team includes multi­ple foun­ders and digi­tal experts Tarek Müller (29, Marke­ting & Brands) and Sebas­tian Betz (27, Tech & Product) as well as former Roland Berger stra­te­gist Hannes Wiese (37, Opera­ti­ons & Finance).

About Otto Group
Foun­ded in Germany in 1949, the Otto Group is now a global trading and services group with around 51,800 employees. The Group is present with 123 major compa­nies in more than 30 count­ries in Europe, North and South America and Asia. Its busi­ness acti­vi­ties cover the three segments of multich­an­nel retail­ing, finan­cial services, and service. In the finan­cial year 2017/18 (Febru­ary 28), the Otto Group gene­ra­ted reve­nues of 13.7 billion euros. With online sales of around 7.9 billion euros, it is one of the world’s largest online retail­ers. E‑commerce, cata­log busi­ness and over-the-coun­ter retail­ing form the three pillars of the Otto Group’s multich­an­nel retail­ing. World­wide Group acti­vi­ties and a large number of stra­te­gic part­ner­ships and joint ventures provide the Otto Group with excel­lent condi­ti­ons for know-how trans­fer and the explo­ita­tion of synergy poten­tial. At the same time, a high degree of auto­nomy on the part of the Group compa­nies guaran­tees flexi­bi­lity and custo­mer proxi­mity as well as an opti­mum target group approach in the respec­tive countries.

Advi­sor Otto Group: Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP
Dr. Norbert Rieger, Dr. Sebas­tian Heim (joint lead, both Corporate/M&A, Munich), Dr. Rolf Füger (Tax, Munich), Dr. Alex­an­der Rinne (Anti­trust, Munich), Dr. Ulrike Friese-Dormann (Corporate/M&A, Munich), Pascal Härdt­ner (Corporate/M&A, Munich), Dr. Karen Freh­mel-Kück (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt), Dr. Moritz Lich­ten­eg­ger (Anti­trust, Munich), Dr. Niko­las Kout­sós, Dr. Thomas Moel­ler (both Finance, Frank­furt), Dr. Moritz Phil­ipp (Tax, Munich), Dr. Fritz Schuch­mann (Corporate/M&A).

News

Frank­furt a. M. — The U.S. services company Genpact acqui­res the Munich-based consul­ting firm Barkawi. Henge­ler Muel­ler, Latham & Watkins, Noerr and Baker Hostet­ler advised.

Genpact has signed an agree­ment to acquire Barkawi Manage­ment Consul­tants. Genpact is a global services company listed on the New York Stock Exch­ange and specia­li­zing in digi­tal transformation.

Barkawi Manage­ment Consul­tants was foun­ded in Munich in 1994 and is a global consul­ting firm specia­li­zing in supply chain manage­ment, supply chain tech­no­logy and after­sa­les services with over 200 employees in offices in Munich, Vienna, Riyadh, Dubai, Shen­zhen, Shang­hai and Atlanta. The merger of Barkawi Manage­ment Consul­tants with Genpact’s Supply Chain Service Line crea­tes ’ ”Barkawi Manage­ment Consul­tants — A Genpact Company”, a global provi­der of manage­ment consul­ting, mana­ged services and digi­tal transformation.

As part of the tran­sac­tion, Noerr provi­ded tax advice to Barkawi’s limi­ted part­ners in the prepa­ra­tion and during the tran­sac­tion. The Noerr team was led by Munich tax law part­ner Dr. Cars­ten Heinz. Noerr invol­ved the US law firm Baker Hostet­ler for the US tax issues.

Advi­sor Genpact: Henge­ler Mueller
Dr. Daniel Wiegand, Part­ner, Lead, M&A, Munich, Dr. Bernd Wirbel, Part­ner, Lead, M&A, Düssel­dorf, Dr. Chris­tian Hoefs, Part­ner, Labor Law, Frank­furt, Dr. Alf-Henrik Bischke, Part­ner, Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf, Dr. Markus Ernst, Coun­sel, Tax, Munich, Patrick H. Wilke­ning, Coun­sel, IP, Düssel­dorf, Dr. Andrea Schlaffge, IP, Düsseldorf
Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Schauf (M&A, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Achim Speng­ler, Dr. Vero­nika Wimmer (both M&A, Munich), Vicki Treib­mann (Labor Law), Dr. Anja Balitzki (Anti­trust Law), Dr. Maxi­mi­lien Wosgien (IP) (all Düssel­dorf), Dr. Sebas­tian Adam (Tax, Frankfurt)

Advi­sors­Bar­kawi: Latham & Watkins LLP
Dr. Rainer Trau­gott, Lead, Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Munich, Dr. Nils Röver, Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Hamburg, Dr. Thomas Fox, Part­ner, Tax, Munich, Dr. Chris­tian Engel­hardt, Coun­sel, IP/IT, Hamburg
Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Michael Schweppe, Corinna Freu­den­ma­cher (Corporate/M&A, Munich), Dr. Chris­tine Watz­in­ger (Tax Law, Munich)

On US tax law: Baker Hostetler 
Paul Schmidt, John D. Bates

Advi­sors to the limi­ted part­ners of Barkawi Manage­ment Consul­tant GmbH & Co: Noerr LLP
Dr. Cars­ten Heinz, Lead, Tax, Berlin/Munich, Peter Scheuch, Tax, Dres­den, Michael Tommaso, Tax, Berlin, Dr. Uwe Brend­ler, Corpo­rate M&A, Dresden

News

Munich — The private equity inves­tor Rigeto Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal GmbH has acqui­red a stake in the SICCUM Group.

SICCUM Group is a service provi­der for drying, clea­ning and resto­ra­tion of water, fire and mold damage. The company works for private, commer­cial and public clients and takes care of both the repair of damage claims and their sett­le­ment with insu­r­ers. THE SICCUM Group opera­tes prima­rily in Meck­len­burg-Western Pome­ra­nia and Schles­wig-Holstein, where it has six locations.

Dr. Richard Lenz (photo) is the mana­ging direc­tor of Rigeto Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal, which repres­ents a group of entre­pre­neurs and family offices seeking to drive the further market expan­sion of the SICCUM Group. With the opening of a new, seventh loca­tion in Seeve­tal near Hamburg in July 2018, a new growth phase of the SICCUM Group has begun.

P+P Pöllath + Part­ners provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal and tax advice to Rigeto Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­talwith the follo­wing team:
Dr. Frank Thiä­ner (Part­ner, Lead, M&A/Private Equity, Munich), Alex­an­der Pupe­ter (Part­ner, Tax, Munich), Dr. Jens Linde (Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Finan­cing, Frank­furt am Main), Dr. Jesko von Mirbach, LL.M. (Stel­len­bosch) (Asso­ciate, M&A/Private Equity, Munich)

Advi­sor to SICCUM share­hol­ders: GSK Stockmann
Dr. Markus Söhn­chen (Lead, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Petra Eckl (Tax), Dr. Andreas Peters (Corporate/M&A), Domi­nik Berka (Tax), Dr. Gerhard Gündel (Corporate/M&A); Asso­cia­tes: Inga Henrich (Corporate/M&A), Nicole Depa­rade (Labor Law)

News

Berlin / Munich / Hamburg — The Scout24 AG (“Scout24″ or “the Group”), a leading opera­tor of digi­tal market­places focu­sing on real estate and auto­mo­tive in Germany and other selec­ted Euro­pean count­ries, has ente­red into an agree­ment to acquire all shares in the FFG FINANZCHECK Finanz­por­tale GmbH (“FINANZCHECK.de”), a German online compa­ri­son portal for consu­mer loans. Scout24 acqui­res FINANZCHECK.de from Acton Capi­tal Part­ners, btov Part­ners, High­land Europe, Harbour­Vest Part­ners as well as from the foun­der and CEO and other inves­tors (toge­ther the “Sellers”). The closing is subject to anti­trust appr­oval and is expec­ted within the next four to six weeks. The tran­sac­tion is based on a conside­ra­tion of €285 million, free of cash and debt. The purchase price is paid enti­rely in cash.

FINANZCHECK.de opera­tes an online plat­form for consu­mer finance and offers users a fast and effi­ci­ent compa­ri­son of consu­mer loans in real time. In addi­tion, FINANZCHECK.de coope­ra­tes with affi­liate websites, point-of-sale finan­cing part­ners and part­ner networks in Germany via its own consu­mer finance tech­no­logy plat­form. In terms of market share and market posi­tio­ning in the online compa­ri­son of consu­mer loans, FINANZCHECK.de is one of the top three portals in Germany. Using an uncom­pli­ca­ted online query, credit offers and credit-rela­ted products from all major provi­ders on the market can be compared within minu­tes. For credit inqui­ries on install­ment loans, car loans and debt resche­du­ling loans, credit advi­sors are available on request in addi­tion to online inquiry — seven days a week and free of charge.

Through this acqui­si­tion of high stra­te­gic importance, Scout24 will in future work with one of the leading indus­try provi­ders to be able to offer users an outstan­ding user expe­ri­ence and help them save time and money in their search for the right consu­mer loan. Banks and finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons can also be provi­ded with a cost-effec­tive and scalable way to offer their services to loan seekers. FINANZCHECK.de has built its successful busi­ness on its own tech­no­logy plat­form with machine lear­ning capa­bi­li­ties and API connec­tions (Appli­ca­tion Programming Inter­face) to the most rele­vant finan­cial service provi­ders in Germany.

The market for online consu­mer loan compa­ri­sons is a fast-growing market, bene­fiting both from a good over­all deve­lo­p­ment of the more than 80 billion euros in new consu­mer loans gran­ted in Germany and from a progres­sive shift in consu­mer loan tran­sac­tions from offline chan­nels to online. Over the period from 2015 to 2022, the market share of consu­mer loans gene­ra­ted through online compa­ri­son is expec­ted to double.

With an average annual growth rate of around 35% over the last three years, FINANZCHECK.de can demons­trate a strong growth history and gene­ra­ted reve­nues of more than 35 million euros in the fiscal year ending Decem­ber 2017. This brings the volume of loans broke­red since the company was foun­ded in 2012 to more than EUR 3.5 billion. In addi­tion, with more than 20 finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons connec­ted to its tech­no­logy plat­form via API, FINANZCHECK.de has compre­hen­sive market coverage with regard to the main provi­ders of consu­mer finance.

The acqui­si­tion of FINANZCHECK.de is an important stra­te­gic step to support users during their consu­mer jour­ney and to imple­ment Scout24’s motto “Inspi­ring your best decis­i­ons” — perfectly comple­men­ted by FINANZCHECK.de’s motto “enab­ling for money”. The acqui­si­tion builds on the alre­ady well-estab­lished and successful busi­ness part­ner­ship between the two compa­nies in broke­ring consu­mer finan­cing for car seekers on the AutoScout24 and FinanceScout24 platforms.

Since the IPO in Octo­ber 2015, Scout24 has alre­ady acqui­red and successfully inte­gra­ted seve­ral other compa­nies from its Euro­pean core markets, such as Auto­Trader B.V. in the Nether­lands or Gebrauchtwagen.at in Austria, which were a perfect stra­te­gic fit and at the same time contri­bu­ted to the expan­sion of the market posi­tion. In this respect, FINANZCHECK.de with its strong and estab­lished brand is a perfect comple­ment to the exis­ting busi­ness and contri­bu­tes signi­fi­cantly to the scope and reach of the market network — which in turn also bene­fits the future deve­lo­p­ment of FINANZCHECK.de.

“The acqui­si­tion of FINANZCHECK.de is another major step in the digi­tiza­tion of the Consu­mer Jour­ney within the Scout24 market network. It is a perfect fit for our busi­ness, and we are convin­ced that this stra­te­gic move will enable us to expand Consu­mer Services sales growth to the EUR 250 million mark in the medium term. In addi­tion to opera­tio­nal syner­gies and reve­nue contri­bu­tion, we also gain an even deeper under­stan­ding of user needs to the point of tran­sac­tion. With insight into user life­cy­cles and an under­stan­ding of when a user will start their next search for a new car or home, we can gain very valuable insights for our busi­ness. These will help us stra­te­gi­cally align our offe­ring so we can build more bridges to future user touch­points,” empha­si­zes Gregory Ellis, CEO of Scout24 AG, the high stra­te­gic value and leverage of the tran­sac­tion, which will help close the gaps in cove­ring the consu­mer jour­ney along the value chains of the real estate and auto­mo­tive businesses.

“We are deligh­ted to have Scout24 on board as our new parent company. This new alli­ance builds on an alre­ady very good coope­ra­tion within the frame­work of our long-stan­ding affi­liate part­ner­ship,” says Moritz Thiele, CEO and foun­der of FINANZCHECK.de.

The Manage­ment Board of Scout24 sees considera­ble oppor­tu­ni­ties to drive growth in this segment through the expan­sion of the Consu­mer Services divi­sion to include FINANZCHECK.de. This is prima­rily due to a more inte­gra­ted service offe­ring on the Scout24 plat­forms, with which Scout24 can accom­pany the consu­mer jour­ney to a grea­ter extent. The Execu­tive Board anti­ci­pa­tes syner­gies in both the auto­mo­tive and real estate busi­nesses. The initial focus will be on expan­ding the presence of FINANZCHECK.de on the AutoScout24 plat­form in order to meet further user needs rela­ting to car purcha­ses. Car loans are an essen­tial part of buying a car; about 40% of used cars are parti­ally or fully finan­ced. Scout24’s manage­ment plans to extend the offer to the AutoScout24 plat­forms in the Euro­pean core markets in the future.

In addi­tion to streng­thening the AutoScout24 plat­form through inte­gra­ted car finan­cing, Scout24’s Manage­ment Board sees addi­tio­nal syner­gies and reve­nue poten­tial by lever­aging the exis­ting close rela­ti­onships with the appro­xi­m­ately 26,000 AutoScout24 dealer part­ners in Germany. For exam­ple, AutoScout24 can also offer the busi­ness-to-busi­ness solu­tion “finanz­check­PRO” from FINANZCHECK.de, which helps car dealers to show poten­tial car buyers suita­ble finan­cing opti­ons for their desi­red car purchase and enable its implementation.

Consul­tant SCOUT 24 
Scout24 was advi­sed in the tran­sac­tion by McKin­sey & Company, Inc., BDO AG Wirt­schafts­prü­fungs­ge­sell­schaft, Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP and by Credit Suisse (Deutsch­land) AG advi­sed. The Scout24 Group is finan­cing the acqui­si­tion through a credit facility.

Consul­tant FINANTCHECK.de
FINANZCHECK.de and its share­hol­ders were supported in the tran­sac­tion by Macqua­rie Capi­tal (Europe) Limi­ted as exclu­sive finan­cial advi­ser and Leo Schmidt-Holl­burg Witte & Frank as legal advi­ser. advise The tran­sac­tion contin­ued to be supported by Ernst & Young and EY Parthe­non. Better­mind GmbH supported the FINANZCHECK.de manage­ment intern­ally in the process and ensu­red further growth in parallel.

About SCOUT 24
With our leading digi­tal market­places ImmobilienScout24 in Germany and AutoScout24 in Europe, we inspire people to make their best decis­i­ons when it comes to finding a property or a car. Scout24 bund­les indi­vi­dual addi­tio­nal services, such as credit reports, the procu­re­ment of relo­ca­tion services or cons­truc­tion and car finan­cing, in the Scout24 Consu­mer Services busi­ness segment. More than 1,200 employees work on the success of our products and services. We put our users at the center and create a networked offe­ring for living and mobi­lity. Scout24 AG is a listed stock corpo­ra­tion and is traded on the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange (ISIN: DE000A12DM80, Ticker: G24). For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.scout24.com.

About FINANZCHECK.de
FINANZCHECK.de, based in Hamburg, is one of the leading inde­pen­dent, tech­no­logy-supported consu­mer finance plat­forms in Germany. FINANZCHECK.de connects consu­mers with product provi­ders across all chan­nels. Consu­mers bene­fit from signi­fi­cant inte­rest cost savings and higher finan­cing opti­ons, while product provi­ders bene­fit from signi­fi­cantly lower custo­mer acqui­si­tion costs. The goal of FINANZCHECK.de is to become the leading provi­der of consu­mer liqui­dity solu­ti­ons through plug-and-play infra­struc­ture. Direct inter­faces to the IT infra­struc­ture of finan­cial service provi­ders are used to compare >70 consu­mer credit products. The end-to-end plat­form incor­po­ra­tes indus­try-leading tech­no­logy and custo­mer service to cover the entire life­cy­cle from custo­mer acqui­si­tion to credit appr­oval and beyond. For more infor­ma­tion, visit www.finanzcheck.de.

About Acton Capi­tal Partners
Acton Capi­tal Part­ners is a growth inves­tor from Munich for inter­net compa­nies. The invest­ment focus is on start­ups with scalable busi­ness models in the areas of online market­places, e‑commerce, online services, digi­tal media and SaaS. Acton invests in Europe and North America. The team has been working toge­ther successfully for many years and has inves­ted in over 70 compa­nies since 1999. Its best-known holdings include AbeBooks, Alando, Alpha­Sights, Ciao, Elite­part­ner, Etsy, Holi­day­Check, Linas Matkasse, Lumas, mytheresa.com, OnVista, Windeln.de and zooplus. To learn more, visit: www.actoncapital.com.

About btov Partners
btov Part­ners, foun­ded in 2000, is a Euro­pean venture capi­tal firm with offices in Berlin, Luxem­bourg and St. Gallen. The invest­ment focus is on digi­tal and indus­trial tech­no­logy compa­nies. btov mana­ges insti­tu­tio­nal funds, part­ner funds and provi­des access to direct invest­ments for private inves­tors and family offices. Through its three divi­si­ons, the company mana­ges assets of 375 million euros and reviews over 3,000 invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties annu­ally. To learn more, visit: www.btov.vc.

About Harbour­Vest Partners
Harbour­Vest is an inde­pen­dent global private equity inves­tor with more than 35 years of expe­ri­ence and more than $50 million in assets under manage­ment. The finan­cial investor’s global plat­form offers clients invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties through primary fund invest­ments, secon­dary invest­ments and direct co-invest­ments in commingled funds or others. Harbour­Vest employs more than 400 people, inclu­ding more than 100 invest­ment specia­lists in Asia, Europe and the US. The global team has commit­ted more than $34 billion to newly estab­lished funds, comple­ted more than $19 billion in secon­dary purcha­ses, and inves­ted more than $8 billion directly. By part­ne­ring with Harbour­Vest, clients bene­fit in a variety of ways from custo­mi­zed solu­ti­ons, long-stan­ding rela­ti­onships, key exper­tise, and successful results. To learn more, visit: www.harbourvest.com.

About High­land Europe
High­land Europe invests in excep­tio­nal growth soft­ware and Inter­net compa­nies. High­land Europe, the company which has been active in Europe since 2003 as High­land Capi­tal Part­ners and was offi­ci­ally foun­ded in 2012, has raised over €1 billion and inves­ted in compa­nies such as Adjust, Bitmo­vin, ContentS­quare, GetSour­Guide, Malware­bytes, Matches­Fa­shion, NewVoice­Me­dia, Next­hink, Smartly.io and WeTrans­fer. Toge­ther, the sites in the U.S., Europe and China include 46 IPOs and >$19 billion compa­nies. To learn more, visit: www.highlandeurope.com.

News

Thetotal market capi­ta­liza­tion is appro­xi­m­ately 106.5 million euros with a free float of more than 20 percent The first day of trading of the secu­ri­ties on the regu­la­ted market (Prime Stan­dard) of the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange is expec­ted to be July 25.

Foun­ded in 2014, the company brokers loans to small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses on its digi­tal plat­form. Credit­s­hel CEO Tim Thabe says the IPO is inten­ded to fuel the company’s growth. The medium-term goal is a broke­red loan volume of around 500 million euros per year. From the launch of the plat­form in 2015 to the end of March 2018, it was about 58 million euros. — In order for the IPO to succeed, Elgeti had placed a so-called back­stop order for up to 15 million euros through his company Hevella Capi­tal, so that he would not acquire shares subscri­bed by other inte­res­ted parties. This was not taken up.

In terms of going public, the company has a “first mover” effect in seve­ral respects. Credit­s­helf is one of the first repre­sen­ta­ti­ves from the fintech sector to realize an IPO in this coun­try and the first credit inter­me­diary to rely on an Inter­net platform.

Book­run­ner: Commerz­bank AG acts as Sole Global Coor­di­na­tor and Sole Bookrunner

Finan­cial advi­sor: Lazard

News

Marburg/ Darm­stadt — The British Spec­tris plc has acqui­red the VI-grade Group. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is still subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory appr­ovals and is expec­ted for the end of August 2018. Both parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the tran­sac­tion. Gleiss Lutz advi­sed the British tech­no­logy company Spec­trics plc on this transaction.

VI-grade specia­li­zes in the produc­tion of auto­ma­tic controls and test systems, as well as the deve­lo­p­ment of turn­key solu­ti­ons for static and dyna­mic driving simu­la­tion. The company, with offices in Germany, Switz­er­land, Italy, the UK, Japan, China and the USA, deli­vers inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons to stream­line deve­lo­p­ment proces­ses, mainly in the auto­mo­tive, aero­space, motor­cy­cle, motor­sport and rail­road industries.

Spec­tris plc is a leading provi­der of products, tech­no­lo­gies and services that help compa­nies increase produc­ti­vity, improve product quality and opti­mize proces­ses until a product is laun­ched. In doing so, Spec­tris is active world­wide for custo­mers from various indus­tries and serves four busi­ness areas: Mate­ri­als Analy­sis, Test and Measu­re­ment, In-Line Instru­men­ta­tion and Indus­trial Controls. Head­quar­te­red in Egham, Surrey, UK, the company is listed on the London Stock Exch­ange (LSE) and employs around 9,800 people in more than 30 countries.

Gleiss Lutz coor­di­na­ted the tran­sac­tion as lead coun­sel in all juris­dic­tions invol­ved, in addi­tion to Germany also the UK (Shoos­miths LLP), Italy (Gianni, Origoni, Grippo, Cappelli & Part­ners), Japan (Kita­hama Part­ners), Switz­er­land (Hombur­ger) and USA (Sidley Austin LLP).

The follo­wing Gleiss Lutz team led by Dr. Patrick Kaffiné, photo (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) advi­sed Spec­tris on the tran­sac­tion: Dr. Stefan Mayer (Part­ner, Tax Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Jacob von Andreae (Part­ner, Public Law, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Michael Ilter, Julia Müller, Dr. Konstan­tin von Dryan­der, (all Corporate/M&A, all Frank­furt), Dr. Matthias Werner, (Coun­sel, IP/IT, Munich), Dr. Ocka Stumm, Chris­tian Hein­richs (both Tax Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Tobias Abend (Labor Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Birgit Colbus (Coun­sel), Dr. Saskia Kirch­geß­ner (both Anti­trust Law, Frankfurt).

The tran­sac­tion was advi­sed in-house by Dr. Alex­an­der Dähnert (M&A Coun­sel, London/Darmstadt) and Silke Leng­nick (Mana­ger Group Taxes, Darmstadt).

Gleiss Lutz regu­larly advi­ses Spec­tris on tran­sac­tions in Germany, most recently on the acqui­si­tion of DISCOM Elek­tro­ni­sche Systeme und Komponenten

News

Berlin — Schnitt­ker Möll­mann Part­ners (SMP) has advi­sed Berlin-based e‑commerce company Lesara on another finan­cing round. The finan­cing round with a total volume of 30 million euros was led by the Ameri­can inves­tor 3L Capi­tal. In addi­tion to 3L Capi­tal, exis­ting inves­tors North­zone, Mangrove Capi­tal Part­ners and Vorwerk Ventures also parti­ci­pa­ted in the financing.

Accor­ding to Lesara, the new capi­tal will bene­fit its expan­sion into a neigh­bor­ing Euro­pean coun­try. This is alre­ady the second finan­cing round that the company has closed toge­ther with SMP within a year. In addi­tion, the team led by SMP part­ners Peter Möll­mann and Matthias Schatz advi­sed Lesara on its recent change of legal form from a limi­ted liabi­lity company (GmbH) to a stock corpo­ra­tion (Akti­en­ge­sell­schaft).

Lesara AG was foun­ded in 2013 by Roman Kirsch, Matthias Wilrich and Robin Müller. The mail order company, head­quar­te­red in Berlin, opera­tes online plat­forms for fashion and life­style products in 24 count­ries worldwide.

Advi­sor Lesara: Schnitt­ker Möll­mann Part­ners (Berlin/ Cologne)
Dr. Peter Möll­mann, Part­ner (Lead), Partner
Dr. Matthias Schatz, Partner
Dr. Ansgar Frank, Senior Associate
Dr. Martin Scha­per, Senior Associate
Janina Erich­sen, Associate

About Schnitt­ker Möll­mann Partners
Schnitt­ker Möll­mann Part­ners is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm active in three core areas: tax, funds and tran­sac­tions. The attor­neys at Schnitt­ker Möll­mann Part­ners repre­sent a wide range of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons or private equity/venture capi­tal funds.

News

Tübin­gen - SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment has recei­ved capi­tal commit­ments of more than EUR 90 million for its now fifth fund at the so-called “first closing”. The Tübin­gen-based medi­cal tech­no­logy inves­tor has thus reached almost two-thirds of its target of 150 million euros faster than expected.

The fifth gene­ra­tion of SHS funds also targets the life scien­ces and medi­cal tech­no­logy sectors and thus the globally growing health­care market with inno­va­tive and strong compa­nies, espe­ci­ally in Germany and Switz­er­land. 12–15 enga­ge­ments are plan­ned. With the “first closing”, fund compa­nies complete an initial capi­tal coll­ec­tion phase — usually when half of the total target volume has been reached. With the formal comple­tion of this first phase, the capi­tal coll­ec­ted can alre­ady be inves­ted in compa­nies. Inves­tors can still parti­ci­pate in SHS V until the “final closing”. Around half of the inves­tors in SHS V had alre­ady parti­ci­pa­ted in the Tübin­gen-based company’s prede­ces­sor funds.

SHS attri­bu­tes the strong demand from insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors and family offices to its posi­tio­ning as a sector specia­list. “We would like to thank the inves­tors for their trust. For 25 years on the market, we have focu­sed on invest­ments in compa­nies from the medi­cal tech­no­logy and diagno­stics sectors. We have built up a great deal of indus­try expe­ri­ence and trust, and also have the neces­sary intui­tion for feasi­ble inno­va­tions. Our port­fo­lio compa­nies can build on an estab­lished network of indus­try experts, health insu­r­ers and medi­cal opinion leaders. In addi­tion, we support the compa­nies’ value deve­lo­p­ment with inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion know-how as well as exper­tise in reim­bur­se­ment and regu­la­tory issues and in initia­ting stra­te­gic part­ner­ships,” says Huber­tus Leon­hardt, SHS part­ner and mana­ging direc­tor respon­si­ble for fundraising.

Focus on expan­sion finan­cing and corpo­rate successions
Mini­mally inva­sive surgi­cal proce­du­res, robo­tics-supported forms of therapy and digi­tal solu­ti­ons for the health­care sector are seen as parti­cu­larly inno­va­tive and fast-growing fields in Tübin­gen. Indus­trial exper­tise, the avai­la­bi­lity of well-trai­ned engi­neers, and above all the close links between the univer­sity and rese­arch land­scape and indus­try have crea­ted a good climate in the indus­try in Germany and Switzerland.

“We alre­ady see a large number of fast-growing health­care compa­nies, both young and estab­lished, in which our fifth fund could invest. Tigh­ter regu­la­tion and high pres­sure to inno­vate and inter­na­tio­na­lize are leading to incre­asing demand for capi­tal in the sector. The incre­asing comple­xity of the health­care market is driving concen­tra­tion proces­ses. In addi­tion, some compa­nies are strugg­ling to ensure a successful hando­ver to the next gene­ra­tion. As an expe­ri­en­ced part­ner, we can provide compa­nies with targe­ted and compe­tent support here,” says Leonhardt.

Accor­ding to SHS, the maxi­mum invest­ment amount of the fifth fund per invest­ment is 30 million euros. Toge­ther with coope­ra­tion part­ners, equity tran­sac­tions of up to EUR 60 million can be carried out. Majo­rity and mino­rity share­hol­dings are possi­ble. The focus is on expan­sion and inno­va­tion finan­cing, succes­sion situa­tions and share­hol­der chan­ges. SHS is expan­ding its previous coun­try focus on Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land to include Scan­di­na­via and the Bene­lux count­ries. SHS had contri­bu­ted capi­tal, many years of exper­tise, market know­ledge and its network to the Fonds IV invest­ments — such as EIT, a 3D prin­ting specia­list for the ortho­pe­dics sector, the Austrian robo­tics company Tyro­mo­tion, which is active in the reha­bi­li­ta­tion sector, and the Swiss manu­fac­tu­rer of cardio­logy products SIS Medical.

With invest­ments from the SHS III fund, for exam­ple, the Bochum-based company phenox, which specia­li­zes in tech­no­lo­gies for the treat­ment of neuro­vas­cu­lar dise­a­ses, was successfully deve­lo­ped. SHS recently announ­ced the sale of its SHS III invest­ment AMW, a Warn­gau-based specia­list in drug deli­very systems, to an inter­na­tio­nal strategist.

About SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment mbH
Tübin­gen-based SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment invests in medi­cal tech­no­logy and life science compa­nies with a focus on expan­sion finan­cing, share­hol­der chan­ges and succes­sion situa­tions. In doing so, SHS enters into both mino­rity and majo­rity share­hol­dings. As an expe­ri­en­ced indus­try inves­tor, SHS, which was foun­ded in 1993, supports the growth of its port­fo­lio compa­nies through a network of colla­bo­ra­ti­ons, for exam­ple in the intro­duc­tion of new products, regu­la­tory issues or entry into addi­tio­nal markets.

German and inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors in SHS funds include the Euro­pean Invest­ment Fund, profes­sio­nal pension funds, pension funds, funds of funds, family offices, entre­pre­neurs and the SHS manage­ment team. The equity invest­ment of the AIFM-regis­tered company is up to 30 million euros. Tran­sac­tions in the mid double-digit million range can be imple­men­ted toge­ther with a network of co-inves­tors. Mana­ging part­ners at SHS are Rein­hilde Spat­scheck, Dr. Bern­hard Schirm­ers, Huber­tus Leon­hardt and Uwe Steinbacher.

News

Munich, Germany - Swyx Group, a port­fo­lio company of Water­land Private Equity (“Water­land”), is joining forces with the Dutch Within Reach Group, parent company of Voice­works. The compa­nies thus estab­lish the Euro­pean market leader for inno­va­tive commu­ni­ca­ti­ons services. At the same time, the new group acqui­res the French company Centile Tele­com Appli­ca­ti­ons.

Advi­sor Water­land: Henge­ler Mueller
Water­land is advi­sing on the tran­sac­tion in an inte­gra­ted team with Dutch Best Friends law firm DeBrauw Blackstone West­br­oek.
Henge­ler Mueller’s part­ners are Dr. Alex­an­der Nolte (Düssel­dorf), Dr. Jens Wenzel (Berlin) (both M&A, both lead,), Dr. Alf-Henrik Bischke (Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Niko­laus Vieten, Dr. Daniela Böning (both Finan­cing, Frank­furt), Dr. Chris­tian Schwandt­ner (Manage­ment Parti­ci­pa­tion, Düssel­dorf), Hendrik Bocken­hei­mer (Labor Law, Frank­furt), Coun­sel Peter Dampf (Finan­cing, Frank­furt) and Fabian Seip (IP, Berlin) and Asso­cia­tes Mandana Bahr­am­pour (M&A, London), Dr. Anja Balitzki (Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf), Adrian Cavin (Manage­ment Parti­ci­pa­tion, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Henning Hilke (Finan­cing, Frank­furt), Jan Krusche (IP, Berlin) and Marc Seeger (M&A, Düsseldorf).

News

Berlin — Schnitt­ker Möll­mann Part­ners (SMP) advi­sed the share­hol­ders of nu3 GmbH on the sale of all nu3 shares to Shop Apotheke. The acqui­si­tion of the online plat­form for nutri­tio­nal products is made against the issue of a package of a total of 54,470 shares in the listed Shop Apotheke Europe N.V. and payment of a cash amount. The foun­ders of nu3 GmbH will remain with the company in their current roles. Toge­ther with the Jahr Group, they will also become share­hol­ders of Shop Apotheke Europe N.V. as part of the transaction.

nu3 GmbH was foun­ded in 2011 by Robert Sünder­hauf, Kassian Ortner and Felix Kaiser. The company specia­li­zes in the deve­lo­p­ment and distri­bu­tion of func­tional nutri­tion products and super­foods. The company now employs around 100 people and gene­ra­ted sales of around 30 million euros in fiscal year 2017. Since its foun­da­tion, nu3 GmbH and its share­hol­ders have been compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed by SMP lawy­ers — espe­ci­ally in the context of all finan­cing rounds.

Advi­sor nu3: Schnitt­ker Möll­mann Part­ners (Berlin)
Dr. Peter Möll­mann, Photo (lead), Partner
Dr. Martin Scha­per (Lead Part­ner), Senior Associate
Dr. Tim Schlös­ser, Partner
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich, Partner
Janina Erich­sen, Associate

Van Campen Liem (Amster­dam): Thomas W. Mitchell, Partner
KNPZ (Hamburg): Dr. Kai-Uwe Plath, Partner

About Schnitt­ker Möll­mann Partners
Schnitt­ker Möll­mann Part­ners is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm active in three core areas: tax, funds and tran­sac­tions. The attor­neys at Schnitt­ker Möll­mann Part­ners repre­sent a wide range of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons or private equity/venture capi­tal funds.

News

Munich, Frank­furt, Zurich — Alter­na­tive finan­ciers conti­nue their success story in 2018. The latest MidCap­Mo­ni­tor by invest­ment bank GCA Altium, which regu­larly pres­ents lever­a­ged buyout finan­cings with loan volu­mes between €20 million and €500 million, shows that debt funds accoun­ted for 48 percent of the LBO market in the first half of 2018. 46 LBO finan­cings in the first half of 2018 mark a new record.

After twelve tran­sac­tions in the first half of 2017, the Debt Funds have alre­ady successfully imple­men­ted 22 tran­sac­tions in the first half of 2018. At this time in 2017, the banks’ market share was still 70 percent and has now shrunk to 52 percent.

The success of alter­na­tive finan­cing parties is based on seve­ral factors. First, debt funds respon­ded a good year ago and incre­asingly star­ted to offer more favorable struc­tures invol­ving lower-rate senior tran­ches held by banks. “In addi­tion, we are incre­asingly seeing debt fund tran­sac­tions that banks would not have done. This is a very posi­tive deve­lo­p­ment, as addi­tio­nal liqui­dity is being made available,” comm­ents Johan­nes Schmit­tat, Mana­ging Direc­tor in GCA Altium’s Frank­furt office.

It is also noti­ceable that buy-and-build stra­te­gies in parti­cu­lar are prefer­a­bly finan­ced with debt funds. “Private equity inves­tors welcome the speed of imple­men­ta­tion and the redu­ced need for coor­di­na­tion with usually only one party compared to larger banking clubs,” says Norbert Schmitz, also a mana­ging direc­tor at GCA Altium. Over­all, GCA Altium does not expect banks to regain lost market share in the near future.

The over­all size of the German LBO market remains on track for a record 46 tran­sac­tions (up from 41 tran­sac­tions in the first half of 2017). The most active private equity houses were Equis­tone and Nordic Capi­tal, with three tran­sac­tions each.

On the banking side, Commerz­bank has alre­ady imple­men­ted eight tran­sac­tions this year, but on a twelve-month basis (16 tran­sac­tions) it still ranks third behind SEB (20) and Unicre­dit (19). — Even though there were head­winds in the London large cap market towards the end of the second quar­ter for the first time in a long time against the very low margins and very borrower-friendly terms, GCA Altium did not notice any impact on the German LBO market. “Due to the contin­ued extre­mely compe­ti­tive envi­ron­ment between banks and debt funds, we do not expect condi­ti­ons to dete­rio­rate in the short term,” adds Norbert Schmitz.

The over­all Euro­pean market for unitran­che finan­cing by debt funds also reached a new record high with 109 tran­sac­tions in the first half of 2018, excee­ding the previous year’s volume by more than 47 percent. In addi­tion to Germany with 22 tran­sac­tions, Unitran­ches have also been used inten­si­vely in the UK (33 tran­sac­tions) and France (23 transactions).

About GCA Altium
GCA Altium is the Euro­pean divi­sion of GCA. The global invest­ment bank provi­des stra­te­gic M&A as well as capi­tal markets advi­sory services to growth compa­nies and market leaders. GCA opera­tes globally with over 400 experts in 15 loca­ti­ons in the US, Asia and Europe. Built by the people who run the busi­ness, GCA specia­li­zes in deals that require commit­ment, an unbi­a­sed view, exper­tise and unique networks. www.gcaaltium.com

News

Munich, Germany — Jones Day advi­sed Celo­nis SE, a soft­ware company based in Munich and New York, in connec­tion with a US$50 million Series B finan­cing round for parti­ci­pa­tion by exis­ting inves­tors Accel and 83North. The Series B finan­cing round was based on a US$1 billion enter­prise valua­tion of Celo­nis SE.

Since its foun­ding in 2011, Celo­nis has become a pioneer in the field of process mining. Based on this tech­no­logy, the Celo­nis Intel­li­gent Busi­ness System helps compa­nies under­stand and improve opera­tio­nal process flows. The current invest­ment will be used for further invest­ments in rese­arch & deve­lo­p­ment and support the global expan­sion plans. The US head­quar­ters in New York, which opened in Septem­ber 2016, grew tenfold last year, new offices were added in London, Boston, Raleigh and Miami, and the site in the Nether­lands was expan­ded. Growth targets since the June 2016 Series A invest­ment of $27.5 million have all been exceeded.

Jones Day alre­ady advi­sed Celo­nis, which was still opera­ting as a limi­ted liabi­lity company at the time, in its first Series A finan­cing round. At US$ 27 million, the volume was very high for a venture capi­tal finan­cing in the German market and the legal struc­ture unusually complex. Among other things, the company was conver­ted into an SE (Socie­tas Euro­paea) with a moni­stic board of direc­tors by way of a down­stream merger after the investment.

Advi­sor Celo­nis: Jones Day
Ivo Poslu­schny, Photo (Lead Part­ner, Private Equity, Munich), Dr. Kars­ten Müller-Eising (Banking, Finance & Secu­ri­ties, Frank­furt), Dr. Markus Fisch (M&A, Munich).

About Jones Day
Jones Day is one of the world’s best and most diver­si­fied commer­cial law firms and has been reco­gni­zed for years as the most client-focu­sed firm. Jones Day advi­ses and repres­ents more than half of the DAX 30 compa­nies and has been the number one firm by number of M&A deals comple­ted world­wide without inter­rup­tion since 2000 (Thom­son and Bloom­berg). The firm employs more than 2,500 lawy­ers in 43 busi­ness and finan­cial centers world­wide — inclu­ding about 600 in Europe and 200 in Asia. In Germany, the firm is repre­sen­ted by more than 100 profes­sio­nals in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt and Munich.

News

Laat­zen (Germany) — Funds advi­sed by Triton (“Triton”) have successfully comple­ted the sale of Aven­tics to Emer­son (NYSE: EMR). Aven­tics is one of the world’s leading compa­nies in the field of intel­li­gent pneu­ma­tic tech­no­lo­gies used in machine and factory auto­ma­tion. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

Triton acqui­red Aven­tics in Decem­ber 2013 through a corpo­rate carve-out from Bosch. Under Triton’s owner­ship, Aven­tics’ manage­ment and advi­sory board have worked toge­ther on a number of impro­ve­ment initia­ti­ves to streng­then the company’s posi­tion as one of the world’s leading manu­fac­tu­r­ers of intel­li­gent pneu­ma­tic tech­no­lo­gies for machine and factory auto­ma­tion applications.

Key impro­ve­ment initia­ti­ves include the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of the busi­ness, the dive­st­ment of non-core busi­nesses, and effi­ci­ency gains in produc­tion. In prepa­ra­tion for the future, the digi­tiza­tion of the company was star­ted by intro­du­cing digi­tal tools. It also included occu­pa­tio­nal safety programs, invest­ments in product deve­lo­p­ment and the estab­lish­ment of a new global sales organization

About Aven­tics
Aven­tics is one of the leading manu­fac­tu­r­ers of pneu­ma­tic compon­ents and systems. The pneu­ma­tics specia­lists offer products and services for indus­trial auto­ma­tion and the food, pack­a­ging, medi­cal and energy tech­no­logy sectors. The company also deve­lops solu­ti­ons for commer­cial vehic­les, ships and rail vehicles.

By inte­gra­ting elec­tro­nics, using modern mate­ri­als and focu­sing on machine safety and Indus­try 4.0, Aven­tics is a pioneer in user- and envi­ron­men­tally-friendly solu­ti­ons. With the expan­sion of digi­ta­liza­tion, Aven­tics is posi­tio­ning itself for the future.

Aven­tics can look back on around 150 years of pneu­ma­tics expe­ri­ence and employs over 2,000 people world­wide. From its produc­tion sites in Germany, France, Hungary, USA and China, Aven­tics sells its products through direct sales and distri­bu­tors in more than 100 count­ries. Aven­tics Group has multi­ple certi­fi­ca­ti­ons, inclu­ding ISO 9001 and ISO/TS 16949 for quality, ISO 50001 for energy manage­ment, and ISO 14001 for envi­ron­men­tal management.

About Triton
The Triton funds invest in medium-sized compa­nies based in Europe and support their posi­tive deve­lo­p­ment. They focus on compa­nies in the indus­trial, services and consu­mer goods/healthcare sectors.

Triton’s goal is to successfully deve­lop its port­fo­lio compa­nies in the long term by working toge­ther as part­ners. Triton and its manage­ment strive to gene­rate posi­tive change and growth through the sustainable impro­ve­ment of opera­tio­nal proces­ses and struc­tures. At present, Triton’s port­fo­lio includes 35 compa­nies with total sales of around EUR 13 billion and around 87,000 employees.

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