ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Gütersloh/Paderborn/Bielefeld/Detmold — The British company 
Texmo Precis­ion Castings
UK Ltd., based in Shef­field, Great Britain, has acqui­red a majo­rity share­hol­ding in the German family-owned company Fein­guss
Blank
 based in Ried­lin­gen, Germany. The merger has crea­ted a leading global invest­ment casting company under the new Texmo Blank brand. Texmo Blank’s custo­mers are leading compa­nies from the auto­mo­tive, indus­trial, aero­space and medi­cal sectors.

The tran­sac­tion was carried out by way of a share deal. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price. BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte advi­ses Texmo Precis­ion Castings on merger with Blank Group.

Texmo Precis­ion Castings is part of the Texmo Group, which was foun­ded in 1956. The core busi­ness at the time was the manu­fac­ture of water pumps and elec­tric motors. With the acqui­si­tion of the majo­rity share­hol­ding, Texmo Blank now has produc­tion faci­li­ties in the USA, Germany, Roma­nia and India with a total of 1710 employees and an annual turno­ver of around 125 million US dollars. Texmo Precis­ion Castings is the only commer­cial foundry in the world with faci­li­ties in Asia, Europe and the USA for the produc­tion of invest­ment castings.

The Blank Group goes back to the foun­ding of a commer­cial agency for tools and machine tools in Ried­lin­gen in 1950 by Wilhelm Blank. The company has grown conti­nuously since it was founded.

Texmo Precis­ion Castings was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by an inter­na­tio­nal team. In Germany, a cross-loca­tion M&A team from the law firm 
BRANDI Attor­neys at Law 
under the leader­ship of Güters­loh partner 
Dr. Cars­ten Christophery
 was active. BRANDI hand­led the mandate toge­ther with the Swiss member of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm network Pangea.net, Probst Part­ner AG. 
Probst Part­ner AG
 from Winter­thur, under the leader­ship of partner 
Franz Probst
. Browne Jacob­son the PANGEA.net member in the UK and Ireland, led by part­ner Richard Cox, provi­ded legal support on the English law aspects of the tran­sac­tion. Probst Part­ner, BRANDI and Browne Jacob­son have been working closely toge­ther for many years as members of the law firm network PANGEA.net. Lawy­ers from the Roma­nian law firm Stra­tu­lat Albu­lescu were also involved.

Probst Part­ner AG, Winter­thur, Switzerland
Franz Probst, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, Corporate/M&A)
Dr. Oliver Frit­schi, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A)
Thomas Würs­ten, Part­ner (Tax Law)
Roy Levy, Part­ner (Labor Law)
Alex­an­dra Williams-Winter, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)

Browne Jacob­son LLP, London
Richard Cox, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A)


Jacobson
the Pangea.net member in the UK and Ireland, led by part­ner Richard Cox, provi­ded legal support on the English law aspects of the tran­sac­tion. Probst Part­ner, BRANDI and Browne Jacob­son have been working closely toge­ther for many years as members of the law firm network Pnagea.net. Lawy­ers from the Roma­nian law firm Stra­tu­lat Albu­lescu were also involved.

Due to the inter­na­tio­nal posi­tio­ning of the parties, various juris­dic­tions were invol­ved in this tran­sac­tion — the indi­vi­dual work­streams were coor­di­na­ted from Germany and Switz­er­land. In addi­tion, inten­sive coor­di­na­tion with the finan­cing banks was required.

BRANDI advi­sed Texmo Precis­ion Castings on the struc­ture and coor­di­na­tion of the tran­sac­tion and on the legal due dili­gence, the nego­tia­tion of the various tran­sac­tion docu­ments under German law and the closing.

The law firm Solu­tio Schnei­der Rechts­an­walts­ge­sell­schaft mbH from Biber­ach acted for the BLANK-Group.

Advi­sor Texmo Precis­ion Castings: BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte Gütersloh/ Paderborn/ Bielefeld/ Detmold

Dr. Cars­ten Chris­to­phery, Part­ner (lead, Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Eva-Maria Gott­schalk, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Dr. Sandra Vyas, Part­ner (Employ­ment Law), Paderborn
Björn Mai, Part­ner (Employ­ment Law), Detmold
Dr. Rüdi­ger Osten, Part­ner (Commer­cial), Detmold
Dr. Chris­toph Rempe, Part­ner (IP/IT, Anti­trust Law), Bielefeld
Jannis Riedl, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A), Gütersloh
Dr. Dennis Piel­sti­cker, Asso­ciate (Commer­cial Tenancy Law), Bielefeld
Chris­tian Rödding, Asso­ciate, (Commer­cial), Detmold

Probst Part­ner AG, Winter­thur, Switzerland
Franz Probst, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, Corporate/M&A)
Dr. Oliver Frit­schi, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A)
Thomas Würs­ten, Part­ner (Tax Law)
Roy Levy, Part­ner (Labor Law)
Alex­an­dra Williams-Winter, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)

Browne Jacob­son LLP, London
Richard Cox, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A)

HLB Stück­mann, Biele­feld (Tax and Financial)
Miriam Roll, Part­ner (Finan­cial Due Diligence)
Dr. Andreas Börger, Part­ner (Tax Due Diligence)
Prof. Dr. Dana Doege, Mana­ger (Finan­cial Due Diligence)
Florian Weeg, Mana­ger (Tax Due Diligence)

Stra­tu­lat Albu­lescu, Bucha­rest, Romania
Silviu Stra­tu­lat, Part­ner (Corporate/M&A)
Ana Kusak, Part­ner (Foreign Trade Law Romania)
Tudor Ciam­bur, Part­ner (Commer­cial Tenancy Law)
Amanda Csaki, Senior Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)

ROCAN, Düssel­dorf
Dr. Timo Anger­bauer, Part­ner (Foreign Trade Law Germany)
Paul Dröß­ler, Part­ner (Foreign Trade Law Germany)

Advi­sor BLANK-Group: Solu­tio Schnei­der Rechts­an­walts­ge­sell­schaft mbH, Biberach
Armin Schnei­der, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner Corporate/M&A)
Manuel Kemp­ter, Asso­ciate (Corporate/M&A)

Crone Consul­tancy, Wachenheim
WP / StB Prof. Andreas Crone (Corporate/M&A, Tax Law)

About BRANDI Attor­neys at Law

BRANDI Rechts­an­wälte is one of the leading medium-sized commer­cial law firms in West­pha­lia and Hano­ver with offices in Biele­feld, Detmold, Güters­loh, Hano­ver, Pader­born and Minden as well as coope­ra­tion offices in Paris and Beijing. Over 100 lawy­ers, 26 of whom are also nota­ries, advise compa­nies in all areas of natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal commer­cial law and public law. BRANDI is a member of the inter­na­tio­nal network PANGEA NET. 
www.brandi.net
.

News

Munich — Copen­ha­gen-based energy start-up Reel announ­ces 5 million euros in seed funding. This is led by Tran­si­tion, a venture capi­tal fund that focu­ses on climate start-ups. Other backers include exis­ting inves­tors UVC Part­ners, The Foot­print Firm and a group of energy specia­lists and foun­ders, inclu­ding Clime­works’ Chief Project Deve­lo­p­ment Offi­cer Daniel Nathan and Netlify co-foun­der Chris­tian Bach.

In order to have a posi­tive impact on climate change, the way in which compa­nies purchase and use elec­tri­city must change. Elec­tri­city is one of the main causes of CO2 emis­si­ons worldwide (
IPCC 2022
). Commer­cial and indus­trial consump­tion is respon­si­ble for two thirds of total global elec­tri­city consumption.

Reel offers compa­nies an alter­na­tive to conven­tio­nal purcha­sing of rene­wa­ble ener­gies, parti­cu­larly with regard to proof of origin. This is because the appli­ca­ble certi­fi­ca­tes are often criti­ci­zed for not really contri­bu­ting to CO2 reduc­tions. With Reel, compa­nies can conclude power purchase agree­ments (PPAs) that offer elec­tri­city at a fixed price and reduce CO2 emis­si­ons by feeding rene­wa­ble energy into the grid.

Anders Engtoft Meldgaard, CCO and co-foun­der of Reel, comm­ents: “These certi­fi­ca­tes lead to compa­nies’ CO2 reduc­tion efforts being greatly overe­sti­ma­ted. Accor­din­gly, the risk of failing to meet the Paris Agree­ment is further increased. Reel, on the other hand, enables compa­nies to achieve carbon-free energy consump­tion every hour of the day.”

Alex­an­der Kiltz (photo © UVC), Prin­ci­pal at UVC Part­ners and Advi­sory Board member at Reel, says: “Since leading Reel’s pre-seed round, we have witnessed the team demons­trate its ability to execute a smart busi­ness model that is deeply embedded in the elec­tri­city value chain. We look forward to the next steps in Reel’s jour­ney as we launch addi­tio­nal products and expand into more regions.”

Reel plans to use the money to expand its product range and intro­duce its elec­tri­city procu­re­ment model to carbon-inten­sive energy markets across Europe. This also includes the expan­sion of the team, parti­cu­larly in the areas of deve­lo­p­ment, sales and operations.

About Reel

Reel is the next gene­ra­tion elec­tri­city supplier and offers compa­nies a new way of purcha­sing elec­tri­city. With Reel, compa­nies can conclude power purchase agree­ments (PPAs) that offer elec­tri­city at a fixed price and reduce CO2 emis­si­ons by feeding rene­wa­ble energy into the grid. Reel’s vision is a world that lives from 100 percent rene­wa­ble energy.

About UVC Partners

UVC Part­ners is a Munich and Berlin-based early-stage venture capi­tal firm inves­t­ing in Euro­pean B2B start-ups in the fields of enter­prise soft­ware, indus­trial tech­no­lo­gies and mobi­lity. The fund gene­rally invests between €0.5 and €10 million at the outset and up to €30 million in total per company. The port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from the exten­sive invest­ment and exit expe­ri­ence of the manage­ment team as well as from the close coope­ra­tion with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Europe’s leading inno­va­tion and start-up center. With over 400 employees and more than 100 indus­try part­ners, Unter­neh­mer­TUM can draw on many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding young compa­nies. This coope­ra­tion gives UVC Part­ners the oppor­tu­nity to offer start-ups unique access to talent, indus­try clients and other finan­cial part­ners. www.uvcpartners.com

News

Munich — PRIMEPULSE SE has sold its majo­rity stake in the listed company KATEK SE. The buyer was Kontron Acqui­si­ti­ons GmbH, a wholly-owned subsi­diary of Kontron AG, which is also listed on the stock exch­ange. A HEUKING team led by Munich part­ner Boris Dürr advi­sed PRIMEPULSE SE on this transaction.

Speci­fi­cally, this invol­ved the sale of around 60% of all KATEK shares. The purchase price for the share package is around EUR 130 million. Anti­trust appr­oval is still pending and the tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to be comple­ted by March 2024. Kontron will gain control of KATEK SE as a result of the tran­sac­tion and will make a manda­tory offer to the outside share­hol­ders follo­wing the transaction.

The KATEK Group is one of the leading elec­tro­nics service provi­ders in Europe. The range of services covers the entire life cycle of elec­tro­nic assem­blies and devices. KATEK places parti­cu­lar empha­sis on the deve­lo­p­ment of rene­wa­ble energy tech­no­lo­gies such as control elec­tro­nics for photo­vol­taic systems and intel­li­gent char­ging solu­ti­ons for elec­tric vehic­les. With more than 3,500 employees at loca­ti­ons in Europe, Asia and North America, the KATEK Group is expec­ted to gene­rate sales of over EUR 750 million in the 2023 finan­cial year.

PRIMEPULSE SE is an invest­ment holding company based in Munich. PRIMEPULSE is backed by the successful foun­ders, entre­pre­neurs and long-stan­ding mana­gers of TecDAX-listed CANCOM SE. PRIMEPULSE’s invest­ment acti­vi­ties focus on the IT & tech­no­logy sector and rela­ted growth markets. PRIMEPULSE’s port­fo­lio compa­nies include the listed company Stem­mer Imaging AG and the cloud mana­ged service provi­der glueck­kanja AG.

The Austrian company Kontron AG specia­li­zes in auto­no­mous commu­ni­ca­tion between devices (Inter­net of Things, IoT). With the acqui­si­tion of KATEK, Kontron is expan­ding its product port­fo­lio in the fast-growing areas of photo­vol­taics and eMobi­lity Smart Char­ging. The take­over of KATEK SE is the largest acqui­si­tion in Kontron’s history. In connec­tion with the take­over, Kontron increased its fore­cast for 2024 to a conso­li­da­ted turno­ver of at least EUR 1.9 billion and a net profit of around EUR 100 million.

The Heuking team regu­larly advi­ses PRIMEPULSE on tran­sac­tions and other projects, inclu­ding in 2018 when PRIMPULSE took over the then KATEK GmbH from the Kath­rein Group. HEUKING subse­quently advi­sed on seve­ral add-on tran­sac­tions and also supported the IPO of KATEK SE in 2021.

Consul­tant PRIMEPULSE SE: HEUKING

Boris Dürr (lead, M&A), Chris­tian Schild, LL.M. (corpo­rate law/M&A), Peter M. Schäff­ler (tax law), Andreas Schruff, Felix Noack (both corpo­rate law/M&A), all Munich.

News

Berlin / Munich — Sunday Natu­ral, a leading brand for high-quality vitamins, mine­rals and nutri­tio­nal supple­ments, has secu­red an invest­ment from CVC Fund VIII. The part­ner­ship aims to support the scaling and inter­na­tio­nal reach of the company. The foun­der of Sunday Natu­ral, Jörg Schwei­kart, will conti­nue to play a central role in the stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment of the company and will remain signi­fi­cantly invol­ved in the company.

OMMAX supported Sunday Natu­ral with an expan­sion stra­tegy and the subse­quent crea­tion of a commer­cial fact­book to prepare for the entry of the inves­tor CVC. — With two million custo­mers in German-spea­king countries,Sunday Natu­ral gene­ra­ted a profit of almost twelve million euros in 2021 and is esti­ma­ted to have a valua­tion of 700 million euros. Most recently, the well-known inves­tor CVC also inves­ted in the company.

Speci­fi­cally, a compre­hen­sive stra­tegy project was laun­ched to improve the under­stan­ding of market dyna­mics and key play­ers in various key regi­ons (14+) with the aim of asses­sing the oppor­tu­ni­ties for inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and chan­nel expan­sion. Combi­ned with a digi­tal and commer­cial compe­ti­tive bench­mar­king analy­sis, the OMMAX results helped the company derive key impli­ca­ti­ons for its go-to-market stra­tegy and formed the basis of a commer­cial fact­book for poten­tial buyers.

Dr. Stefan Sambol, Part­ner and Co-Foun­der at OMMAX, comm­ents: “We are impres­sed by the great digi­tal execu­tion of Sunday Natural’s stra­tegy and its ability to reac­ti­vate its loyal custo­mer base. ”

About Sunday Natural

Sunday Natu­ral is a leading D2C brand for premium nutri­tio­nal supple­ments that is charac­te­ri­zed by high quality and a wide range of products and focu­ses on sustaina­bi­lity and trans­pa­rency. The company pursues a multi-chan­nel approach with a focus on direct-to-consu­mer (D2C) sales via its website and the use of its network of thera­pists. Sunday Natu­ral was foun­ded in Berlin in 2013 and has quickly deve­lo­ped into one of the largest premium nutri­tio­nal supple­ment brands in Europe with more than 1,0,000 products in the areas of nutri­tio­nal supple­ments, vitamins, teas, super­foods and cosmetics.

The company sells its products to over one million loyal custo­mers per year via its D2C online plat­form Sunday.de, gene­ra­ting sales of around EUR 100 million in 2022. This strong custo­mer affi­nity and loyalty is a testa­ment to Sunday Natural’s commit­ment to quality and has resul­ted in the brand being truly loved by its commu­nity. www.sunday.de.

About Ommax — Anyone can become a digi­tal market leader

We are a fast-growing digi­tal stra­tegy consul­tancy specia­li­zing in tran­sac­tion advi­sory, stra­tegy and end-to-end execu­tion of digi­tal initia­ti­ves. Our vision is to build digi­tal leaders world­wide to drive inno­va­tion and acce­le­rate digi­tal growth and profi­ta­bi­lity. Over the last 12 years, we have execu­ted more than 300 M&A tran­sac­tions with a tran­sac­tion value of more than EUR 18 billion and more than 2,000 inter­na­tio­nal value crea­tion projects across various indus­tries for leading private equity firms in the areas of busi­ness stra­tegy, digi­tal opera­tio­nal excel­lence, advan­ced data stra­tegy, analy­tics, tech­no­logy and auto­ma­tion. As a pioneer in holi­stic data-driven stra­tegy consul­ting and end-to-end imple­men­ta­tion, we are the leading consul­ting firm in the global private equity space, deve­lo­ping and imple­men­ting best-in-class digi­tal stra­te­gies and value crea­tion. www.ommax.de

Consul­tant Sunday Natu­ral: Houli­han Lokey

Advi­sor CVC: Rothschild

News

Karls­ruhe — INERATEC, a pioneer in the deve­lo­p­ment and produc­tion of synthe­tic fuels, has raised €118 million in a finan­cing round. This will acce­le­rate the commer­cia­liza­tion of CO2-neutral e‑fuels. The Series B venture capi­tal finan­cing is led by US inves­tor Piva Capi­tal with addi­tio­nal inter­na­tio­nal parti­ci­pa­tion from HG Ventures, TDK Ventures, Copec WIND Ventures, RockCreek, Emer­ald and Samsung Ventures, as well as increased support from exis­ting inves­tors, inclu­ding major corpo­ra­ti­ons such as ENGIE New Ventures, Safran Corpo­rate Ventures and Honda.

“This finan­cing round is an important mile­stone for INERATEC and the tran­si­tion from fossil fuels to sustainable e‑fuels. With this capi­tal, we are in a posi­tion to bring about a para­digm shift in the energy sector. Our focus is clear: we want to use this invest­ment for the global scaling of e‑fuels. In order to take concrete steps towards the next era of mobi­lity, we are plan­ning to convert 1 GW of rene­wa­ble energy into 165,000 tons of sustainable e‑fuels by 2030,” says Dr. Tim Bölt­ken, CEO of INERATEC.

Rene­wa­ble alter­na­tive for fossil fuels

Over 4,000 million tons of fossil crude oil are proces­sed into fuels and chemi­cal products every year. Much of the demand comes from indus­tries that rely on the speci­fic proper­ties of these fossil products. In avia­tion, ship­ping and the chemi­cal indus­try, a sustainable trans­for­ma­tion to rene­wa­ble mole­cu­les is ther­e­fore a key chall­enge. Without excep­tion, these sectors are curr­ently depen­dent on fossil fuels and are urgen­tly looking for rene­wa­ble alter­na­ti­ves in order to achieve their climate targets. The demand for “drop-in” e‑fuels, i.e. synthe­tic fuels produ­ced from rene­wa­ble elec­tri­city, green hydro­gen and CO2, which require little or no adapt­a­tion to the exis­ting fuel infra­struc­ture, is expec­ted to triple by 2030 and increase by 19% each year until 2050.

A pionee­ring technology

The world is moving towards clea­ner energy solu­ti­ons and INERATEC is leading the trans­for­ma­tion in the field of climate-neutral fuels. INERATEC’s scalable, paten­ted tech­no­logy enables the effi­ci­ent produc­tion of e‑fuels. The process compri­ses two main steps: First, CO2 and hydro­gen are conver­ted into a synthe­sis gas. In the second step, the corre­spon­ding fuel frac­tions are produ­ced from synthe­sis gas in a further reac­tor. The e‑fuels meet the stan­dards inten­ded for indus­tries with high fossil fuel consump­tion such as avia­tion, ship­ping and the chemi­cal industry.

Since its foun­da­tion in 2016, INERATEC has built and opera­ted nume­rous pilot plants and works with over 30 custo­mers in the respec­tive appli­ca­tion areas. The company has also won seve­ral important awards, inclu­ding the German Founder’s Prize, the Next Economy Award and the EARTO Award. INERATEC was recently selec­ted as a top inno­va­tor in the field of sustainable avia­tion fuels by UpLink, the inno­va­tion plat­form of the World Econo­mic Forum.

Expan­sion of the global impact

The new capi­tal will be used to start series produc­tion of INERATEC’s Power-to‑X plants on an indus­trial scale and to drive forward the produc­tion of e‑fuels from recy­cled CO2 and rene­wa­ble ener­gies. In addi­tion, INERATEC has begun cons­truc­tion of its largest plant to date in Frank­furt and conti­nues to expand through inter­na­tio­nal projects, such as in the Nether­lands and Chile. This expan­sion will increase produc­tion by a factor of 1,500, with over 12,000,000 tons of CO2 being recy­cled annu­ally. In addi­tion, the tech­no­logy is to be used world­wide — where­ver CO2 and rene­wa­ble energy are available.

“INERATEC’s breakth­rough tech­no­logy is the most promi­sing e‑fuels solu­tion we have seen to date for the most diffi­cult to decar­bo­nize sectors such as avia­tion, ship­ping and chemi­cals. The company not only produ­ces e‑fuels. Its reac­tors are more effi­ci­ent, scalable and enable the indus­try to convert excess CO2, green elec­trons and hydro­gen to meet a wide range of needs. From fuels for cars, airplanes and ships to green chemi­cals for our daily needs. We believe that INERATEC has the best solu­tion to change the indus­try. In this way, we can achieve our common goal of moving away from fossil fuels,” explains Adzmel Adznan, foun­ding part­ner at Piva Capi­tal.

The inves­tor consor­tium for the Series B finan­cing round consists of:

Planet A Ventures, MPC, High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, FO Holding, Safran Corpo­rate Ventures, Honda, ENGIE New Ventures, HG Ventures, TDK, Copec WIND Ventures, RockCreek, Emer­ald , Samsung Ventures, Piva Capital.

About INERATEC

INERATEC is a pioneer in the field of power-to-liquid appli­ca­ti­ons. The company supplies sustainable e‑fuels and chemi­cal products. In modu­lar chemi­cal plants for power-to‑X and gas-to-liquid appli­ca­ti­ons, hydro­gen is used to produce e‑kerosene, CO2-neutral gaso­line, clean diesel or synthe­tic waxes, metha­nol or SNG from rene­wa­ble elec­tri­city and green­house gases such as CO2. Foun­ded in 2016, the company has alre­ady imple­men­ted large-scale power-to-liquid plants at German loca­ti­ons in order to increase the avai­la­bi­lity of sustainable fuels and chemi­cals in various trans­port sectors such as avia­tion. Further infor­ma­tion can be found at www.ineratec.com.

About Piva Capital

Piva Capi­tal is a San Fran­cisco-based venture capi­tal firm that invests in visio­nary entre­pre­neurs who are solving the world’s criti­cal indus­trial chal­lenges with breakth­rough tech­no­lo­gies and inno­va­tive busi­ness models. www.Piva.vc

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported more than 700 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of the fourth fund, HTGF has around 1.4 billion euros under manage­ment. The team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. To date, exter­nal inves­tors have inves­ted around EUR 5 billion in the HTGF port­fo­lio in more than 2,000 follow-on finan­cing rounds. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 170 companies.
The fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal and 45 compa­nies from a wide range of sectors . www.htgf.de

 

News

Frank­furt a. M. — Dr. Barbara Sturm has sold a majo­rity stake in Barbara Sturm Mole­cu­lar Cosme­tics GmbH to the Spanish cosme­tics company Puig. Gibson, Dunn & Crut­cher LLP advi­sed Barbara Sturm on this transaction.

The Spanish cosme­tics giant Puig has acqui­red a substan­tial majo­rity stake in the Dr. Barbara Sturm brand. The price remains confi­den­tial, but is likely to be in the seven-figure range. “We are very proud to welcome a brand of the cali­ber of Dr. Barbara Sturm to our house for ‘Love­brands’,” CEO Marc Puig is quoted as saying. Her “Glow Drops” are a real best­sel­ler. The Düssel­dorf-based company, which will retain a mino­rity stake, will remain as the respon­si­ble product deve­lo­per and brand face.

The Gibson Dunn corpo­rate team, led by New York part­ner Andrew M. Herman and Munich part­ner Dr. Ferdi­nand From­hol­zer, included Munich part­ners Sonja Rutt­mann and Dr. Markus Nauheim, as well as Munich asso­cia­tes Dr. Marcus Geiss, Maxi­mi­lian Schnie­wind and Johan­nes Reul. Munich part­ner Kai Gesing advi­sed on IP and anti­trust issues, supported by Munich asso­cia­tes Chris­toph Jacob and Yannick Ober­acker on IP and Frank­furt asso­ciate Jan Voll­kam­mer on anti­trust law. In Frank­furt, coun­sel Alex­an­der Klein advi­sed on finan­cing aspects. London part­ner James Cox advi­sed on employ­ment law issues.

About Gibson Dunn

Gibson, Dunn & Crut­cher LLP is one of the leading inter­na­tio­nal law firms and is ranked among the top law firms world­wide in indus­try surveys and by autho­ri­ta­tive publi­ca­ti­ons. With more than 1,800 lawy­ers in 21 offices, the firm has a global presence in all major econo­mic regi­ons. Gibson Dunn’s offices are loca­ted in Abu Dhabi, Brussels, Century City, Dallas, Denver, Dubai, Frank­furt, Hong Kong, Hous­ton, London, Los Ange­les, Munich, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, Paris, Beijing, Riyadh, San Fran­cisco, Singa­pore and Washing­ton, D.C. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.gibsondunn.com.

News

Berlin — YPOG provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to the growth equity fund Planet First Part­ners on FINN’s €100 million Series C finan­cing round. Planet First led the round, with other exis­ting inves­tors parti­ci­pa­ting in the new finan­cing round. These include HV Capi­tal, Korelya Capi­tal, UVC Part­ners, White Star Capi­tal and Picus Capi­tal. This increa­ses the valua­tion of FINN to over US$600 million.

Foun­ded in 2019, the start-up FINN has deve­lo­ped a car subscrip­tion plat­form that aims to make mobi­lity flexi­ble and climate-neutral at the same time.

The Munich-based company intends to use the capi­tal raised to acce­le­rate its growth in the elec­tric car segment, with the aim of more than doubling the propor­tion of low-emis­sion vehic­les from the current 40% by 2028 and thus giving people the oppor­tu­nity to test elec­tric cars in ever­y­day life. To date, the start-up has more than 25,000 subscri­bers and recently gene­ra­ted annual sales of around €160 million.

YPOG Team:

Dr. Tim Schlös­ser (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Matthias Kres­ser (Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin
Tobias Lovett (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin Florian Bacher (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin Barbara Hasse (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin

About Planet First Partners

Planet First Part­ners is a growth equity plat­form that invests in and part­ners with disrup­tive entre­pre­neurs to grow tech­no­logy-enab­led busi­nesses that combine a purpose-driven mission, profi­ta­ble growth and a people-cente­red culture. The fund has coll­ec­ted equity invest­ments tota­ling €450 million. As an Article 9 fund, Planet First Part­ners applies a rigo­rous sustainable invest­ment metho­do­logy and is commit­ted to main­tai­ning the highest stan­dards and stric­test crite­ria at all times. Planet First Part­ners was foun­ded in 2020 and consists of a highly quali­fied and expe­ri­en­ced team of invest­ment and sustaina­bi­lity experts focu­sed on maxi­mi­zing and opti­mi­zing sustaina­bi­lity. The team is comple­men­ted by an advi­sory board made up of leading figu­res from busi­ness and poli­tics. www.planetfirst.partners

About YPOG

YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Funds, Tax, Banking & Finance and Tran­sac­tions. The YPOG team advi­ses a wide variety of clients. These include emer­ging tech­no­logy compa­nies and family-run medium-sized enter­pri­ses as well as corpo­ra­ti­ons and private equity/venture capi­tal funds. YPOG is one of the leading addres­ses for venture capi­tal, private equity and fund struc­tu­ring in

News

Munich — In a round led by Newion, a total of USD 7.5 million was raised, with inves­tors inclu­ding XAnge, Nauta, River­side Acce­le­ra­tion Capi­tal and Picea Capi­tal parti­ci­pa­ting along­side Newion. The successful invest­ment increa­ses airfo­cus’ total funding to USD 15 million and paves the way for global expan­sion in the billion-dollar market for product manage­ment soft­ware. Green­Gate Part­ners advi­sed Newion on this transaction.

airfo­cus has alre­ady made a name for itself as the world’s first modu­lar product manage­ment tool. The soft­ware helps compa­nies over­come key chal­lenges, inclu­ding road­map­ping, prio­ri­tiza­tion, custo­mer analy­ses and alignment with OKRs (Objec­ti­ves and Key Results). With over 800 custo­mers world­wide, airfo­cus is setting new stan­dards in the field of product manage­ment software.

Malte Scholz, co-foun­der and CEO of airfo­cus (photo, center © airfocus):
“This funding is of crucial importance. We not only deve­lop soft­ware, but also a stan­dar­di­zed product opera­ting system. Our AI-supported plat­form will change the way product mana­gers work. Decis­ion-making beco­mes more effi­ci­ent and effective.”

About airfo­cus

airfo­cus was foun­ded in Hamburg in 2017 and offers a unique, flexi­ble end-to-end product manage­ment plat­form. With a growing global presence and backed by major VCs, the company is commit­ted to empowe­ring teams to deve­lop better products faster. — airfocus.com

About XAnge

XAnge is a leading Euro­pean venture capi­tal firm certi­fied by Bcorp and based in Paris, Berlin and Munich. With assets under manage­ment of EUR 600 million, the company invests in early-stage Euro­pean inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies opera­ting in the digi­tal consu­mer, enter­prise and data, fintech and deept­ech sectors. Since its foun­da­tion in 2003, XAnge has supported more than 200 fast-growing compa­nies in their entre­pre­neu­rial deve­lo­p­ment. The team works with visio­nary foun­ders with strong values and inter­na­tio­nal ambi­ti­ons such as Ledger, Odoo, Lydia and Believe Digi­tal. xange.vc

About Nauta Capital

Nauta is a pan-Euro­pean venture capi­tal firm that invests in early-stage B2B soft­ware compa­nies and has offices in London and Barce­lona. With over half a billion in assets under manage­ment and a team of 20 employees, Nauta is one of the largest Euro­pean VCs with a B2B focus. As an indus­try agno­stic inves­tor, Nauta is parti­cu­larly inte­res­ted in B2B SaaS solu­ti­ons with strong network effects, verti­cally-focu­sed enter­prise tech­no­lo­gies that are trans­forming large indus­tries, and compa­nies that are using deep tech appli­ca­ti­ons to solve the chal­lenges of large enter­pri­ses. Nauta has led invest­ments in more than 80 compa­nies, inclu­ding Brand­watch, Lodgify, Mercaux, Holded, Onna, MishiPay, Land­bot, AppFol­low, ifeel and Cledara. — nautacapital.com

About River­side Acce­le­ra­tion Capital

River­side Acce­le­ra­tion Capi­tal (RAC) provi­des flexi­ble growth capi­tal for B2B soft­ware and tech­no­logy compa­nies in the expan­sion phase. RAC is part of The River­side Company, a global private invest­ment firm focu­sed on inves­t­ing in growing compa­nies valued up to $400 million. Since its foun­da­tion in 1988, River­side has made more than 980 invest­ments. The company’s inter­na­tio­nal private equity and struc­tu­red capi­tal port­fo­lios comprise more than 150 compa­nies. riverside.ac

About Picea Capital

Picea Capi­tal is a level-inde­pen­dent invest­ment company based in Hamburg that focu­ses prima­rily on digi­tal tech­no­logy companies.

About Newion
Newion is a venture capi­tal company based in Amster­dam with opera­ti­ons in the Bene­lux region, Germany and the Nordics. For more than 20 years, Newion has focu­sed exclu­si­vely on support­ing promi­sing B2B SaaS start-ups. The latest fund, Newion 4, was laun­ched in 2022 and is supported by the Euro­pean Union via the InvestEU Fund.

About Green­Gate Partners

With its corpo­rate team, Green­Gate Part­ners specia­li­zes in parti­cu­lar in the areas of M&A and venture capi­tal. Green­Gate Part­ners’ legal exper­tise in the venture capi­tal sector ranges from the foun­da­tion to the various finan­cing rounds to the exit. Green­Gate Part­ners regu­larly sets stan­dards in the German market and offers compre­hen­sive advi­sory services for dome­stic and foreign venture capi­tal funds, stra­te­gic inves­tors, busi­ness angels as well as foun­ders, start-ups and managers.

News

Munich — Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Bird & Bird has advi­sed Vecto­flow GmbH, the global market leader in 3D-prin­ted flow measu­re­ment systems, on its Series A invest­ment round and secu­red €4 million in financing.

The round was secu­red by new inves­tors, inclu­ding Bayern Kapi­tal Inno­va­ti­ons­fonds II, WN Invest GmbH, asto One Invest­ment GmbH, argo Vantage GmbH, Schwarz Holding GmbH, Dr. Rolf Pfeif­fer and exis­ting seed inves­tors AM Ventures and KfW Bankengruppe.

Vecto­flow will thus conti­nue its expan­sion into the series produc­tion of measu­ring devices for the aero­space and energy markets. By working with the new part­ners, the company aims to expand its global reach.

Vecto­flow was advi­sed by the follo­wing Bird & Bird lawy­ers: Asso­ciate Louisa Graf. LL.M. (lead), part­ner Stefan Münch, coun­sel Andrea Schlote (photo © Bird&Bird) and coun­sel­Mi­chaelGaßner (all corporate/M&A, Munich), part­ner Dr. Ralph Panzer, coun­sel Sandy Gerlach, asso­ciate Cara-Marlene Fuchs (all employ­ment law, Munich), asso­cia­te­Jo­na­thanHech­ler (IP, Munich) and part­ner Dr. Rolf Schmich (tax law, Frankfurt).

News

Munich — A team led by Alex­an­der Weber, Heuking-Part­nert, provi­ded legal advice to FarmIn­sect GmbH on its Series A finan­cing round.

The over­sub­scri­bed finan­cing round of eight million euros was led by the Oslo-based impact fund Sand­wa­ter and the growth fund mana­ged by Bayern Kapi­tal; the Stra­te­gic Impact Fund of the Minderoo Foun­da­tion (Austra­lia) and the EIC Funds of the Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Coun­cil also inves­ted. Other inves­tors previously invol­ved include High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, Unter­neh­mer­TUM Funding for Inno­va­tors and various busi­ness angels.

Foun­ded in 2020, FarmIn­sect GmbH is a Munich-based company specia­li­zing in insect bree­ding systems. It was part of the Food-Agro-Biotech (FAB) venture lab at the Tech­ni­cal Univer­sity of Munich.

FarmIn­sect offers a complete modu­lar solu­tion for decen­tra­li­zed on-site produc­tion of insect larvae and has deve­lo­ped indus­try-leading insect bree­ding tech­ni­ques and gene­tic strains with impro­ved adap­ta­bi­lity to locally available larval feed. FarmInsect’s custo­mers should signi­fi­cantly reduce their feed costs, recy­cle orga­nic waste and gene­rate addi­tio­nal sources of income through ferti­li­zer, biogas and the sale of larvae.

Heuking has advi­sed FarmIn­sect GmbH since its foun­da­tion on various topics and in the area of venture capi­tal in seve­ral finan­cing rounds.

Advi­sor FarmIn­sect GmbH: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek

Alex­an­der Weber, LL.M. (lead), Roman Ettl-Steger, LL.M. (both venture capi­tal), both Munich; Dr. Henrik Lay (tax law/venture capi­tal), Hamburg; Peter M. Schäff­ler (tax law), Munich; Ariane Neubauer, Shimon Merkel, LL.M. (both venture capi­tal), both Berlin;
Domi­nik Eicke­meier, Svea Kunz (both IP/ data protection)
Kers­tin Deiters, LL.M., EMBA (Labor Law), all Cologne
Dr. Ruth Schnei­der (Anti­trust Law), Munich

News

Hano­ver — A Hano­ver-based Deloitte Legal team led by corporate/M&A part­ners Dr. Harald Stang and Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Habel has advi­sed HANNOVER Finanz on its invest­ment in PAUL Tech AG (PAUL), based in Mann­heim, as part of a growth finan­cing with a total volume of EUR 40 million.

PAUL will use the newly provi­ded funds in parti­cu­lar for invest­ments and further growth in the area of energy-saving tech­no­lo­gies & solu­ti­ons for large resi­den­tial buil­dings. With its core product PAUL Perfor­mance, PAUL has deve­lo­ped a system control­led by intel­li­gent soft­ware using AI that can reduce energy consump­tion and thus energy costs and CO2 taxes in buil­dings by up to 40 percent through perma­nent adap­tive hydrau­lic balan­cing in real time. This also makes it possi­ble to install heat pumps.

About HANNOVER Finanz

Foun­ded in 1979, HANNOVER Finanz has more than 40 years of expe­ri­ence as an equity part­ner for SMEs. The private equity firm based in Hano­ver and with an office in Vienna is one of the first venture capi­tal provi­ders for the D‑A-CH region in Germany and is an owner-mana­ged invest­ment company in its second gene­ra­tion. Well-known compa­nies such as Fiel­mann, Ross­mann and AIXTRON have reali­zed their growth with equity capi­tal from HANNOVER Finanz and taken advan­tage of its entre­pre­neu­rial support. Since its foun­ding, the equity part­ner for SMEs has comple­ted over 250 projects and inves­ted over two billion euros. Invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties are mainly growth finan­cing and succes­sion plan­ning for solid medium-sized compa­nies with annual sales of 20 million euros or more. In addi­tion to majo­rity share­hol­dings, the HANNOVER Finanz Group is one of the few invest­ment compa­nies in Germany to acquire mino­rity inte­rests. The port­fo­lio curr­ently includes 35 companies.

About PAUL Tech AG
PAUL Tech AG is the tech­no­logy leader and specia­list for the digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the real estate indus­try. PAUL uses arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to make exis­ting buil­dings climate-friendly with mini­mal invest­ment and no loss of comfort for resi­dents. Inves­tors and opera­tors rely on PAUL to make their proper­ties fit for the future and compe­ti­tive. PAUL curr­ently supports over 150 compa­nies in the real estate indus­try with over one hundred thousand resi­den­tial units.

The Hano­ver-based private equity house HANNOVER Finanz has regu­larly relied on the exper­tise of the Hano­ver-based Deloitte Legal team for many years, as eviden­ced by nume­rous tran­sac­tions invol­ving PE inves­tors and medium-sized compa­nies. Follo­wing the invest­ment in First Climate AG in spring 2022, the Deloitte Legal team was once again able to support HANNOVER Finanz with an invest­ment in the rapidly growing market for inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons and tech­no­lo­gies to miti­gate climate change. In the PAUL tran­sac­tion, the Deloitte Legal team was entrus­ted with the legal due dili­gence, in parti­cu­lar in the areas of corpo­rate law, labor law, commer­cial, IP/IT and regu­la­tory law.

Advi­sor HANNOVER Finanz: 

In-house: Dr. Chris­tina Silber­ber­ger (Gene­ral Counsel/Partner; lead)
Deloitte Legal: Dr. Harald Stang, Foto (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Habel (Part­ner, Corporate/M&A), Johan­nes Passas (Part­ner, Commer­cial), Dr. Char­lotte Sander (Part­ner, Employ­ment Law), Gunnar Fehrin­ger (Coun­sel, Real Estate), Laura Vaske (Senior Asso­ciate, Commer­cial), Daniela Wasseram (Senior Asso­ciate, Employ­ment Law), Anna Beth­mann (Senior Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A), all Hanover

News

Munich/ Hamburg — OMMAX advi­sed EMBRACE of Bertels­mann Invest­ments on the acqui­si­tion of milch & zucker, a leading HR tech and service provi­der in Germany, which offers an appli­cant track­ing system (the BeeSite Recrui­ting Edition), agency services (employer bran­ding & recruit­ment marke­ting) and its own job board (Jobstairs.de).

OMMAX carried out a commer­cial, product-rela­ted, tech­ni­cal and AI due dili­gence. This compre­hen­sive analy­sis included an exami­na­tion of milch & zucker’s unique busi­ness model, market dyna­mics and compe­ti­tive land­scape, as well as an assess­ment of the company’s tech­ni­cal and product-rela­ted capa­bi­li­ties. In addi­tion, the impact of AI on the market and the company’s readi­ness for AI were assessed.

The company opera­tes in a market that is driven by funda­men­tal trends, such as the chal­lenges of attrac­ting top talent, the growing importance of skills-based recrui­ting and the incre­asing auto­ma­tion of HR proces­ses. In this context, the company is charac­te­ri­zed by a first-class Appli­cant Track­ing System (APS). The ability to support large mid-sized compa­nies and corpo­ra­ti­ons in the criti­cal phase of recruit­ment has earned the company a strong fan base of highly satis­fied clients and their outstan­ding loyalty.

The AI readi­ness assess­ment has shown that a dedi­ca­ted team has deve­lo­ped and inte­gra­ted mature AI use cases into the soft­ware product suite, such as the auto­ma­tic gene­ra­tion of conver­sion-opti­mi­zed job descrip­ti­ons that further increase produc­ti­vity in clients’ HR func­tions. Targe­ted invest­ments have led to the deve­lo­p­ment of new func­tions that are on the road­map and are to be inte­gra­ted into the BeeSite soft­ware suite in the future.

Ana Fernan­dez-Mühl, Vice Presi­dent Syner­gies & Colla­bo­ra­tion at EMBRACE, empha­si­zes: “milch & zucker perfectly comple­ments EMBRACE’s exis­ting port­fo­lio, both in terms of tech­no­logy and consul­ting as well as in terms of custo­mers. Toge­ther, we deve­lop inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons for the recrui­ting chal­lenges of the future, which are incre­asingly driven by tech­no­logy and require a high level of consul­ting exper­tise. We would like to thank the OMMAX team for their profes­sio­nal work during the acqui­si­tion process. We felt that we were in good hands thanks to the well-foun­ded analy­ses and the criti­cal but cons­truc­tive view of the OMMAX team. We look forward to conti­nuing the good coope­ra­tion in the imple­men­ta­tion phase.”

Max Kneissl, Part­ner at OMMAX, empha­si­zes: “milch & zucker has impres­sed us with its immense custo­mer loyalty, parti­cu­larly in rela­tion to the Beesite recrui­ting plat­form. With the AI func­tion­a­li­ties deve­lo­ped and a dedi­ca­ted team, the company shows a high level of readi­ness to exploit the immense oppor­tu­ni­ties that AI offers in terms of effi­ci­ency gains for the incre­asingly important HR func­tion. We congra­tu­late Bertels­mann Invest­ments and the manage­ment team of milch & zucker on their new partnership.”

News

Düssel­dorf — ARQIS has advi­sed Fit Reisen on the sale of KMW Reisen GmbH to Home­ToGo. KMW Reisen GmbH (KMW) opera­tes under kurz-mal-weg. de is a leading online travel portal for short trips in the DACH region. Foun­ded in 2001, the online pioneer Kurz Mal Weg has been part of the Fit Reisen Group (fitreisen.de) based in Frank­furt am Main since 2016.

Home­ToGo was foun­ded in 2014 and makes vaca­tion rentals easily acces­si­ble to ever­yone. Since then, the listed Berlin-based company has grown steadily and deve­lo­ped into the SaaS-enab­led market­place with the world’s largest selec­tion of vaca­tion rentals (over 15 million listings). Home­ToGo SE is listed on the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange under the ticker symbol “HTG”.

At the same time as acqui­ring KMW Reisen GmbH from Fit Reisen, Home­ToGo acqui­res a majo­rity stake in Super Urlaub GmbH. As a result of this tran­sac­tion, Home­ToGo will hold a 51% majo­rity stake in the combi­ned company. These include the two brands Kurz Mal Weg and Kurz­ur­laub, two leading specia­lists for themed tours and hotel offers for short breaks in the DACH region and neigh­bor­ing countries.

OMMAX advi­sed Fit Reisen Group on the sale of KMW Reisen GmbH (“Kurz Mal Weg”) to a subsi­diary of Home­ToGo SE. Home­ToGo thus holds a 51% majo­rity stake in the combi­ned company.

OMMAX conduc­ted a compre­hen­sive commer­cial vendor due dili­gence, criti­cally evalua­ting Kurz Mal Weg’s current busi­ness model, compe­ti­tive posi­tion, market envi­ron­ment and busi­ness plan. This thorough assess­ment under­li­ned Kurz Mal Weg’s excep­tio­nal strengths and confirmed its status as the leading specia­list provi­der in the DACH market for the sale of themed tours in conjunc­tion with hotel offers for short breaks.

The sale of the two compa­nies took place as part of a bidding process led by Carls­quare as M&A advi­sor. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

The ARQIS part­ner in charge of this mandate, Dr. Lars Laeger, alre­ady advi­sed Fit Reisen on the acqui­si­tion of the busi­ness of KMW Reisen GmbH from the insol­vency of the former Unis­ter Group.

Consul­tant Fit Reisen: ARQIS (Düssel­dorf)
Dr. Lars Laeger (lead; M&A), Thomas Chwa­lek (M&A), Johan­nes Landry (M&A), Lisa-Marie Niklas (employ­ment law), Marcus Noth­hel­fer (IP); Coun­sel: Jens Knip­ping, Dennis Reisich (both: tax); Mana­ging Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Denis Schütz (M&A); Asso­cia­tes: Katrin Ludwig (M&A), Rolf Tichy (IP)

News

Munich/ Arzberg — The Munich office of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, toge­ther with the Swiss law firm MLL Meyer­lus­ten­ber­ger Lache­nal Froriep Ltd., has advi­sed MW Storage Fund as anchor inves­tor in a joint venture for the deve­lo­p­ment, cons­truc­tion and opera­tion of Germany’s largest battery storage power plant in Arzberg.

Cons­truc­tion of the battery storage power plant is about to begin and commis­sio­ning is plan­ned for early 2025. With a connec­tion capa­city of 100 MW and a storage capa­city of 200 MWh, the plant will be one of the largest in Europe.

Other joint venture part­ners are Reich­muth Infra­struc­ture, a leading Swiss asset manage­ment company for infra­struc­ture invest­ments in the mid-cap segment, ZENOB, a regio­nal consor­tium for the cons­truc­tion of wind farms and photo­vol­taic systems, and the energy company Bayern­werk AG, a subsi­diary of E.ON.

The MW Storage Fund is an invest­ment vehicle set up speci­fi­cally for the battery storage power plant project by the Swiss multi-family office Swiss KMU Part­ners AG.

The Weil tran­sac­tion team was led by Munich corpo­rate part­ner Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt and included coun­sel Andreas Fogel (photo © Weil) as well as asso­cia­tes Amelie Zabel, Seve­rin Scholz, Laurin Schmidt and Chris­to­pher Schlet­ter (all corpo­rate, Munich).

The MLL Legal team was led by M&A Part­ner Andrea Sieber and supported by Senior Asso­ciate Phil­ipp Falk (M&A), Asso­ciate Michèle Sidler (M&A) and Part­ner Daniel Schoch (Banking & Finance).

About Weil

Weil, Gotshal & Manges is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,100 lawy­ers. Weil has offices in New York, Boston, Brussels, Dallas, Frank­furt, Hong Kong, Hous­ton, London, Miami, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Prince­ton, Shang­hai, Washing­ton, D.C. and Sili­con Valley. In Germany, the firm has two offices and around 60 lawyers/tax advi­sors in Frank­furt and Munich. The focus here is on provi­ding specia­li­zed advice to natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal clients on cross-border private equity and M&A tran­sac­tions, high-profile liti­ga­tion manda­tes, complex restruc­tu­rings and finan­cings as well as tax structuring.

News

Zurich/Dresden — The share­hol­ders of bitvoo­doo AG (“bitvoo­doo”), active in the field of colla­bo­ra­tive work­place solu­ti­ons, have ente­red into a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Commu­nardo Soft­ware GmbH (“Commu­nardo”), a leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons and consul­ting services for the digi­tal work­place. POELLATH advi­sed the share­hol­ders of bitvoo­doo AG on a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with Commu­nardo Soft­ware GmbH.

The newly formed stra­te­gic alli­ance will be contin­ued under the umbrella of the Commu­nardo Group. This allows both Atlas­sian Plati­num Solu­tion Part­ners to conti­nue to operate inde­pendently while pooling resources.

Toge­ther, the aim is to further expand the company’s posi­tion as a leading provi­der of solu­ti­ons for modern working in the digi­tal work­place in the DACH market. Custo­mers will also bene­fit from an even more effi­ci­ent and robust service offe­ring as a result of the merger. POELLATH advi­sed the share­hol­ders of bitvoo­doo AG on the legal and tax aspects of the transaction.

Foun­ded in 2008 and based in Zurich (Switz­er­land), bitvoo­doo supports compa­nies in the plan­ning, design, deve­lo­p­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of indi­vi­dua­li­zed company and project plat­forms. These include social intra­nets, know­ledge plat­forms, manage­ment cock­pits and ticke­ting and issue track­ing systems.

Commu­nardo was foun­ded in 2001 and is a leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons and consul­ting services for the digi­tal work­place. The Dres­den-based company supports its custo­mers from all sectors in selec­ting the right soft­ware, imple­men­ting intel­li­gent solu­ti­ons and deve­lo­ping custo­mi­zed apps.

Consul­tant bitvoo­doo AG: POELLATH 

Otto Haber­stock, M.C.J. (NYU) (Part­ner, Lead, M&A/Private Equity)
Gerald Herr­mann (Part­ner, Taxes)
Daniel Zhu (Senior Asso­ciate, M&A/Private Equity)
Jannis Lührs (Asso­ciate, Tax)

News

Munich — AURELIUS Wachs­tums­ka­pi­tal has sold the IT services group connexta to the finan­cial inves­tor Frem­man Capi­tal, marking a further mile­stone in the port­fo­lio of the busi­ness services consul­tancy. Aure­lius was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by OMMAX.

In a favorable market envi­ron­ment supported by incre­asing IT comple­xity, growing cyber­se­cu­rity thre­ats and a trend towards outsour­cing, connexta has built a signi­fi­cant posi­tion in the German market by effec­tively combi­ning local presence and deep specia­liza­tion in areas such as cloud, cyber­se­cu­rity and busi­ness appli­ca­ti­ons. In this way, connexta has become a “one-stop store” for its thou­sands of customers.

On its path of inor­ga­nic growth, the buy-and-build plat­form has successfully comple­ted nine acqui­si­ti­ons in recent years and offers its port­fo­lio compa­nies an ever-growing range of Group bene­fits that streng­then their sales, deli­very and person­nel quality. Supported by a sophisti­ca­ted M&A process and a dedi­ca­ted team, the plat­form is well posi­tio­ned to conti­nue and acce­le­rate this path in the future.

Jens Stief, CEO of connexta, on the VDD support provi­ded by OMMAX: “We greatly appre­cia­ted the thorough report­ing and in-depth analy­sis that OMMAX brought to the process. The team’s support enab­led us to effec­tively deve­lop connexta’s equity story, which we will drive forward in the future. OMMAX’s exper­tise, from tran­sac­tion consul­ting to digi­tal imple­men­ta­tion, has proven to be very valuable in this partnership.”

Max Kneissl, Part­ner at OMMAX, commen­ted: “We would like to thank AURELIUS , connexta and TCG for their effec­tive colla­bo­ra­tion in this commer­cial VDD process, which repres­ents a remar­kable deal in the Euro­pean IT services land­scape. With their clear posi­tio­ning, relent­less pursuit of opera­tio­nal excel­lence and expe­ri­en­ced leader­ship, we see a strong deve­lo­p­ment path for the connexta group. “MAX KNEISSL

The OMMAX team conduc­ted a compre­hen­sive due dili­gence review of the vendor, focu­sing on key areas such as market and compe­ti­tive dyna­mics, custo­mer perfor­mance, group inte­gra­tion and busi­ness plan assess­ment. This holi­stic approach high­ligh­ted the innate robust quali­ties that the Group, with a turno­ver of over € 100 million, has built up for support­ing medium-sized compa­nies on the German market.

About the AURELIUS Group

AURELIUS is a globally active alter­na­tive invest­ment group that is widely reco­gni­zed for its opera­tio­nal approach. AURELIUS focu­ses on private equity, private debt and real estate. The most important invest­ment plat­forms are the AURELIUS Euro­pean Oppor­tu­ni­ties Fund IV and the listed AURELIUS Equity Oppor­tu­ni­ties SE & Co. KGaA. — The AURELIUS Group has grown stron­gly in recent years and today gene­ra­tes reve­nues of EUR 11 billion and employs more than 300 people at 10 loca­ti­ons in Europe and North America. AURELIUS is a reco­gni­zed specia­list for complex invest­ments with opera­tio­nal impro­ve­ment poten­tial, such as corpo­rate carve-outs, plat­form build-ups or succes­sion solu­ti­ons, as well as for specia­li­zed finan­cing solutions.

With more than 260 tran­sac­tions comple­ted to date, AURELIUS has a strong track record of deli­ve­ring supe­rior returns to its inves­tors through its flexi­ble approach, uncom­pro­mi­sing focus on opera­tio­nal excel­lence, ability to execute multi-dimen­sio­nal tran­sac­tions, prudent risk manage­ment and long-term invest­ment philosophy.

About OMMAX
We believe that anyone can become a digi­tal market leader.

We are a fast-growing digi­tal stra­tegy consul­tancy specia­li­zing in tran­sac­tion advi­sory, stra­tegy and end-to-end execu­tion of digi­tal initia­ti­ves. Our vision is to build digi­tal leaders globally to drive inno­va­tion and acce­le­rate digi­tal growth and profi­ta­bi­lity. Over the last 12 years, we have execu­ted more than 300 M&A tran­sac­tions with a tran­sac­tion value of more than EUR 18 billion and more than 2,000 inter­na­tio­nal value crea­tion projects across various indus­tries for leading private equity firms in the areas of busi­ness stra­tegy, digi­tal opera­tio­nal excel­lence, advan­ced data stra­tegy, analy­tics, tech­no­logy and auto­ma­tion. As a pioneer in holi­stic data-driven stra­tegy consul­ting and end-to-end imple­men­ta­tion, we are the leading consul­ting firm in the global private equity space, deve­lo­ping and imple­men­ting best-in-class digi­tal stra­te­gies and value creation.

News

Hamburg — Sport Alli­ance, a leading soft­ware company in the fitness indus­try based in Hamburg, Germany, announ­ces a further invest­ment of USD 100 million from leading equity growth firm PSG Equity (“PSG”). PSG alre­ady supported the Hamburg-based soft­ware company with USD 65 million in 2021. No further finan­cial details were disclosed.

Sport Alli­ance has set itself the goal of taking the sports and fitness indus­try to a new level with cloud-based and digi­tal soft­ware solu­ti­ons. The company counts more than 8,000 sports and health faci­li­ties among its custo­mers and offers inno­va­tive all-in-one soft­ware and services for fitness chains, fran­chise systems and indi­vi­dual studios.

With its product port­fo­lio, which is curr­ently available throug­hout Europe, Sport Alli­ance enables the effi­ci­ent manage­ment of gyms Sport Alli­ance and easy, digi­tal access to sport and exer­cise for members in sports faci­li­ties. Over 5.2 million gym members use the app solu­ti­ons provi­ded by Sport Alli­ance to gain easy and digi­tal access to sports facilities.

Sport Alliance’s core product is the “Magicline” manage­ment soft­ware. It is not only the market leader among ERP soft­ware systems in the fitness indus­try in German-spea­king count­ries — with its inte­gra­ted core brands for finan­cial services and member apps, Magicline has become the stan­dard for many sports provi­ders over the years. Its most renow­ned custo­mers include the RSG Group (McFit, John Reed, Gold’s Gym), clever fit and Bodystreet.

“I am extre­mely proud of the great perfor­mance of the Sport Alli­ance team and very plea­sed about the trust that PSG has placed in us. It proves once again that our products and services offer precis­ely the solu­ti­ons that the market needs and that we are making an important contri­bu­tion to the digi­ta­liza­tion of the fitness indus­try,” says Daniel Hanelt, CEO of Sport Alli­ance. “PSG’s invest­ment once again encou­ra­ges us to conti­nue our success story inter­na­tio­nally beyond the German-spea­king region. I am looking forward to the exci­ting future that lies ahead of us.”

“Since we ente­red into the part­ner­ship with Sport Alli­ance just over two years ago, we have expe­ri­en­ced an incre­di­ble curve of success. The company has since further expan­ded its offe­ring and driven forward the digi­ta­liza­tion of sports venues in Europe,” says Edward Hughes, Mana­ging Direc­tor at PSG. “We are deligh­ted to deepen our commit­ment to Sport Alli­ance and look forward to seeing what the strong team will achieve next.”

About Sport Alliance

Sport Alli­ance GmbH, based in Hamburg, specia­li­zes in soft­ware solu­ti­ons for effi­ci­ent studio manage­ment and finan­cial services in the fitness indus­try. The group of compa­nies has over 8,000 custo­mers, inclu­ding FitX, RSG Group (McFIT, Gold’s Gym, John Reed), clever fit and Body­s­treet. With “Magicline”, Sport Alli­ance offers Europe’s leading manage­ment ERP solu­tion for the fitness indus­try, helping gym opera­tors to opti­mize and digi­ta­lize their faci­li­ties. In addi­tion to Magicline, the company’s port­fo­lio also includes Finion — with Finion Capi­tal and Finion Fair­Pay — a provi­der of finan­cial services that supports studio opera­tors with the manage­ment of member­ship fees through to debt coll­ec­tion. www.sportalliance.com

About PSG Equity

PSG Equity (“PSG”) is a growth equity firm that part­ners with soft­ware and tech­no­logy-enab­led services compa­nies to help them trans­form and grow, capi­ta­lize on stra­te­gic oppor­tu­ni­ties and build strong teams. PSG has supported more than 130 plat­form compa­nies and faci­li­ta­ted over 470 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons to date. The company brings exten­sive invest­ment expe­ri­ence, deep exper­tise in soft­ware and tech­no­logy and a strong commit­ment to working with manage­ment teams to the part­ner­ships. Foun­ded in 2014, PSG has offices in Boston, Kansas City, London, Madrid, Paris and Tel Aviv. www.psgequity.com

 

News

Munich/Durham/Innsbruck — Holo­light, a leading specia­list in AR and VR solu­ti­ons for the enter­prise market, has successfully closed a Series B finan­cing round of EUR 11.4 million. Led by Euro­pean growth inves­tor Flatz Hoff­mann and exis­ting inves­tors Bayern Kapi­tal (via the Bayern 2 growth fund), EnBW New Ventures and Future Energy Ventures, this brings the company’s total invest­ment to around EUR 25 million. The company intends to use the newly acqui­red capi­tal to further deve­lop its XR strea­ming plat­form “Holo­light Hub”.

Holo­light was foun­ded in 2015 and has been doing pionee­ring work in the field of AR/VR ever since. As a proven indus­try-tested enter­prise strea­ming plat­form in the immersive and XR (virtual and augmen­ted reality) market with over 150 renow­ned custo­mers such as BMW, Nokia and Amazon Web Services, Holo­light has set the bench­mark for XR strea­ming. In the age of digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion, the tech­no­logy has great poten­tial in various sectors.

Holo­light Hub enables global avai­la­bi­lity and easy deploy­ment of XR appli­ca­ti­ons. Compa­nies use this to improve their indus­trial proces­ses in product deve­lo­p­ment, manu­fac­tu­ring, trai­ning or service. This supports compa­nies in setting up future-proof XR infra­struc­tures and promo­tes new forms of colla­bo­ra­tion and digi­tal work­flows in 3D. With the new invest­ment, Holo­light aims to further deve­lop the XR strea­ming plat­form and gain addi­tio­nal custo­mers in its key indus­tries such as auto­mo­tive, aero­space, engi­nee­ring and many more.

Impres­sive growth and forward-looking vision

Hololight’s plat­form addres­ses the great need for strea­ming in times of spatial compu­ting and indus­trial XR and effec­tively addres­ses the core chal­lenges that arise in indus­trial scena­rios, espe­ci­ally with regard to data manage­ment, proces­sing and secu­rity aspects. Over the years, Holo­light has worked hard to deve­lop and refine its own strea­ming tech­no­logy, which is now at the heart of its enter­prise strea­ming plat­form. Holo­light Hub brings a signi­fi­cant trans­for­ma­tion to the Exten­ded Reality (XR) expe­ri­ence by helping to increase the quality, acces­si­bi­lity and secu­rity of immersive content, as well as simpli­fy­ing manage­ment and delivery.

Florian Haspin­ger, CEO of Holo­light, explains: “As a pioneer in the field of XR strea­ming for compa­nies, we aim to stream every XR app via our Holo­light Hub. In doing so, we want to help compa­nies over­come the hurd­les of using immersive tech­no­lo­gies. Our approach not only offers impro­ved data secu­rity and infra­struc­ture flexi­bi­lity, but also enables true-to-life XR expe­ri­en­ces and global avai­la­bi­lity — all in a highly cost-effec­tive way.”

The recent expan­sion into the US, with the opening of an office in the Triangle Tech­no­logy Center in Durham in 2022, signals Hololight’s ambi­ti­ons to further expand its global presence.

“Holo­light impres­si­vely demons­tra­tes the inno­va­tive strength of Euro­pean compa­nies in the XR sector. Its ability to assert itself on the global market reflects the strength and poten­tial of Euro­pean tech­no­logy leaders,” says Monika Steger, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapital. ”

Hubert Aiwan­ger, Bava­rian Minis­ter of Econo­mic Affairs, adds: “Compa­nies like Holo­light bene­fit from a dyna­mic inno­va­tion land­scape, as is the case here in Bava­ria. Hololight’s pionee­ring deve­lo­p­ments in the field of augmen­ted reality (XR) are setting stan­dards for product designs and cons­truc­tions of the future. With the Growth Fund Bava­ria 2, we support such compa­nies in successfully navi­ga­ting through decisive growth phases. In this way, we are further expan­ding Bavaria’s posi­tion as a leading loca­tion for high-tech innovations.”

About Bayern Kapital

Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, is the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria. It accom­pa­nies inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies in the Free State through various growth phases, from seed to later stage, with equity capi­tal in the amount of 0.25 to 25 million euros. Bayern Kapi­tal often fills gaps in the VC sector in proven consor­tium constel­la­ti­ons with private inves­tors (busi­ness angels, family offices and corpo­rate ventures).
Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with a volume of around 700 million euros. Since it was foun­ded in 1995 on the initia­tive of the state govern­ment, the wholly-owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern has inves­ted around 475 million euros of its own equity capi­tal in around 300 start-ups and scale-ups from sectors such as life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. This has crea­ted over 10,000 perma­nent jobs in sustainable compa­nies in Bava­ria. The active port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses almost 100 companies.
Examp­les of nume­rous ground­brea­king success stories that Bayern Kapi­tal has been invol­ved in at an early stage include EOS (today the world’s leading tech­no­logy provi­der in indus­trial 3D prin­ting of metals and plas­tics), Proglove, Fazua, SimS­cale, Scom­pler, egym, Parcel­lab, Cobrai­ner, Quan­tum Systems, Casavi, Riskme­thods, Tubu­lis, Cata­lym, Immu­nic, Sirion, tado and many more.
www.bayernkapital.de

 

News
Munich/ Düssel­dorf — The global invest­ment company Carlyle is acqui­ring a majo­rity stake in GBTEC Soft­ware AG and its affi­lia­ted compa­nies from Main Capi­tal. The equity for the invest­ment is provi­ded by Carlyle Europe Tech­no­logy Part­ners V, a three billion euro fund that invests in tech­no­logy compa­nies in Europe.

Global invest­ment firm Carlyle (NASDAQ: CG) today announ­ced a majo­rity invest­ment in GBTEC Soft­ware AG and its affi­lia­tes (“GBTEC”). GBTEC is a leading provi­der of soft­ware for busi­ness process manage­ment (BPM) and gover­nance, risk and compli­ance (GRC). Company foun­der and CEO Gregor Greinke remains the largest single private share­hol­der and CEO of GBTEC. As part of the tran­sac­tion, co-foun­der Marc-Oliver Strom­berg and the exten­ded GBTEC manage­ment team are reinves­t­ing and inves­t­ing signi­fi­cant shares in the company. Main Capi­tal Part­ners, which has supported GBTEC as a specia­li­zed soft­ware inves­tor since 2019, is selling its stake in GBTEC as part of the tran­sac­tion. Further details of the tran­sac­tion were not disclosed.

GBTEC is a leading provi­der of SaaS soft­ware in the market segments of intel­li­gent Busi­ness Process Manage­ment (iBPM), Digi­tal Process Auto­ma­tion (DPA) and Process Gover­nance, Risk and Compli­ance (GRC). GBTEC’s products stand out in parti­cu­lar due to their high level of user-friend­li­ness based on no- and low-code tech­no­lo­gies and a state-of-the-art product plat­form. GBTEC is highly regarded by leading tech­no­logy analysts. The company has over 1,200 custo­mers, inclu­ding many well-known Euro­pean and inter­na­tio­nal blue chip compa­nies and public insti­tu­ti­ons, and employs around 300 people. In addi­tion to the DACH home market, GBTEC has alre­ady estab­lished bran­ches in Spain and Austra­lia and has conti­nuously inves­ted in the inter­na­tio­nal aware­ness of the brand in recent years.

Toge­ther with GBTEC’s manage­ment team, Carlyle plans to further acce­le­rate the company’s inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion and further deve­lop its product port­fo­lio, parti­cu­larly in the area of Digi­tal Process Auto­ma­tion (DPA). Signi­fi­cant invest­ments are to be made in sales and marke­ting in parti­cu­lar, as well as in arti­fi­cial intelligence.

The equity for the invest­ment is provi­ded by Carlyle Europe Tech­no­logy Part­ners (“CETP”) V, a EUR 3 billion fund that invests in tech­no­logy compa­nies in Europe. In its colla­bo­ra­tion with GBTEC, Carlyle will draw on its many years of expe­ri­ence in the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of Euro­pean soft­ware compa­nies, inclu­ding SER Group, Shop­ware, CSS, 1E, Phrase and Hack The Box.

Gregor Greinke, foun­der and CEO of GBTEC, said: “With our modern and user-friendly products, we have deve­lo­ped into a leading BPM and GRC SaaS provi­der in Europe in recent years. Carlyle’s invest­ment marks the begin­ning of the next phase of GBTEC’s growth story. As one of the leading tech­no­logy inves­tors, we have found in Carlyle the ideal part­ner to realize our further growth plans. We would like to thank Main Capi­tal Part­ners for their excel­lent coope­ra­tion and part­ner­ship over the past four years.”

Michael Wand, Mana­ging Direc­tor and co-head of the CETP advi­sory team, said: “GBTEC is active in one of the most important tech­no­logy trends of our time: digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion and, above all, the auto­ma­tion of busi­ness proces­ses. We are deligh­ted that Gregor Greinke and his team have deci­ded to part­ner with us. We are convin­ced that with our track record of over 20 years in infra­struc­ture soft­ware invest­ments and in the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of Euro­pean soft­ware compa­nies, we can signi­fi­cantly support GBTEC in its further deve­lo­p­ment into a global market leader.”

Sven van Berge Henegou­wen, Mana­ging Part­ner at Main Capi­tal Part­ners, said: “The deve­lo­p­ment of GBTEC over the past years has been impres­sive, and the time spent with the manage­ment on stra­te­gic initia­ti­ves such as inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and product expan­sion has been extre­mely exci­ting. We are convin­ced that Carlyle is inves­t­ing in an outstan­din­gly posi­tio­ned company with excel­lent future prospects.”

Advi­sor to Main Capi­tal Part­ners: McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed Main Capi­tal Part­ners and the other share­hol­ders on the sale of their respec­tive share­hol­dings in the GBTEC Group inclu­ding GBTEC Soft­ware AG to the invest­ment company Carlyle.

 

News

Helsinki, London, Paris — One Click LCA, a leading global plat­form for redu­cing green­house gas emis­si­ons in the cons­truc­tion and manu­fac­tu­ring indus­tries, recei­ves €40 million from finan­cial inves­tors PSG Equity (“PSG”) and Infra­Via Capi­tal Part­ners (“Infra­Via”) to acce­le­rate growth. PSG is a leading growth equity inves­tor that works with soft­ware and tech­no­logy compa­nies to drive their inter­na­tio­nal growth. Infra­Via is a leading inde­pen­dent Euro­pean private equity firm in the infra­struc­ture, tech­no­logy, criti­cal metals and real estate sectors.

One Click LCA’s vision is to pave the way to a CO2-neutral future with a powerful global Life-Cycle Assess­ment (LCA), Envi­ron­men­tal Product Decla­ra­tion (EPD) and other sustaina­bi­lity solu­ti­ons. The company analy­zes the entire cons­truc­tion value chain — from real estate port­fo­lios to cons­truc­tion compa­nies — and uses scien­ti­fic methods to measure, report and reduce climate-dama­ging CO2 emis­si­ons and to calcu­late other sustaina­bi­lity crite­ria for the entire cons­truc­tion and real estate sector.

The One Click LCA plat­form supports thou­sands of custo­mers in over 150 count­ries, inclu­ding well-known compa­nies such as Siemens, Schind­ler, Skanska, AECOM, WSP, Foster+Partners, Lafar­ge­Hol­cim, Saint Gobain and CSD Inge­nieure, in achie­ving their envi­ron­men­tal goals. The plat­form includes LCA tools that are compli­ant with over 70 stan­dards and certi­fi­ca­ti­ons inclu­ding LEED, BREEAM, GRESB and many natio­nal regu­la­ti­ons and toge­ther form a unique global LCA database.

The plat­form enables CO2 analy­sis across the entire value chain, inclu­ding LCA and sustaina­bi­lity assess­ment for buil­dings, infra­struc­ture and the produc­tion of buil­ding mate­ri­als, inclu­ding early-stage analy­sis, test­ing of diffe­rent product designs, bench­mar­king and sugges­ti­ons for redu­cing CO2 emis­si­ons. In addi­tion, manu­fac­tu­r­ers can use the plat­form to create and publish digi­tal envi­ron­men­tal product decla­ra­ti­ons for their products and buil­ding mate­ri­als. The services inte­grate seam­lessly with over 15 of the most widely used Buil­ding Infor­ma­tion Mode­ling (BIM) soft­ware tools, inclu­ding Auto­desk Revit®, Tekla Struc­tures® and Bent­ley iTwin®.

With the help of the two inves­tors and the funds provi­ded, One Click LCA will invest even more in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment and drive orga­nic and inor­ga­nic growth with the aim of beco­ming the leading global sustaina­bi­lity plat­form for all stake­hol­ders in the areas of green­house gas reduc­tion, biodi­ver­sity, circu­lar economy and beyond.

“With the global buil­ding stock expec­ted to double in the next forty years, gene­ra­ting 230 giga­tons of CO2 emis­si­ons, we need to scale up measu­res to reduce green­house gas emis­si­ons in cons­truc­tion and manu­fac­tu­ring,” says Panu Pasa­nen, foun­der and CEO of One Click LCA. “We are convin­ced that our part­ner­ship with PSG and Infra­Via will usher in a new phase of growth and that toge­ther we are getting ever closer to our goal of support­ing one million users with life cycle analy­sis, envi­ron­men­tal product decla­ra­ti­ons and other sustaina­bi­lity software.”

“We look forward to working with Panu Pasa­nen and the One Click LCA team to support the company’s inter­na­tio­nal growth and deve­lop inno­va­tive products for the indus­try,” says Dany Rammal, Mana­ging Direc­tor, Head of Europe at PSG (photo © PSG). “Our opera­tio­nal exper­tise and track record of growing leading inter­na­tio­nal soft­ware provi­ders will enable us to streng­then and conso­li­date One Click LCA’s posi­tion as a leading force in the decar­bo­niza­tion of the global cons­truc­tion industry.”

Alban Wyniecki, Part­ner at Infra­Via, adds: “The world is commit­ted to carbon neutra­lity and this offers huge oppor­tu­ni­ties for One Click LCA. Thanks to its stra­tegy of flag­ship invest­ments in the infra­struc­ture sector, Infra­Via has been a major player in the infra­struc­ture and cons­truc­tion indus­try for 15 years. We are very much looking forward to support­ing Panu Pasa­nen and One Click LCA in brin­ging sustaina­bi­lity to our ecosys­tem and the cons­truc­tion manu­fac­tu­ring indus­try more broadly.”

About One Click LCA

One Click LCA is a tech­no­logy company based in Helsinki (Finland) that helps the cons­truc­tion and manu­fac­tu­ring sector to calcu­late and reduce the envi­ron­men­tal impact of buil­dings, infra­struc­ture and reno­va­tion projects — as well as cons­truc­tion products and other manu­fac­tu­red products — with a world-leading, user-friendly and auto­ma­ted Life-Cycle Assess­ment (LCA). Manu­fac­tu­r­ers will also be able to create and publish Envi­ron­men­tal Product Decla­ra­ti­ons (EPDs), have them checked by third parties and evaluate them in terms of the circu­lar economy, life cycle costs and soon also biodi­ver­sity. One Click LCA is used in over 150 count­ries. Its decar­bo­niza­tion plat­form includes a unique global data­base of over 200,000 LCA data­sets and supports over 70 stan­dards and certi­fi­ca­ti­ons, inclu­ding LEED, BREEAM, GRESB and other natio­nal regu­la­ti­ons. One Click LCA was foun­ded in Finland in 2001 and has a team of over 170 employees on five conti­nents. www.oneclicklca.com

About PSG

PSG is a growth equity inves­tor that works with soft­ware and tech­no­logy-enab­led services compa­nies to help them trans­form and grow, capi­ta­lize on stra­te­gic oppor­tu­ni­ties and build strong teams. PSG has supported more than 130 plat­form compa­nies and faci­li­ta­ted over 470 add-on acqui­si­ti­ons to date. PSG brings exten­sive invest­ment expe­ri­ence, deep exper­tise in the soft­ware and tech­no­logy indus­try and a strong commit­ment to working with manage­ment teams to the part­ner­ships. Foun­ded in 2014, PSG has offices in Boston, Kansas City, London, Madrid, Paris and Tel Aviv. — One Click LCA is PSG’s fourth plat­form invest­ment in Finland and its 23rd in Europe.
www.psgequity.com

About Infra­Via

Infra­Via is a leading inde­pen­dent private equity firm specia­li­zing in invest­ments in real assets and tech­no­logy. Infra­Via supports foun­ders, manage­ment teams and compa­nies in their growth and helps them to expand their busi­nesses and deve­lop them into first-class plat­forms. Since 2008, Infra­Via has inves­ted 12 billion euros in over 50 compa­nies throug­hout Europe.
www.infraviacapital.com

News

Düssel­dorf — Allen & Overy has advi­sed RAG-Stif­tung on the successful place­ment of a new EUR 500 million exch­an­geable bond conver­ti­ble into shares of Evonik Indus­tries AG and the repurchase of outstan­ding exch­an­geable bonds. The RAG-Stif­tung intends to use the net proceeds from the offe­ring of the new bonds to finance the repurchase of outstan­ding bonds and to expand its shareholdings.

The new bonds will bear inte­rest at a rate of 2.25% per annum, paya­ble semi-annu­ally in arre­ars on May 28 and Novem­ber 28 of each year, and will be issued at par. The refe­rence share price of the New Shares is EUR 17.6148. This results in an initial exch­ange price for the New Shares of EUR 21.14. It is inten­ded to apply for admis­sion of the new bonds to trading on the open market of the Frank­furt Stock Exchange.

The RAG-Stif­tung intends to use the net proceeds from the offe­ring of the new bonds to finance the repurchase of outstan­ding bonds and to expand its share­hol­dings. In this context, the RAG-Stif­tung issued a repurchase invi­ta­tion to the holders of the outstan­ding exch­an­geable bonds matu­ring in 2024 (the 2024 bonds) and the holders of the outstan­ding exch­an­geable bonds matu­ring in 2026 (the 2026 bonds).) Offers to sell in the total nomi­nal amount of EUR 396.9 million (approx. 79.4 % of the outstan­ding nomi­nal amount of the 2024 bonds) at a price of EUR 97,000 per EUR 100,000 nomi­nal amount and in the total nomi­nal amount of EUR 50 million (approx. 10 % of the outstan­ding nomi­nal amount of the 2026 bonds) at a price of EUR 94,000 per EUR 100,000 nomi­nal amount were accepted.

The sett­le­ment of the new bonds is expec­ted to take place on or around Novem­ber 28, 2023 and the sett­le­ment of the bond buyback is expec­ted to take place on or around Novem­ber 29, 2023 will take place.

The Allen & Overy team was led by part­ner Dr. Hans Diek­mann (Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf) and also compri­sed part­ner Dr. Knut Sauer, coun­sel Nadine Kämper (both Capi­tal Markets, both Frank­furt) and Doro­thée Kupiek (Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), senior asso­ciate Dr. Jan-Bene­dikt Fischer (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg) and asso­ciate Patrick Reuter (Capi­tal Markets, Frank­furt). Part­ner Marc Plepe­lits and Senior Asso­ciate Martin Schmidt (both US Corpo­rate Finance, both Frank­furt) advi­sed on U.S. law issues.

About Allen & Overy

Allen & Overy is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with around 5,800 employees, inclu­ding around 590 part­ners, in more than 40 offices world­wide. An up-to-date over­view of Allen & Overy’s offices can be found here: allenovery.com/locations.

Allen & Overy is repre­sen­ted in Germany at its offices in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt am Main, Hamburg and Munich with around 220 lawy­ers, inclu­ding 51 part­ners. The lawy­ers advise leading natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies prima­rily in the areas of banking, finance and capi­tal markets law, corpo­rate law and M&A, tax law as well as other areas of busi­ness law. www.allenovery.de

News

Düssel­dorf — AddSe­cure Group acqui­res the Digi­Comm Group. Heuking provi­ded legal advice to the share­hol­ders of Digi­Comm Group on the take­over by the Swedish AddSe­cure Group.

For the Digi­Comm Group, this acqui­si­tion repres­ents a signi­fi­cant mile­stone on its growth path. As part of AddSe­cure, it gains access to the finan­cial stabi­lity and resour­ces of a larger, expan­sive player. This will enable the Digi­Comm Group to embark on its next phase of growth and further expand its market posi­tion. The acqui­si­tion expands the AddSe­cure Group’s presence in the DACH region and gives it access to a broad range of exper­tise and offe­rings in the criti­cal infra­struc­ture sector. The Swedish company is also opening up the new appli­ca­tion area of intel­li­gent waste management.

For deca­des, the Digi­Comm Group has been one of the leading compa­nies when it comes to moni­to­ring and secu­rely control­ling decen­tra­li­zed systems or criti­cal infra­struc­tures. The company has parti­cu­lar exper­tise in tele­con­trol commu­ni­ca­tion tech­no­logy for utili­ties, water boards and distri­bu­tion network opera­tors. Today, these solu­ti­ons are among the most important plat­forms for future tasks such as the digi­ta­liza­tion of the energy tran­si­tion or the imple­men­ta­tion of Indus­try 4.0 and the Indus­trial Inter­net of Things (IIoT). Through member­ships in the areas of “Cyber Secu­rity” and “450Alliance”, the company secu­res an up-to-date and signi­fi­cant infor­ma­tion advan­tage for itself and its customers.

The take­over of the Digi­Comm Group by AddSe­cure is expec­ted to be comple­ted in the coming weeks.

Advi­sor Digi­Comm Group: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dr. Michael Sörgel, LL.M., Foto (lead), Chris­tina Huck­schlag (both corpo­rate), Julian Rosen­feld (IT/ data protec­tion law), all Düsseldorf

News

Leuven, Belgium — Vault­Speed, the auto­ma­ted data trans­for­ma­tion company, announ­ced that it has recei­ved a Series A finan­cing of USD 15.9 million (approx. USD 15.9 million (approx. EUR 15.1 million). This finan­cing round is led by Octo­pus Ventures, one of the largest and most active venture capi­tal inves­tors in the UK and conti­nen­tal Europe. The current inves­tor Fort­ino Capi­tal, PMV and BNP Pari­bas Fortis Private Equity are also invol­ved. After two conse­cu­tive years of triple-digit reve­nue growth, Vault­Speed intends to use the proceeds to expand its strong inter­na­tio­nal presence, with a parti­cu­lar focus on the UK and US markets, and to further deve­lop the platform’s auto­ma­tion capabilities.

To enable faster analy­ses and data-driven decis­i­ons, more and more large compa­nies are moving their data to the cloud. This poses a problem for data teams: without auto­ma­tion, it is prac­ti­cally impos­si­ble to trans­form and inte­grate data from multi­ple sources in a timely manner without compro­mi­sing on quality or quan­tity. — Accor­ding to a market study by Gart­ner, global spen­ding on public clouds will increase by 17.5% to 725 billion dollars (approx. EUR 680 billion) by next year. Spen­ding on cloud infra­struc­tures is the fastest growing market segment.

Vault­Speed was laun­ched four years ago with an initial invest­ment of Cronos Group and Fort­ino Capi­tal in Belgium and has comple­tely trans­for­med data trans­for­ma­tion: Vault­Speed not only hand­les the comple­xity of data through trans­for­ma­tion, but also conso­li­da­tes data into a compre­hen­sive target data model that data engi­neers can custo­mize to their needs in days and weeks, unlike tradi­tio­nal methods.

Vault­Speed alre­ady offers its auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons to global compa­nies, espe­ci­ally in the finan­cial, health­care and utili­ties sectors. The company has ente­red into stra­te­gic part­ner­ships with Snow­flake, Micro­soft and Datab­ricks and has built a network of over 30 service part­ners to serve custo­mers globally.

“All data teams want to increase produc­ti­vity and agility. We auto­mate every step of their cloud data warehouse or lake­house: from setup to main­ten­ance and beyond,” explains Piet De Windt, CEO and co-foun­der of Vault­Speed. “We are deligh­ted to be working with Octo­pus Ventures, where they have supported our goal of revo­lu­tio­ni­zing the cloud data market from the very begin­ning. With this funding, we aim to triple our reve­nue by 2025.”

Paul David­son, Part­ner at Octo­pus Ventures (Photo © Octo­pus Ventures): “Data warehouse auto­ma­tion is incre­asingly repla­cing conven­tio­nal approa­ches to crea­ting data warehou­ses that are beco­ming inef­fec­tive and outda­ted. Vault­Speed has deve­lo­ped a code-free auto­ma­tion plat­form. We believe it is a first class answer to the chal­lenges of modern data science, where busi­ness intel­li­gence or analy­tics projects often need to be done in a matter of hours rather than months. We are deligh­ted to be working with Piet and Dirk, who are execu­ting their vision for their solu­tion well so far. We are confi­dent that we can help them acce­le­rate their ambi­tious inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion plans.”

Marcel van der Heij­den, Part­ner at Fort­ino Capi­tal“We are deligh­ted to conti­nue to support Piet De Windt, Dirk Vermei­ren and their team in their mission to push the boun­da­ries of auto­ma­tion, which has weathe­red the pande­mic and beyond and conti­nues to thrive as it trans­forms the produc­ti­vity of data teams. A must-have in the current AI era.”

“Vault­Speed is at the fore­front and will use the proceeds to main­tain its compe­ti­tive advan­tage. We are just begin­ning to tap into the huge poten­tial of auto­ma­tion in the cloud data warehouse and lake­house market. For exam­ple, we are explo­ring how AI and abstrac­tion can further revo­lu­tio­nize auto­ma­tion and deli­very of target data models,” explai­ned Dirk Vermei­ren, CTO and co-foun­der of VaultSpeed. ”

Roald Borré, Group Mana­ger Equity Invest­ments at PMV: “Auto­ma­ting data migra­tion to cloud envi­ron­ments is a key cata­lyst for digi­tiz­ing busi­nesses. PMV is exci­ted to support Vault­Speed in its rapid growth towards beco­ming a leader in the data space. The combi­na­tion of the team’s talent and addi­tio­nal funding is the perfect recipe for contin­ued success.”

Ben Kolada and Eddie Harding from ICON Corpo­rate Financewho acted as advi­sors on the tran­sac­tion, added: “We are very proud to have advi­sed Piet and the Vault­Speed team on this trans­for­ma­tive funding round. VaultSpeed’s rapid expan­sion clearly demons­tra­tes that the advan­ced auto­ma­tion capa­bi­li­ties of VaultSpeed’s data trans­for­ma­tion plat­form are exactly what the market demands. In addi­tion, Octo­pus Ventures, with its exten­sive indus­try expe­ri­ence and broad inter­na­tio­nal network, is the perfect part­ner for VaultSpeed’s next phase of growth.”

About Vault­Speed
Vault­Speed is the prefer­red solu­tion of leading compa­nies for auto­ma­ted data trans­for­ma­tion. By combi­ning auto­ma­tion templa­tes, a graphi­cal user inter­face for data mode­ling and a meta­data repo­si­tory in a single plat­form, Vault­Speed enables orga­niza­ti­ons to better deploy and main­tain their cloud data warehou­ses or lake­hou­ses. Vault­Speed has offices in London, Seat­tle, Leuven and Vilnius and coope­ra­tes with compa­nies such as HDI, Olym­pus, Euro­con­trol and Bleckmann.
www.vaultspeed.com

About Octo­pus Ventures

Octo­pus Ventures is one of the largest and most active venture capi­ta­lists in the UK and conti­nen­tal Europe. The company invests in and supports people, ideas and indus­tries that are chan­ging the world. Octo­pus Ventures has acqui­red exper­tise in seven sectors: B2B soft­ware, climate tech, consu­mer tech, deep tech, fintech, biotech and healthcare.
Octo­pus Ventures supports over 180 compa­nies in the UK and conti­nen­tal Europe, inclu­ding highly successful ones such as Zoopla, Wave­Op­tics and Depop. Octo­pus Ventures invests in people and teams — from the idea on a piece of paper to the later growth phases — and provi­des capi­tal, know-how and part­ner­ships. The company mana­ges GBP 1.9 billion (approx. EUR 2.2 billion) for private and insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors and invests GBP 200 million (approx. EUR 230 million) annu­ally. Octo­pus Ventures is part of Octo­pus Invest­ments, an invest­ment company that invests in people, ideas and indus­tries that will change the world. www.octopusventures.com.

About Fort­ino Capital

Fort­ino Capi­tal is a Euro­pean invest­ment company specia­li­zing in high-growth B2B soft­ware solu­ti­ons, mana­ging two private equity growth and two venture capi­tal funds. With offices in Belgium, the Nether­lands and Germany, Fort­ino supports excep­tio­nal and ambi­tious entre­pre­neurs in Europe. Fortino’s venture capi­tal port­fo­lio includes Vertuoza (BE), Tech­Wolf (BE), Timeseer.ai (BE), Zaion (FR), Salon­kee (LUX), Sides (DE), D2X (NL), Peers (DE) and Kosli (NO). Fort­ino Capital’s private equity growth port­fo­lio includes VanRoey (BE), Bizz­Mine (BE), Mobil­eX­pense (BE), Efficy CRM (BE), Tenzin­ger (NL), SpeakUp (NL), Ceno­sco (NL), Maxx­ton (NL), Star­dekk (BE) and Boni­ta­soft (FR). www.fortinocapital.com

About PMV

As an invest­ment company, PMV shapes a sustainable Flemish economy, the engine of our prospe­rity and well-being. We coope­rate with ambi­tious compa­nies and projects that focus on social impact and finan­cial return. PMV finan­ces promi­sing compa­nies from zero hour to growth and inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion. The company offers custo­mi­zed finan­cial solu­ti­ons in the form of capi­tal, loans and guaran­tees to all entre­pre­neurs with a good busi­ness plan and a strong manage­ment team. With and for the govern­ment and other part­ners, PMV also reali­zes important projects for the prospe­rity and well-being of Fland­ers. PMV mana­ges a port­fo­lio worth EUR 1.7 billion. www.pmv.eu/en

About BNP PARIBAS Fortis Private Equity

BNP Pari­bas Fortis Private Equity, the venture capi­tal arm of BNP Pari­bas Fortis, has been active in the Belgian private equity market since the 1980s. BNP Pari­bas Fortis Private Equity is curr­ently acqui­ring mino­rity share­hol­dings and provi­ding mezza­nine finan­cing to high-performing medium-sized compa­nies. BNP Pari­bas Fortis Private Equity also invests in specia­li­zed venture capi­tal and private equity funds in the Belgian market. BNP Pari­bas Fortis Private Equity has direct invest­ments in Studio 100, Konings, eTheRNA, Hanne­card, Quality Assis­tance and PointChaud.

About Cronos Group

At Cronos Groep, we combine entre­pre­neur­ship with a passion for inno­va­tion. Our tech­no­lo­gi­cal exper­tise is used not only to create oppor­tu­ni­ties, but also to promote growth and bring visio­nary ideas to life. We actively invest in start-ups, incu­bate promi­sing concepts and provide the resour­ces, mento­ring and know-how for their success. With the entre­pre­neu­rial spirit embedded in our DNA, we strive to create a future where inno­va­tion and human progress go hand in hand. https://cronos-groep.be/

About ICON CORPORATE FINANCE

ICON has offices in London, Bris­tol and San Fran­cisco and specia­li­zes inter­na­tio­nally in mergers and acqui­si­ti­ons and capi­tal raising. The company works closely with the global M&A, venture capi­tal, private equity and CVC commu­ni­ties. ICON has advi­sed on exits for compa­nies such as Accen­ture, Crayon, Aptean, IQVIA, Aviva, NTT, Syniti and Tels­tra and reali­zed capi­tal raisings with JP Morgan, Synova, BGF, YFM, Mobeus and Moodys. His indus­try exper­tise includes AI & Data­Tech, FinTech, Cyber, Health­Tech, Digi­tal Media, Enab­ling­Tech, Enter­prise Soft­ware and Mana­ged Services.

News

Utrecht (The Nether­lands) — Gilde Health­care announ­ces the final closing of the new Venture&Growth Fund VI with a volume of EUR 740 million. Fund VI thus closes at the upper end of the target volume after announ­cing an initial closing of EUR 600 million in April of this year. The new fund focu­ses on fast-growing compa­nies that deve­lop solu­ti­ons for impro­ved health­care at lower costs.

Gilde Health­care invests in compa­nies in Europe and North America that are active in areas such as digi­tal health, medi­cal tech­no­logy and thera­peu­tics. Gilde Health­care Venture&Growth VI is an Article 9 fund in the context of the Sustainable Finance Disclo­sure Regu­la­tion (SFDR).

Inves­tors include compa­nies from the health­care sector, pension funds, banks, insu­rance compa­nies, funds of funds and sove­reign wealth funds, foun­da­ti­ons, family offices, entre­pre­neurs and the Gilde team.

Pieter van der Meer, Mana­ging Part­ner at Gilde Health­care: “The strong inte­rest from insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors who want to make a sustainable impact with their invest­ments is a clear confir­ma­tion of our mission: inves­t­ing in solu­ti­ons that improve the quality of pati­ent care and are cost-effec­tive at the same time. Our holi­stic and broad-based stra­tegy, which includes invest­ments in digi­tal health, medi­cal tech­no­logy and thera­peu­tics in parti­cu­lar, enables us to find the best and most cost-effec­tive solu­tion for each indi­vi­dual pati­ent. With our team of expe­ri­en­ced indus­try experts, we help compa­nies to scale medi­cal inno­va­tions and make them acces­si­ble worldwide.”

Spen­ding on health­care in the western world is rising steadily and alre­ady exceeds 20% of GDP in the United States. Society as a whole needs cost-effec­tive solu­ti­ons to coun­ter this growth in expen­dit­ure. Gilde Healthcare’s mission to invest in impro­ved health­care at lower cost is supported by the newly formed Impact Coun­cil, chai­red by the former Execu­tive Direc­tor of the Euro­pean Medi­ci­nes Agency (EMA).

The new fund will invest 10–70 million euros per port­fo­lio company. Toge­ther with the last Venture&Growth Fund V (2020) and Gilde Health­care Private Equity IV (2022), Gilde Health­care has raised EUR 1.7 billion in capi­tal in the last three years.

About Gilde Healthcare

Gilde Health­care is an inves­tor specia­li­zing in the health­care sector that mana­ges over 2.6 billion euros with two fund stra­te­gies: Venture&Growth and Private Equity. Gilde Healthcare’s Venture&Growth fund invests in fast-growing compa­nies in the fields of digi­tal health, medi­cal tech­no­logy and thera­peu­tics based in Europe and North America. Gilde Healthcare’s private equity fund invests in profi­ta­ble, medium-sized health­care compa­nies based in north-western Europe. Further infor­ma­tion can be found at: www.gildehealthcare.com

News

The Munich and Frank­furt offices of the inter­na­tio­nal law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP have advi­sed Alibaba Inter­na­tio­nal Digi­tal Commerce Group (“AIDC”) in connec­tion with an invest­ment in the Visa­ble Group via a subsidiary.

The German Visa­ble Group, a former port­fo­lio company of Capvis, opera­tes one of Europe’s leading B2B market plat­forms with over 3 million Euro­pean corpo­rate custo­mers. The manage­ment of the Visa­ble Group remains inves­ted in the company.

For AIDC, an inde­pen­dent divi­sion of the Chinese tech­no­logy group Alibaba Group Holding, which bund­les the inter­na­tio­nal e‑commerce plat­forms, this invest­ment is of stra­te­gic importance due to the inten­ded expan­sion of its B2B platform.

Advi­sor Alibaba: Weil, Gotshal & Manges

Munich corpo­rate part­ners Manuel-Peter Fringer and Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schmidt were in charge and compri­sed part­ner Benja­min Rapp (Tax, Frank­furt), coun­sel Florian Wessel (Regu­la­tory, Munich), Thomas Zimmer­mann (Finance, Munich), Julian Schwa­ne­beck (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt) and Dr. Konstan­tin Hoppe (IP/IT, Munich) as well as asso­cia­tes Amelie Zabel, Chris­to­pher Schlet­ter (both Corpo­rate, Munich), Alexia Kuhn­münch (Regu­la­tory, Munich), Silvia Lengauer (Finance, Munich), Mario Kuhn (Data Protec­tion, Frank­furt), Fabian Kraupe (Labor Law, Munich) and Stef­fen Giolda (Anti­trust Law, Munich).

About Weil

Weil, Gotshal & Manges is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,100 lawy­ers. Weil has offices in New York, Boston, Brussels, Dallas, Frank­furt, Hong Kong, Hous­ton, London, Miami, Munich, Paris, Beijing, Prince­ton, Shang­hai, Washing­ton, D.C. and Sili­con Valley. In Germany, the firm has two offices and around 60 lawyers/tax advi­sors in Frank­furt and Munich. The focus here is on provi­ding specia­li­zed advice to natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal clients on cross-border private equity and M&A tran­sac­tions, high-profile liti­ga­tion manda­tes, complex restruc­tu­rings and finan­cings as well as tax structuring.

News

Munich/ London - EQS Group AG (“EQS”), a leading inter­na­tio­nal cloud soft­ware provi­der in the areas of corpo­rate compli­ance, inves­tor rela­ti­ons and ESG, and Thoma Bravo, a leading soft­ware invest­ment firm, have today signed an inves­tor agree­ment pursu­ant to which Thoma Bravo will support the future growth of EQS and launch a public tender offer (the “Offer”) for all outstan­ding shares at an offer price of EUR 40.00 per share in cash.

New regu­la­ti­ons such as the EU Whist­le­b­lo­wing Direc­tive are incre­asing the demand for inno­va­tive compli­ance soft­ware solu­ti­ons. EQS will bene­fit from Thoma Bravo’s expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in soft­ware and opera­ti­ons to acce­le­rate product inno­va­tion and fully capi­ta­lize on the company’s long-term growth oppor­tu­ni­ties in Europe. Thoma Bravo’s invest­ment will also enable EQS to finance future growth initia­ti­ves and poten­tial acqui­si­ti­ons with the aim of jointly deve­lo­ping the Euro­pean market for compli­ance soft­ware. This includes invest­ments in EQS’ plans to address the incre­asingly complex requi­re­ments in the inves­tor rela­ti­ons and corpo­rate compli­ance envi­ron­ment, in parti­cu­lar the demand for auto­ma­ted and simpli­fied proces­ses on a single secure and inte­gra­ted platform.

EQS and Thoma Bravo are convin­ced that such invest­ments are best made outside the stock market. In addi­tion, the inves­tor agree­ment sets out the corner­sto­nes of the part­ner­ship, which also include assu­ran­ces to employees, busi­ness part­ners and other stake­hol­ders. As part of the part­ner­ship, Thoma Bravo has under­ta­ken to provide addi­tio­nal capi­tal upon comple­tion of the offer by subscrib­ing to a cash capi­tal increase of 10% of the EQS shares at the offer price. The tran­sac­tion is Thoma Bravo’s first invest­ment in a German company.

“EQS is a unique German soft­ware company that deve­lops inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons for the three mega­trends of digi­ta­liza­tion, regu­la­tion and ESG and is growing profi­ta­bly thanks to these trends,” said Irina Hemmers, Part­ner at Thoma Bravo. “Toge­ther with Achim Weick and the expe­ri­en­ced team at EQS, we will deve­lop the plat­form into a pan-Euro­pean compli­ance and ESG cham­pion. This will bene­fit clients whose requi­re­ments are constantly chan­ging in this very dyna­mic market. We are very much looking forward to working with the EQS manage­ment team on the further deve­lo­p­ment of state-of-the-art soft­ware solutions.”

“Over the past 23 years, EQS has grown into a leading RegTech company provi­ding soft­ware solu­ti­ons to thou­sands of custo­mers, inclu­ding all DAX40 compa­nies as well as blue chip compa­nies world­wide. From day one, we have firmly belie­ved that trans­pa­rency crea­tes the most important busi­ness asset: trust. We enable compa­nies not only to reach important mile­sto­nes in the capi­tal markets, but also to gain and main­tain the trust of all stake­hol­ders. The colla­bo­ra­tion with Thoma Bravo will enable us to embark on the next chap­ter of our growth story. Toge­ther we will successfully estab­lish our EQS COCKPIT as the leading Euro­pean compli­ance manage­ment system for compa­nies of all sizes,” said Achim Weick, foun­der and Chief Execu­tive Offi­cer of EQS. “With its soft­ware exper­tise, many years of expe­ri­ence and enthu­si­asm for trans­for­ma­tive tech­no­lo­gies, Thoma Bravo is the right part­ner to support our growth plans.”

Today’s announce­ment is the result of a struc­tu­red process in which the EQS Execu­tive Board has been in inten­sive dialog with selec­ted inte­res­ted parties over the past months in order to find the right part­ner and achieve the best possi­ble outcome for EQS and its shareholders.

Key data of the transaction 

Thoma Bravo will offer EQS share­hol­ders EUR 40.00 per share in cash. The offer repres­ents a very attrac­tive premium of 53% over the XETRA closing price of EQS on Novem­ber 15, 2023, the last trading day prior to this publi­ca­tion, and 61% over the volume-weigh­ted average share price over the last three months prior to this date (VWAP). Based on the offer price, the market capi­ta­liza­tion will amount to appro­xi­m­ately EUR 400 million. Thoma Bravo and EQS are convin­ced that the offer offers an extre­mely attrac­tive oppor­tu­nity for all EQS share­hol­ders to realize a signi­fi­cant part of the poten­tial future value appre­cia­tion ahead of time.

Thoma Bravo has alre­ady secu­red a stake of appro­xi­m­ately 60% of all outstan­ding EQS shares through irre­vo­ca­ble tender agree­ments with EQS major share­hol­ders, inclu­ding Achim Weick, the CEO of EQS, wher­eby Achim Weick will also reinvest part of his stake in EQS into the new holding struc­ture. All major share­hol­ders will receive the same offer price under these agreements.

Thoma Bravo finan­ced the tran­sac­tion enti­rely with equity from its funds.

The Manage­ment Board and the Super­vi­sory Board of EQS welcome and support the Offer and intend, subject to review of the Offer Docu­ment, to recom­mend that all EQS Share­hol­ders accept the Offer. In addi­tion to Achim Weick’s obli­ga­tion to tender and parti­ally reinvest, the other members of the Manage­ment Board have also agreed to tender their EQS shares as part of the offer.

Strong stra­te­gic fit 

Thoma Bravo has over 20 years of expe­ri­ence in support­ing fast-growing soft­ware compa­nies with capi­tal and exper­tise. The invest­ment company has acqui­red or inves­ted in over 450 soft­ware and tech­no­logy compa­nies. Having deployed more than €10 billion of equity across 11 tran­sac­tions in Europe over the last 12 years, this tran­sac­tion is Thoma Bravo’s first plat­form invest­ment in Germany.

EQS is a leading inter­na­tio­nal deve­lo­per and provi­der of cloud soft­ware solu­ti­ons in the areas of corpo­rate compli­ance, inves­tor rela­ti­ons and ESG. EQS’ leading compli­ance and inves­tor rela­ti­ons soft­ware solu­ti­ons enable thou­sands of compa­nies world­wide to secu­rely meet complex regu­la­tory requi­re­ments, mini­mize risk and report trans­par­ently on corpo­rate perfor­mance and its impact on society and the environment.

“We have follo­wed the impres­sive growth of EQS over many years. The company has estab­lished itself as a leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons that ensure regu­la­tory compli­ance and effi­ci­ent capi­tal markets,” said Will Downing and David Tse, Vice Presi­dents of Thoma Bravo. “EQS is very well posi­tio­ned to be the part­ner of choice for compa­nies in an incre­asingly complex compli­ance and report­ing envi­ron­ment. The new EU regu­la­ti­ons in parti­cu­lar increase the need for soft­ware work­flows to improve trans­pa­rency and build trust. We look forward to working with the EQS team to further grow the busi­ness through orga­nic product inno­va­tion and M&A activity.”

Details of the tran­sac­tion

The Offer is subject to custo­mary offer condi­ti­ons, inclu­ding regu­la­tory appr­ovals, but will not include a mini­mum accep­tance thres­hold. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to be comple­ted in Janu­ary or Febru­ary 2024.

EQS and Thoma Bravo have agreed that the EQS manage­ment board will apply for the revo­ca­tion of the inclu­sion of the EQS shares in the open market imme­dia­tely after comple­tion of the Offer. A sepa­rate delis­ting offer will not be required.

Further details of the Offer, inclu­ding the terms and condi­ti­ons, will be set out in the Offer Docu­ment, upon publi­ca­tion of which the Offer Accep­tance Period will commence. As EQS Group is not listed on the regu­la­ted market, the Offer is not subject to the German Secu­ri­ties Acqui­si­tion and Take­over Act (Wert­pa­pier­er­werbs- und Über­nah­me­ge­setz — WpÜG). The offer docu­ment (in German and English) and other infor­ma­tion in connec­tion with the Offer will be published on the follo­wing website: www.cloud-solutions-offer.com.

Consul­tant EQS: Gold­man Sachs Bank Europe SE is acting as finan­cial advi­sor and GLNS as legal advi­sor to EQS.

Advi­sor Thoma Bravo: Park­View Part­ners as finan­cial advi­sor and Kirk­land & Ellis as legal advisor. 

About Thoma Bravo

Thoma Bravo is one of the largest soft­ware inves­tors in the world with assets under manage­ment of more than USD 131 billion (as of June 30, 2023). With private equity, growth equity and credit stra­te­gies, the company invests in growth-orien­ted, inno­va­tive compa­nies opera­ting in the soft­ware and tech­no­logy sectors. Thoma Bravo lever­a­ges its deep indus­try know­ledge and proven stra­te­gic and opera­tio­nal capa­bi­li­ties to work with its port­fo­lio compa­nies to imple­ment best prac­ti­ces in opera­ti­ons and drive growth initia­ti­ves. Over the past 20 years, the company has acqui­red or inves­ted in more than 450 compa­nies with an enter­prise value of over 250 billion US dollars — inclu­ding invest­ments with and without a control­ling influence. The company has bran­ches in Chicago, London, Miami, New York and San Fran­cisco. Further infor­ma­tion can be found at www.thomabravo.com.

About EQS

EQS is a leading inter­na­tio­nal cloud soft­ware provi­der in the areas of corpo­rate compli­ance, inves­tor rela­ti­ons and sustaina­bi­lity. Over 10,000 compa­nies world­wide use EQS products to build trust by relia­bly and secu­rely meeting complex regu­la­tory requi­re­ments, mini­mi­zing risk and report­ing trans­par­ently on their busi­ness perfor­mance and its impact on society and the climate. EQS products are bund­led in the cloud-based EQS COCKPIT soft­ware. This allows compli­ance proces­ses in the areas of whist­le­b­lower protec­tion and case hand­ling, policy manage­ment and appr­oval proces­ses to be mana­ged just as profes­sio­nally as busi­ness part­ner manage­ment, insi­der list manage­ment and report­ing obli­ga­ti­ons. Listed compa­nies also use a global news­wire, inves­tor targe­ting and cont­act manage­ment, as well as IR websites, digi­tal reports and webcasts for effi­ci­ent and secure inves­tor commu­ni­ca­tion. EQS also offers soft­ware for the manage­ment of ESG data (envi­ron­men­tal, social, gover­nance), the fulfill­ment of human rights due dili­gence obli­ga­ti­ons along corpo­rate supply chains, and for compli­ant sustaina­bi­lity report­ing. EQS was foun­ded in Munich in 2000. Today, the Group has around 600 employees in the world’s most important finan­cial centers.

News

Düssel­dorf, Novem­ber 2023 — niiio finance group AG, a public limi­ted company listed on the open market, acqui­res a stake in private equity inves­tor Pollen Street Capi­tal. The aim of the inves­tor is to create a new market leader in the field of soft­ware for asset and wealth manage­ment. — A Deloitte Legal team led by coun­sel Chris­toph Meves advi­sed niiio finance group on this transaction.

As part of the invest­ment, all shares in the German funds­ac­cess AG, the Luxem­bourg-based Fund­Hero S.A. and the Geor­gian FinTecc LLC, among others, are to be contri­bu­ted to niiio finance group AG.

The growth stra­tegy of niiio finance group AG, which consists of both orga­nic and inor­ga­nic growth, is thus to be contin­ued. The company aims to create a “one-stop store” in all areas rele­vant to Euro­pean asset and wealth manage­ment. In parti­cu­lar, funds­ac­cess AG, which would increase the Group’s reach in wealth manage­ment services, and Fund­Hero S.A., which expands the range of asset manage­ment services, are to provide the company with important buil­ding blocks in achie­ving this goal.

Chris­toph Meves has been advi­sing niiio finance group AG on capi­tal markets law and tran­sac­tions since 2018. After joining Deloitte Legal, Deloitte Legal has advi­sed niiio finance group AG since the begin­ning of 2022, inclu­ding on gene­ral meetings, capi­tal increa­ses and the acqui­si­tion of FIXhub GmbH.

Advi­sor niiio finance group AG: Deloitte Legal

Chris­toph Meves (Corporate/M&A), Niko Jako­vou (Corporate/M&A/Capital Markets, both lead, both Düsseldorf)

Advi­sor to Pollen Street Capi­tal Limi­ted: White & Case (Frank­furt am Main)

News

Menold Bezler has advi­sed Singa­pore-based BW Water Group on the acqui­si­tion of H+E Pharma GmbH (“H+E Pharma”) and S‑Tec GmbH (“S‑Tec”), each based in Klipp­hau­sen near Dres­den, inclu­ding the busi­ness premi­ses, as part of an asset deal. Both compa­nies are loca­ted in the so-called “Sili­con Saxony”, the largest semi­con­duc­tor clus­ter in Europe.

Stutt­gart — H+E Pharma is a high-tech plant engi­nee­ring company that manu­fac­tures, stores and distri­bu­tes pure water system solu­ti­ons for phar­maceu­ti­cal custo­mers. S‑Tec manu­fac­tures equip­ment and systems for the puri­fi­ca­tion and treat­ment of water and other liquids of all kinds. Both compa­nies had been in self-admi­nis­te­red insol­vency procee­dings since August 2023.

Foun­ded in 2017, BW Water Group, a joint venture of BW Group, is a leading provi­der of water and waste­wa­ter systems for the indus­trial and muni­ci­pal markets. The acqui­si­tion is part of BW Water’s global expan­sion and streng­thens the company’s Euro­pean presence and expertise.

Advi­sors to BW Water: Menold Bezler (Stutt­gart)
Jost Ruders­dorf (lead, part­ner), Ann-Chris­tin Heine­mann (both distres­sed M&A), Dr. Axel Klumpp (part­ner, real estate law), Dr. Jan Nehring-Köppl (foreign trade law), Kath­rin Seiz (coun­sel, employ­ment law), Dr. Julia Schnei­der (part­ner, IP law)

About Menold Bezler

Menold Bezler is a part­ner­ship-struc­tu­red commer­cial law firm based in Stutt­gart. More than 120 profes­sio­nals offer legal advice, tax advice, audi­ting and busi­ness manage­ment advice from a single source. Our clients include well-known medium-sized compa­nies, listed corpo­ra­ti­ons, the public sector and its compa­nies as well as non-profit orga­niza­ti­ons. More at www.menoldbezler.de.

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