Author: Tatjana Anderer

Malaga/ Hamburg — With the support of HEUKING KÜHN LÜER WOJTEK, AERTEC Solu­ti­ons S.L. has comple­tely taken over the avia­tion supplier and service provi­der Quali­tyP­ark Avia­tion­Cen­ter GmbH. AERTEC, a global provi­der of aero­space engi­nee­ring services head­quar­te­red in Malaga, Spain, is thus conti­nuing its inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion course and streng­thening its compe­ti­tive posi­tion in the Euro­pean aero­space services market.

Quali­tyP­ark works closely with custo­mers such as Airbus, Premium Aero­tec, FERCHAU Engi­nee­ring or LATESYS and parti­ci­pa­tes in the A400M, A320, A330-200, A350XWB or A380 aero­space programs.

The Hamburg-based Heuking team led by Lothar Ende has been invol­ved in avia­tion projects many times in the past and is accor­din­gly well networked in this field.

Advi­sor to AERTEC Solu­ti­ons S.L.: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Lothar Ende, Photo (Lead/M&A)
Dr. Johan-Michel Menke, LL.M. (labor law)
Fabian G. Gaffron (Tax)
Dr. Sebas­tian Junge­meyer (Aero­space Commercial)
Char­lotte Massen­berg (IP/Data Protec­tion), all Hamburg

Munich — P+P Pöllath + Part­ners advi­sed the share­hol­ders on the sale of Cotesa GmbH to the Chinese inves­tors Chang­zhou QFAT Compo­site Mate­rial. The Saxon aircraft supplier Cotesa is a manu­fac­tu­rer of high-quality fiber compo­site compon­ents for the avia­tion and auto­mo­tive industries.

The sale of Cotesa to Chang­zhou QFAT Compo­site Mate­rial is the first tran­sac­tion to be reviewed in depth under the tigh­tened foreign trade invest­ment control regime intro­du­ced in July 2017. — After a six-month review, the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy confirmed in April that the tran­sac­tion does not raise any public policy or secu­rity concerns.

Advi­sors to Cotesa GmbH: P+P provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to all share­hol­ders of Cotesa GmbH in the context of the tran­sac­tion with the follo­wing team:
- Dr. Frank Thiä­ner, Photo (Part­ner, Lead Part­ner, M&A, Munich)
— Daniel Wied­mann, LL.M. (NYU) (Coun­sel, Foreign Trade Law, Frankfurt)
— Dr. Jens Linde (Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Finance, Frankfurt)
— Tim Jung­in­ger (Senior Asso­ciate, M&A, Munich)

P+P had alre­ady advi­sed the main share­hol­der HPE Growth Capi­tal on its invest­ment in Cotesa GmbH in 2013.

Hamburg - Sopra Steria SE in Hamburg acqui­res all shares in it-econo­mics GmbH, Munich. The acqui­si­tion is subject to the usual closing condi­ti­ons and in parti­cu­lar still requi­res the appr­oval of the German Fede­ral Cartel Office. Both parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the transaction.

Sopra Steria is a leading Euro­pean provi­der for digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion. With 42,000 employees in over 20 count­ries, Sopra Steria gene­ra­ted reve­nues of €3.8 billion in 2017. The Group parent company Sopra Steria Group S.A. is listed on Euron­ext Paris.

it-econo­mics specia­li­zes in digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion, agile deve­lo­p­ment and coaching, cloud services, and the manage­ment of complex large-scale IT projects. The company was foun­ded in 2003 and achie­ved an esti­ma­ted turno­ver of 20 million euros in 2017.

Advi­sor to Sopra Steria: Gleiss Lutz
Dr. Corne­lius Götze (Part­ner, Lead), Dr. Chris­tina Aye (Coun­sel), Maxi­mi­lian Hirsch (all Corporate/M&A), Dr. Birgit Colbus (Coun­sel), Sergej Bräuer (both Anti­trust), Konrad Discher (Real Estate, all Frank­furt), Dr. Bene­dikt Burger (IP/IT, Düsseldorf).

A Gleiss Lutz team led by part­ner Dr. Corne­lius Götze had previously advi­sed Sopra Steria SE on the recently comple­ted acqui­si­tion of Blue­ca­rat AG, Colo­gne. Toge­ther with Dr. Thomas Winzer (Part­ner) and Dr. Tobias Abend (both Labor Law, both Frank­furt), he also advi­sed the company on its change of legal form to a Socie­tas Euro­paea (SE), which was comple­ted in spring 2018.

All of the above projects were mana­ged in-house by Dr. Ingo Marfor­ding, Head of Legal, Compli­ance & Corpo­rate at Sopra Steria SE.

Frank­furt am Main — Allen & Overy LLP has advi­sed Hamm Reno Group (HR Group), one of the largest distri­bu­tors in the tradi­tio­nal shoe retail and systems busi­ness in Germany and Europe, on the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in the eCom­merce company surf4shoes GmbH. The tran­sac­tion has alre­ady been successfully comple­ted; the parties have agreed not to disc­lose the tran­sac­tion value.

The HR Group expects the coope­ra­tion with surf4shoes to gene­rate further signi­fi­cant growth in the online segment as well as synergy effects that will bene­fit both compa­nies in the rapidly growing eCom­merce market. In addi­tion to the inter­nal resour­ces of the HR Group, which surf4shoes will be able to draw on in the future, there are syner­gies in the areas of logi­stics, IT and purchasing.

surf4shoes GmbH, based in Bitz, Baden-Würt­tem­berg, is a dyna­mi­cally growing company that has specia­li­zed in the online retail of brand-name shoes in the mid-price segment since its foun­ding in 2006. In the past fiscal year, the company gene­ra­ted sales of around 30 million euros in this segment.

The HR Group, with its 130 years of expe­ri­ence in shoe retail­ing, employs around 4,000 people and opera­tes in 20 count­ries. The Group opera­tes around 400 retail outlets world­wide and will be opera­ting over 2,000 outlets in its system busi­ness by the end of the finan­cial year. Sales gene­ra­ted at retail prices total more than 500 million euros. Follo­wing the sale of the company in 2016, the share­hol­ders of HR Group include the finan­cial inves­tor and majo­rity share­hol­der capi­ton AG, the Turkish stra­te­gic share­hol­der Flo (prior to the change of name Ziylan) with a mino­rity stake, the CEO Peter M. Wolf and the manage­ment team.

Advi­sor to Hamm Reno Group: Allen & Overy
The Allen & Overy team consis­ted of part­ners Dr. Markus Käpplin­ger, photo (Corporate/Private Equity, Frank­furt), Dr. Walter Uebel­hoer (Banking and Finance, Munich), Jürgen Schind­ler (Anti­trust, Brussels), Dr. Heike Weber (Tax, Frank­furt), Dr. Jens Matthes (IP, Düssel­dorf), Coun­sel Niko­lai Soko­lov (Corporate/Private Equity, Frank­furt), Senior Asso­cia­tes Boris Blunck and Dr. Sebas­tian Schulz (both Labor Law, Frank­furt), Miray Kavruk (IP, Düssel­dorf) as well as asso­cia­tes Dr. Jörg Weber (Banking and Finance Law, Munich), Milosz Cywin­ski and Benja­min Geisel (both Anti­trust Law, Brussels), Dr. Lisa Müller (Labor Law, Frank­furt) and Dr. Thomas Dieker (Tax Law, Frankfurt).

Allen & Overy is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with appro­xi­m­ately 5,400 employees, inclu­ding appro­xi­m­ately 550 part­ners, in 44 offices worldwide.

Berlin/ Zurich - Gleiss Lutz has advi­sed Inte­ger, the leading US medi­cal device manu­fac­tu­rer world­wide, on the sale of itsAdvan­ced Surgi­cal & Ortho­pe­dics busi­ness to MedPlast Group, a leading service provi­der to the medi­cal device indus­try. The purchase price is $600 million. The tran­sac­tion is subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory appr­ovals, inclu­ding anti­trust clearan­ces, and is expec­ted to close in the third quar­ter of 2018.

New York Stock Exch­ange-listed Inte­ger Holdings Corpo­ra­tion (NYSE: ITGR) is one of the world’s largest manu­fac­tu­r­ers of medi­cal devices for cardio­logy, neuro­mo­du­la­tion, ortho­pe­dics, vascu­lar surgery and surgery, as well as mobile medi­cal equip­ment. The company offers OEMs inno­va­tive, high-quality tech­no­lo­gies and manu­fac­tu­ring proces­ses. Inte­ger also deve­lops batte­ries for high-end niche appli­ca­ti­ons for utili­ties, mili­tary and envi­ron­men­tal appli­ca­ti­ons. The company’s brands also include Great­batch Medi­cal, Lake Region Medi­cal and Electrochem.

With the sale of the busi­ness, Inte­ger expects to improve the company’s numbers with a profit of $1.2 billion with higher margins, higher net profits, higher returns on inves­ted capi­tal and signi­fi­cantly lower debt.

MedPlast Inc. based in Tempe, Arizona, provi­des product design and deve­lo­p­ment, program and supply chain manage­ment for the deli­very of finis­hed medi­cal devices and compon­ents. The company is also invol­ved in the deve­lo­p­ment and supply of implan­ta­ble and biocom­pa­ti­ble plastics.

Advi­sor Inte­ger: Gleiss Lutz
Lead Dr. Martin Viciano Gofferje (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Berlin) advi­sed Inte­ger on all aspects of German law in the tran­sac­tion: Dr. Micha Pfarr, Svenja Bender (both Corporate/M&A, both Berlin), Dr. Stefan Linge­mann (Part­ner), Dr. Rut Stein­hau­ser, Dr. Kathe­rina Wind (all Berlin, all Labor Law), Anto­nia Harbusch (Düssel­dorf), Sergej Bräuer (Frank­furt, both Anti­trust), Dr. Johann Wagner (Part­ner), Dr. Hendrik Marchal (Coun­sel, both Tax, both Hamburg) and Dr. Jacob von Andreae (Part­ner, Regu­la­tory, Düsseldorf).

Back in 2015, Gleiss Lutz acted for Inte­ger (then known as Great­batch) on all aspects of German law in its acqui­si­tion of compe­ti­tor Lake Region Medi­cal from private equity inves­tors KKR and Bain Capi­tal for appro­xi­m­ately $1.7 billion.

Dettin­gen an der Erms/Stuttgart — The Uniplast Knauer Group, a leading manu­fac­tu­rer of thin-walled plas­tic pack­a­ging for the food indus­try, had been under­go­ing a restruc­tu­ring process since 2013. Toge­ther with the trus­tee Dr. Thilo Schultze from the law firm Grub Brug­ger, the manage­ment team in the company, with the mana­ging direc­tors Chris­toph Ries (CEO) and Andreas Doster (COO) at the helm, has succee­ded in stabi­li­zing the core busi­ness over the past three years.

With around 3 billion plas­tic packa­ges produ­ced per year, the Uniplast Knauer Group is the leading manu­fac­tu­rer of plas­tic pack­a­ging in the German dairy indus­try. The group achie­ved sales of around 70 million euros in 2017. The group employs 400 people at its produc­tion sites in Dettin­gen, south of Stutt­gart, and Bad Laas­phe in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Effec­tive May 02, 2018, the Uniplast Knauer Group was acqui­red by the listed indus­trial holding Blue Cap AG. In the inter­na­tio­nal bidding process initia­ted by Concen­tro, Blue Cap AG was able to prevail over the other inte­res­ted parties not only with an attrac­tive offer for all parties invol­ved, but above all with an attrac­tive perspec­tive for the group of companies.

With the help of Blue Cap AG, the company has now succee­ded in restruc­tu­ring and refi­nan­cing its balance sheet in advance of the inten­ded further opera­tio­nal deve­lo­p­ment of the group of compa­nies. With around 3 billion plas­tic cups produ­ced annu­ally, Uniplast Knauer is the market leader in the southern German dairy indus­try. Throug­hout its history, the company foun­ded by Karl­heinz Knauer in 1968 has often been a pioneer for new and inno­va­tive cup shapes and has always been a tech­no­lo­gi­cal leader, espe­ci­ally in thin-walled in-mold labe­l­ing injec­tion molding products, but also in the field of ther­mo­forming. Thanks to its strong market posi­tion and its good and broad tech­ni­cal base compared with its compe­ti­tors, the company has succee­ded in main­tai­ning its leading role even during the restruc­tu­ring phase.

With Blue Cap AG, which is alre­ady invol­ved in the pack­a­ging indus­try, as a share­hol­der, “Knauer-Uniplast will conti­nue to exist as a well-known, relia­ble pack­a­ging specia­list and inde­pen­dent company ‚” says Dr. Hanns­pe­ter Schu­bert, CEO of Blue Cap AG. Accor­ding to his plans, on the one hand the exis­ting market posi­tion in the dairy market is to be secu­red by new invest­ments, and on the other hand, based on “Knauer-Uniplast’s tech­no­logy and deve­lo­p­ment compe­tence, pack­a­ging solu­ti­ons outside the tradi­tio­nal food indus­try are also to be deve­lo­ped”. Inten­sive talks were held with a wide range of poten­tial inves­tors as part of the inter­na­tio­nal bidding process. “In addi­tion to the balance sheet restruc­tu­ring, the main focus of the process from the management’s point of view was to find a relia­ble part­ner for the company with whom the diverse growth poten­ti­als can be lever­a­ged in the best possi­ble way and thus the strong market posi­tion can be secu­red in the long term. “With Blue Cap, we are convin­ced that we have found the right part­ner to realize the exis­ting poten­tial,” says Andreas Doster, who as Mana­ging Direc­tor has stee­red the group of compa­nies through the most diffi­cult phase of its history and will now conti­nue to manage it toge­ther with Blue Cap.

In the prepa­ra­tion and execu­tion of the tran­sac­tion, the law firm Menold Bezler provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to the Knauer Group, in parti­cu­lar with regard to the adjus­t­ment of the complex finan­cing structure.

Advi­sor to seller | trus­tee Dr. Thilo Schultze: Kanz­lei Grub Brug­ger (www.grub-brugger.de)
Attor­ney-at-law Dr. Thilo Schultze (Treu­hander) (leading), Attor­ney-at-law Maxi­mi­lian Rötscher (Treu­hand, M&A). — Dr. Thilo Schultze is a lawyer and part­ner in the Stutt­gart office of the law firm Grub Brug­ger & Part­ner. He is, among other things, co-author of the banking commen­tary on insol­vency law, editor of a profes­sio­nal jour­nal and lectu­rer at the German Lawy­ers’ Academy. He has been accom­pany­ing compa­nies and their boards in special situa­tions for 15 years. As a trus­tee, he also assu­mes opera­tio­nal respon­si­bi­lity for restruc­tu­rings and M&A transactions.

CRO / Manage­ment | Mana­ging Director/CEO/CRO: Chris­toph Riess / Stra­tegy Pilots (www.strategy-pilots.de) Riess Stra­tegy Pilots advi­ses compa­nies from a wide range of indus­tries and supports them in parti­cu­lar in the context of stra­te­gic realignments. Chris­toph Riess has exten­sive, inter- natio­nal manage­ment expe­ri­ence. At the begin­ning of the crisis situa­tion, he accom­pa­nied the Uniplast Knauer Group as a gene­ral repre­sen­ta­tive before taking over the role of CEO in a board posi­tion in 2015. Since then, he has been mana­ging the company’s busi­ness toge­ther with Andreas Doster, and in this role has played a key role in driving forward the opera­tio­nal restruc­tu­ring of the group of companies.

Advi­sor to the sellers | Legal support: Law firm Menold Bezler (Stutt­gart, www.menoldbezler.de)
Dr. Chris­toph Wink­ler (Corpo­rate Law, M&A), Jost Ruders­dorf (Corpo­rate Law, M&A) (leading), Frie­de­rike Frosch (Corpo­rate Law, M&A), Stef­fen Foll­ner (Banking Law, Financing)

About Menold Bezler
Menold Bezler is one of the leading medium-sized commer­cial law firms in Germany. More than 90 profes­sio­nals in Stutt­gart advise private compa­nies and the public sector on all aspects of commer­cial law: from labor, corpo­rate, compe­ti­tion and anti­trust law to energy and real estate law, envi­ron­men­tal and cons­truc­tion plan­ning law or public procu­re­ment law. The firm assists clients in restruc­tu­ring, corpo­rate acqui­si­ti­ons, finan­cing and capi­tal market tran­sac­tions as well as restruc­tu­ring and reor­ga­niza­tion or succes­sion planning.

Tax support: RWT Reut­lin­ger Wirt­schafts­treu­hand GmbH (www.rwt-gruppe.de)
Raphael Zeisset, Georg Kess­ler as audi­tors and tax consultants

About RWT
Reut­lin­ger Wirt­schafts­treu­hand (RWT) is an audi­ting and consul­ting company with inter­na­tio­nal connec­tions, ancho­red in its Swabian home­land. RWT covers a broad range of consul­ting services with a focus on family businesses.

Tran­sac­tion Control/M&A: Concen­tro Manage­ment AG (www.concentro.de/)
Dr. Alex­an­der Sasse (Part­ner), Sebas­tian Mink (Prin­ci­pal), Johan­nes Dürr (Senior Consul­tant), Julian Napo­li­tano (Consul­tant), Bene­dikt Hofstet­ter (Consul­tant)

About Concen­tro Management
Concen­tro Manage­ment AG is a medium-sized consul­ting company with a focus on M&A consul­ting, mainly in tran­si­tion situa­tions, restruc­tu­ring consul­ting and corpo­rate manage­ment. With 35 employees at four loca­ti­ons in Germany, Concen­tro works in an imple­men­ta­tion and success-orien­ted manner. The aim is to gene­rate added value for the custo­mer through an indi­vi­dual consul­ting service.

Leip­zig — The owners of FIO SYSTEMS AG sell to Hypo­port AG. As part of the tran­sac­tion, some of the exis­ting share­hol­ders of FIO SYSTEMS AG will acquire shares in Hypo­port AG as part of a capi­tal increase through contri­bu­ti­ons in kind using autho­ri­zed capi­tal at Hypo­port AG. Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek provi­ded compre­hen­sive advice to the share­hol­ders of Leip­zig-based FIO Systems AG in connec­tion with the sale and partial contri­bu­tion of all their shares in or to Hypo­port AG.

The company of the share­hol­ders advi­sed by Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek, FIO SYSTEMS AG, is one of the leading specia­list provi­ders of web-based soft­ware solu­ti­ons for the finance, housing and real estate industries.

The acqui­ring Hypo­port AG is a tech­no­logy-based finan­cial service provi­der listed on the Regu­la­ted Market of the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange (Prime Stan­dard) and head­quar­te­red in Berlin. Toge­ther with its subsi­dia­ries, it is active in the fields of consul­ting, manage­ment and infor­ma­tion systems deve­lo­p­ment, parti­cu­larly in the area of real estate finance and the inter­me­dia­tion of loans, insu­rance and invest­ment products between clients and finan­cial service provi­ders in the Euro­pean Econo­mic Area, as well as the opera­tion and deve­lo­p­ment of infor­ma­tion systems for the distri­bu­tion of finan­cial services.

In the tran­sac­tion, the share­hol­ders of FIO SYSTEMS AG were advi­sed by Dr. Rainer Hersch­lein and his team of lawy­ers. The advice included in parti­cu­lar the legal and tax support of the tran­sac­tion and the indi­vi­dual share­hol­ders as well as the proces­sing and nego­tia­tion of all contracts in the context of the tran­sac­tion, in parti­cu­lar the purchase and contri­bu­tion-in-kind agreement.

Advi­sor to the share­hol­ders of FIO SYSTEMS AG: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Rainer Hersch­lein, Photo (Lead Part­ner, Corpo­rate / Stuttgart)
Fabian F. Gaffron (Tax Law / Hamburg)
Dr. Thors­ten Kuthe (Capi­tal Markets / Cologne)
Chris­to­pher Görtz (Capi­tal Markets / Cologne)
Bene­dikt Raisch (Corpo­rate, M&A / Stuttgart)
Antje Münch (IP/IT / Stuttgart)
Dr. Anto­nia Stein (Labor Law / Stuttgart)
Corne­lia Schwiz­ler (Corpo­rate, M&A / Stuttgart)

New York/ Munich — Morpho­sys, based in Munich, succee­ded in achie­ving the largest IPO of a German biotech company on the Nasdaq in the USA to date and one of the largest share place­ments ever in the German biotech sector. The company’s shares were previously only listed in Germany.

With the fresh capi­tal, Morpho­sys is prepa­ring for the further expan­sion of its clini­cal rese­arch and the possi­ble market launch of its first own product candi­date in 2020.

The stock market proceeds will bring the company’s capi­tal reser­ves to around 450 million euros, a lot of money for the ambi­tious projects.

The expen­sive drug rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment, which curr­ently still leads to losses on the balance sheet, was the driving force behind the US IPO. For 2018, the company is projec­ting around 100 million euros in rese­arch costs and 110 to 120 million euros in opera­ting losses. But such numbers are not unknown to U.S. inves­tors, nor are they a deal-brea­ker if the tech­no­logy and over­all stra­tegy are judged to be of value.

Morpho­sys’ stra­te­gic goal is to become a “fully inte­gra­ted commer­cial biophar­maceu­ti­cal” company with drugs deve­lo­ped in-house. In this respect, the Munich-based company is in global compe­ti­tion, espe­ci­ally with strong U.S. companies.

Morpho­sys’ current hope is an anti­body compound called MOR208, which the company is test­ing in the final phase III trial against certain forms of blood cancer, so-called B‑cell lympho­mas. It could — if the promi­sing data so far are further confirmed — enter the first appr­oval proce­du­res next year and be laun­ched on the market in 2020. The U.S. Food and Drug Admi­nis­tra­tion has gran­ted this drug candi­date “breakth­rough therapy” status, which comes with expe­di­ted consul­ta­tion and review proce­du­res, among other bene­fits. A further four proprie­tary MOR product candi­da­tes are in earlier stages of clini­cal development.

In addi­tion, clini­cal trials with more than two dozen compounds based on Morpho­sys’ tech­no­logy are curr­ently under­way with part­ners from the phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­try. In the event of appr­oval, the Munich-based company is entit­led to royal­ties on these active ingre­di­ents. A first product from these part­ner programs, the psoria­sis drug Trem­fya deve­lo­ped by John­son & John­son, has been appro­ved since 2017 — and is alre­ady gene­ra­ting initial reve­nues for the Munich-based company. Nume­rous other projects based on Morpho­sys’ subs­tance libra­ries are in the earlier, precli­ni­cal phase of rese­arch: a total of around 100 anti­body projects.

Thanks to this two-pron­ged stra­tegy with the deve­lo­p­ment of proprie­tary compounds and tech­no­logy part­ner­ships, Morpho­sys now has a rela­tively broad base and is in prin­ci­ple not depen­dent on indi­vi­dual projects, and can focus on its own developments.

The U.S. Nasdaq, at any rate, is deligh­ted with the weighty new addi­tion, and its Presi­dent Nelson Griggs attests to the company from Plan­egg near Munich: “Morpho­Sys’ rich expe­ri­ence in anti­body disco­very and deve­lo­p­ment, coupled with its proprie­tary tech­no­lo­gies, makes it a leading company in the biophar­maceu­ti­cal indus­try. We are plea­sed to welcome Morpho­Sys to the Nasdaq Stock Exch­ange and support the company’s contin­ued success in impro­ving the lives of pati­ents with serious diseases.”

MorphoSys’s common shares are listed on the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange under the symbol “MOR”. The ADSs are listed on the Nasdaq Global Market under the symbol “MOR.”

Gold­man Sachs & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Secu­ri­ties LLC and Leer­ink Part­ners LLC acted as lead book-running mana­gers for the offe­ring; Beren­berg Capi­tal Markets, LLC and JMP Secu­ri­ties LLC acted as co-mana­gers for the ADS offering.

Photo: Nasdaq Inc.

Acqui­si­tion of ZKW by LG: Gleiss Lutz advi­ses on another billion-euro tran­sac­tion in the auto­mo­tive sector

Wieselburg/ South Korea — Gleiss Lutz has advi­sed the share­hol­der of Austrian auto­mo­tive supplier ZKW on the sale of the group to South Korean LG Corpo­ra­tion and its subsi­diary LG Elec­tro­nics. The purchase price is 1.1 billion euros. For LG, it is the largest acqui­si­tion in the company’s history to date. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant anti­trust authorities.

ZKW, head­quar­te­red in Wiesel­burg, Austria, is one of the world’s leading light­ing and elec­tro­nic systems specia­lists in the auto­mo­tive sector and, as such, one of the most important suppli­ers to premium-segment auto­ma­kers such as Audi, BMW, Porsche and Daim­ler. The company employs more than 9,000 people world­wide at sites in Austria, Slova­kia, the Czech Repu­blic, China, India, Mexico and the USA. In 2017, ZKW increased its conso­li­da­ted group sales by almost 30 percent year-on-year to over 1.2 billion euros.

LG Corpo­ra­tion is a South Korean conglo­me­rate opera­ting in the elec­tro­nics, chemi­cals, and services and tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons indus­tries. In Germany, the subsi­diary LG Elec­tro­nics is parti­cu­larly well known: it is a global leader in consu­mer elec­tro­nics, mobile commu­ni­ca­ti­ons and house­hold appli­ances. With 125 offices around the world and 77,000 employees, LG achie­ved conso­li­da­ted sales of $47.9 billion in fiscal 2016.

Consul­tant: Gleis Lutz
The Gleiss Lutz team led by Dr. Jochen Tyrolt and Dr. Chris­tian Cascante, photo (both Stutt­gart, Part­ner, Corporate/M&A) consis­ted of the follo­wing lawy­ers: Johan­nes Schrägle (Coun­sel), Dr. Maike Sauter, Dr. Markus Martin, Dr. Jan Sten­ger, Sava Kasa­liy­ski (all Stutt­gart), Dr. Michael Ilter (Frank­furt), Dr. Stephan Dangel­mayer, Dr. Olaf Hohle­fel­der (both Munich, all Corporate/M&A), Dr. Chris­tian Arnold (Part­ner, Stutt­gart), Dr. Thomas Winzer (Part­ner), Dr. Tobias Abend (Frank­furt, all Labor Law), Dr. Achim Danne­cker (Part­ner), Dr. Michael Rudolf, Dr. Hanna Datzer, Dr. Konrad Grün­wald (all Tax Law, Stutt­gart), Dr. Moritz Holm-Hadulla (Part­ner), Dr. Domi­nik Braun, Andreas Schüs­sel, Vanessa Gehle (all Anti­trust Law, Stutt­gart), Dr. Herwig Lux (Coun­sel), Chris­to­pher Noll (both Stutt­gart, both IP/IT), Dr. Helge Kortz (Part­ner, Frank­furt, Banking and Finance), Dr. Florian Wagner (Frank­furt, Dispute Reso­lu­tion) and Dr. Chris­tiane Frey­tag (Coun­sel, Public Law, Stuttgart).

Advi­sing compa­nies in the auto­mo­tive and auto­mo­tive supply indus­try in all areas of commer­cial law is a core compe­tence of Gleiss Lutz. Last year, the firm advi­sed Bosch and Mahle on the sale of their joint venture BMTS (Bosch Mahle Turbo Systems) to Foun­ta­in­Vest. Gleiss Lutz also advi­sed on, among other things, the billion-euro merger of ZF Fried­richs­ha­fen and TRW and the billion-euro take­over of GETRAG by Magna.