ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Munich — FSN Capi­tal, a private equity company based in Scan­di­na­via and Germany, has raised 588 million euros for its “FSN Capi­tal Confluence” fund.
The newly laun­ched fund focu­ses on the re-invest­ment in two port­fo­lio compa­nies whose regu­lar holding period is coming to an end.
FSN Capi­tal Confluence is acqui­ring the mana­ged IT service provi­der Nordlo and the traf­fic safety and infra­struc­ture solu­ti­ons provi­der Saferoad.
Both had been held by FSN Capi­tal Fund V since 2018. The new invest­ment by the conti­nua­tion fund provi­des both compa­nies with addi­tio­nal capi­tal and lays the foun­da­tion for the next growth phase. The fund was signi­fi­cantly over­sub­scri­bed at closing The inves­tors include leading insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, inclu­ding inter­na­tio­nal foun­da­ti­ons, pension funds and invest­ment mana­gers, some of whom were and are alre­ady invol­ved in previous FSN Capi­tal funds.
The main inves­tor is Liech­ten­stein-based LGT Capi­tal Part­ners; Alta­mar­CAM Part­ners and Cubera act as co-underwriters.
As a so-called conti­nua­tion fund, FSN Confluence follows a model that is still rela­tively new in the indus­try: initi­ally it was a vehicle for the conti­nua­tion of invest­ments that were diffi­cult to sell, but today it is gene­rally used to support successful compa­nies at the end of the previous fund term.
With the Capi­tal Confluence Fund, FSN aims to seam­lessly conti­nue its successful part­ner­ship with attrac­tive port­fo­lio compa­nies and thus support them on their contin­ued growth path.
“We were able to solve a common dilemma in such models with an attrac­tive cons­truct for all sides,” explains Robin Mürer, Co-Mana­ging Part­ner at FSN Capi­tal Part­ners.
“Unusually for the indus­try, we offe­red exis­ting inves­tors the oppor­tu­nity to switch to the conti­nua­tion fund at the previous condi­ti­ons. Many took advan­tage of this status quo roll­over option, while others used the oppor­tu­nity to raise liqui­dity,” the invest­ment expert continued.
For FSN Capi­tal Confluen­ce’s two port­fo­lio compa­nies, the re-invest­ment repres­ents an oppor­tu­nity for addi­tio­nal orga­nic growth and further stra­te­gic add-on acquisitions.
Nordlo, which FSN Capi­tal formed through the merger of four Scan­di­na­vian IT compa­nies, has alre­ady made 15 such acqui­si­ti­ons and is one of the regi­on’s leading provi­ders of mana­ged IT outsour­cing, cloud services and process digitization.
Safe­road is conside­red one of the largest Euro­pean service provi­ders for traf­fic safety.
Since the delis­ting in 2018 and the subse­quent split into Safe­road and ViaCon, the company has been on a steady growth path through FSN Capi­tal, driven by inno­va­tion, ESG leader­ship, opera­tio­nal excel­lence initia­ti­ves and stra­te­gic market conso­li­da­tion. Fred­rik Almén, CEO of Nordlosays: “The conti­nua­tion of the part­ner­ship opens up exci­ting new oppor­tu­ni­ties for further deve­lo­p­ment. With addi­tio­nal capi­tal, we can further expand Nord­lo’s successful entre­pre­neu­rial model and grow through even larger acqui­si­ti­ons, both in the Nordics and in other markets.” Bernd Früh­wald, CEO of Safe­roadcommen­ted: “We look forward to conti­nuing our jour­ney toge­ther with FSN Capi­tal. We share a passion for road safety, sustainable infra­struc­ture and our goal to create value for our custo­mers, employees and society. Looking to the future, our part­ner­ship puts us in an excel­lent posi­tion to seize new oppor­tu­ni­ties and lead the way in our indus­try.” Michael Gentili, Head of Capi­tal Markets at FSN Capi­tal Part­nersadded: “Through FSN Capi­tal Confluence, the FSN Capi­tal funds reaf­firm their support and confi­dence in Nordlo and Safe­road and their manage­ment teams. It is parti­cu­larly plea­sing to have such high profile inves­tors at the helm with LGT Capi­tal Part­ners, Alta­mar­CAM Part­ners and Cubera and so many exis­ting FSN Capi­tal V inves­tors wanting to be part of this next phase of growth — we look forward to conti­nuing our jour­ney toge­ther.” André Aubert, Part­ner at LGT Capi­tal Part­ners“We have been cove­ring the secon­dary market for more than two deca­des and have focu­sed on attrac­tive, high-quality assets. With this tran­sac­tion, we are not only support­ing Nordlo and Safe­road, but also deepe­ning our part­ner­ship with FSN Capi­tal Part­ners. This crea­tes oppor­tu­ni­ties for both FSN Capi­tal V and our own inves­tors.” The advi­sers to the fund closing: Camp­bell Luty­ens and K&E About FSN Capi­tal FSN Capi­tal, one of the leading Nort­hern Euro­pean private equity firms, was foun­ded in 1999 and has four offices in Oslo, Stock­holm, Copen­ha­gen and, since 2017, Munich.
The four funds advi­sed by FSN Capi­tal have more than four billion euros under manage­ment; for the latest Fund VI, 1.8 billion euros were raised for invest­ments in Scan­di­na­via and the DACH region.
The funds make majo­rity invest­ments in growth-orien­ted compa­nies in order to support them in their contin­ued success and to make them even more sustainable, compe­ti­tive, inter­na­tio­na­li­zed and profitable.
True to the motto “We are decent people making a decent return in a decent way”, FSN Capi­tal’s team of more than 90 people (25 of whom are based in Munich) is commit­ted to inves­t­ing respon­si­bly, achie­ving a posi­tive ESG impact on the port­fo­lio and gene­ra­ting market-leading returns.
Current port­fo­lio compa­nies in Germany include Bäcker Görtz, MEGABAD (Swash Group), Ecovium, Lobs­ter, impreg, Adra­gos Pharma, Rame­der and TASKING.
www.fsncapital.com

News

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) is inves­t­ing in UNITY AG — Akti­en­ge­sell­schaft für Unter­neh­mens­füh­rung und Infor­ma­ti­ons­tech­no­lo­gie (UNITY AG), a leading inter­na­tio­nal consul­ting firm specia­li­zing in tech­no­logy consul­ting and digi­ta­liza­tion processes.
A fund advi­sed by DBAG acqui­res a control­ling stake in UNITY AG.
The previous share­hol­der, UNITY Inno­va­tion Alli­ance, which in turn is owned by its foun­ders and employees, acqui­res an almost equal econo­mic stake.
In addi­tion, UNITY AG employees are also inves­t­ing directly in UNITY AG as part of the transaction.
This results in a constel­la­tion of strong part­ners through the capi­tal share ratios.
The tran­sac­tion, which is still subject to appr­oval by the anti­trust autho­ri­ties, is expec­ted to be comple­ted by the end of the third quar­ter of 2024.
The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the terms of the sale. Holi­stic consul­ting approach for sustainable success UNITY AG, which was named as one of the 14 most important manage­ment consul­tancies in Germany in the renow­ned Lünen­donk® List 2024, offers compre­hen­sive services to clients such as AIRBUS, GEA, Luft­hansa Tech­nik, Merce­des-Benz, Miele and the Univer­sity Hospi­tal of Cologne.
From 14 loca­ti­ons, almost 400 employees enable UNITY AG custo­mers to successfully posi­tion them­sel­ves in the age of digi­ta­liza­tion and sustaina­bi­lity — in 2023, a total output of more than 72 million euros was generated.
Tradi­tio­nal, isola­ted consul­ting approa­ches fall short due to the complex chal­lenges of digi­tal transformation.
This is UNITY AG’s core area of expertise.
It offers its custo­mers the expe­ri­ence of hundreds of successful projects paired with the inno­va­tive power of conti­nuous further deve­lo­p­ment of its areas of exper­tise and consul­ting approaches.
The strong growth of UNITY AG also charac­te­ri­zes this strategy.
In recent years, the company has grown by an average of 13 percent per year, clearly outper­forming the over­all market in Germany (approx. seven percent). UNITY AG is an ideal addi­tion to DBAG’s port­fo­lio The invest­ment decis­ion stems from the fact that the digi­ta­liza­tion market is largely resi­li­ent to macroe­co­no­mic effects.
The demand for consul­ting services is charac­te­ri­zed by struc­tu­ral growth and ther­e­fore offers attrac­tive deve­lo­p­ment opportunities.
These can be further inten­si­fied through the imple­men­ta­tion of stra­te­gic M&A transactions.
As a manage­ment consul­tancy, UNITY AG fits seam­lessly and comple­men­ta­rily into DBAG’s IT services and soft­ware port­fo­lio, which accounts for around 17 percent of the over­all portfolio.
The invest­ment in UNITY AG will bene­fit from this sector exper­tise and DBAG’s network.
Both are fed by current (akqui­net, AOE, Cloudf­light, freiheit.com) and former (in-tech, Solva­res) invest­ments. “UNITY AG is an ideal addi­tion to our port­fo­lio. The company impres­ses with its inno­va­tive and inte­gra­tive consul­ting approach, which goes far beyond pure IT consul­ting. UNITY AG supports custo­mers as a spar­ring part­ner along the entire value crea­tion process. This turns them into digi­tal cham­pi­ons and also enables them to take the deman­ding chal­lenges of digi­ta­liza­tion into their own hands. Toge­ther with the foun­ders, board members and part­ners of UNITY AG, this forms the basis for the growth path that we have jointly defi­ned and that will be pursued in the coming years,” says Jannick Hune­cke, Member of the Manage­ment Board of Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (Photo: DBAG).
Values and manage­ment systems guaran­tee success UNITY AG orga­ni­zes its services within seven service units, inclu­ding Cyber Secu­rity, IT Trans­for­ma­tion and Sustainability.
The range of services is value-orien­ted and is based on “Inno­vate”, “Inte­grate”, “Trans­form” and “Realize”.
These values are the foun­da­tion of the consul­ting approach and ensure successful project implementation.
The UNITY AG manage­ment system plays a central role in the corpo­rate stra­tegy, focu­ses action on a concrete target image and serves as a compass in consulting.
By conti­nuously analy­zing new trends, UNITY AG is able to anti­ci­pate and iden­tify dyna­mic and tech­no­lo­gi­cal deve­lo­p­ments at an early stage.
The high quality of the manage­ment system is regu­larly confirmed by exter­nal certi­fi­ca­ti­ons, inclu­ding the inter­na­tio­nally valid DIN EN ISO 9001:2015 and DIN EN ISO/IEC 27001:2017 for infor­ma­tion secu­rity management.
Future-orien­ted consul­ting for digi­tal change “We are looking forward to great growth oppor­tu­ni­ties thanks to our brand core of ‘inno­va­tion, digi­ta­liza­tion and trans­for­ma­tion’. This can be further lever­a­ged through stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons. DBAG’s diverse M&A expe­ri­ence also helps us here. In this respect, we are very much looking forward to the colla­bo­ra­tion and the oppor­tu­nity to work toge­ther on our stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment,” says
Chris­toph Plass, foun­der and CEO of UNITY AG, explains further: “We have found the ideal inves­tor in DBAG. Its proxi­mity to SMEs and its sector exper­tise repre­sent real added value for UNITY AG. In addi­tion to these tech­ni­cal factors, the ‘cultu­ral fit’ also played a decisive role for us — we not only share a common vision, but also the same values.”
Dr.-Ing. Frank Thie­le­mann, long-stan­ding CEO of UNITY AG, adds: “In recent years, we have reali­zed a very successful orga­nic growth story. The indus­try and custo­mer port­fo­lio that we have built up is an excel­lent basis, also for our orga­nic growth in the coming years. The conti­nua­tion of this path — coupled with the addi­tio­nal oppor­tu­ni­ties of acqui­si­ti­ons with our strong inves­tor DBAG — will lead to a more ambi­tious growth path.”
UNITY AG is commit­ted to active transformation.
In this respect, the corpo­rate stra­tegy is geared towards linking all rele­vant econo­mic and ecolo­gi­cal factors in order to conti­nuously increase custo­mer and employee satisfaction.
This claim is under­li­ned by various awards.
These include the fifth “Best of Consul­ting” award from Wirt­schafts­Wo­che, the “Top Company” award from the employer rating portal kununu and the “Very Good Employer” award from the inter­na­tio­nal rese­arch and consul­ting insti­tute Great Place to Work®.
In addi­tion, nume­rous certi­fi­ca­ti­ons and member­ships in the ESG context, such as the UN GLOBAL Compact, the German Sustaina­bi­lity Code, the ecova­dis® award and the ÖKOPROFIT® certi­fi­ca­tion, demons­trate UNITY AG’s high level of ESG commit­ment. About DBAG Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG), which has been listed on the stock exch­ange since 1985, is one of the most renow­ned private equity compa­nies in Germany. As an inves­tor and fund advi­sor, DBAG’s invest­ment focus has tradi­tio­nally been on medium-sized compa­nies with a focus on well-posi­tio­ned compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial, prima­rily in the DACH region. The indus­try focus is on manu­fac­tu­ring compa­nies, indus­trial service provi­ders and Indus­try­Tech compa­nies — i.e. compa­nies whose products enable auto­ma­tion, robo­tics and digi­tiza­tion — as well as compa­nies from the broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services, soft­ware and health­care sectors. Since 2020, DBAG has also been repre­sen­ted in Italy with its own office in Milan. Assets mana­ged or advi­sed by the DBAG Group amount to appro­xi­m­ately 2.6 billion euros. As part of its stra­te­gic part­ner­ship with ELF Capi­tal Group, DBAG is adding private debt capi­tal to its range of flexi­ble finan­cing solu­ti­ons for SMEs.

News

Berlin — identity.vc has laun­ched the first Euro­pean LGBTQ+ venture capi­tal fund with a target volume of EUR 50 million.
The inves­tor team includes Til Klein, former BCG part­ner and FinTech foun­der, Jochen Beut­gen, family office inves­tor with 20 years of expe­ri­ence in venture capi­tal and Mari Luuk­kai­nen, marke­ting expert and former inves­tor at Icebreaker.vc.
Identity.vc invests prima­rily in LGBTQ+-led start-ups at foun­der or manage­ment level (C‑level) across all industries.
The focus is on young compa­nies, from the pre-seed to the Series A phase, prima­rily in Europe, but also beyond.
The social impact fund (Article 9 SFDR) has alre­ady made four invest­ments, inclu­ding in the Berlin start-up Front­now, which has deve­lo­ped an AI solu­tion for online retail­ers, and in the London start-up Omni, which offers vegan dog food. POELLATH advi­sed identity.vc on all contrac­tual, regu­la­tory and tax aspects of the fund struc­tu­ring and contrac­tual docu­men­ta­tion with the follo­wing Berlin team: Dr. Philip Schwarz van Berk (Photo, Part­ner, Lead, Private Funds) Katha­rina Hammer (Asso­ciate, Private Funds) 

About PÖLLATH POELLATH is a market-leading inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness and tax law firm with more than 180 lawy­ers and tax advi­sors in Berlin, Frank­furt and Munich. We stand for high-end advice on tran­sac­tions and asset manage­ment. We offer legal and tax services from a single source. In our selec­ted and highly specia­li­zed prac­tice groups, we not only know the law, but also shape best prac­tice in the market toge­ther with our clients. Natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal rankings regu­larly list our consul­tants as leading experts in their field. We offer compre­hen­sive services in the follo­wing areas: Mergers & Acqui­si­ti­ons | Private Equity | Venture Capi­tal | Private Funds | Real Estate Law | Corpo­rate and Capi­tal Markets Law | Finan­cing | Tax Law | Succes­sion and Assets | Foun­da­ti­ons and Non-Profit Orga­niza­ti­ons | IP/IT, Distri­bu­tion and Anti­trust Law | Liti­ga­tion and Arbitration.
www.pplaw.de www.identity.vc

News

Munich — Biomat­ter, a company in the field of synthe­tic biology, closes a seed finan­cing round of 6.5 million euros.
UVC Part­ners and Inven­ture VC lead the round.
Exis­ting inves­tors Prac­tica Capi­tal and Meta­pla­net, as well as busi­ness angels and indus­try experts, are also participating.
The start-up plans to use the fresh capi­tal to further expand the plat­form and create funda­men­tally new enzymes.
Enzy­mes play a key role in various indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons, such as in diagno­stics, for exam­ple with DNA poly­me­ra­ses, in gene therapy, for exam­ple with CRISPR, in biofuels, for exam­ple with cellu­la­ses, or in agri­cul­ture, for exam­ple with phytases.
Every new appli­ca­tion requi­res a new enzyme.
The design of new enzy­mes is curr­ently still leng­thy — the process can take months or years -, expen­sive and based on trial-and-error scree­ning around small impro­ve­ments to natu­rally occur­ring enzymes.
Biomat­ter’s tech­no­logy makes it possi­ble to over­come these chal­lenges with gene­ra­tive AI (arti­fi­cial intelligence).
“Enzy­mes will play a promi­nent role in the future of the bioe­co­nomy — they are the criti­cal element that will ulti­m­ately allow us to create new mole­cu­les, cells and orga­nisms for the world. The enzy­mes we have successfully deve­lo­ped for our global part­ners to date demons­trate our ability to go far beyond the simple opti­miza­tion of known enzy­mes. At Biomat­ter, we believe that the unli­mi­ted capa­city to design funda­men­tally new enzy­mes will help shape a better future for all,” says Laury­nas Karpus, co-foun­der and CEO of Biomatter.
Inno­va­tive tech­no­logy for a sustainable future Back in 2019, the Biomat­ter team published a key study show­ing that their gene­ra­tive AI tool can under­stand the intri­ca­cies of large amounts of enzyme data and use the infor­ma­tion to design enti­rely new enzymes.
This was a signi­fi­cant breakth­rough, demons­t­ra­ting for the first time the ability to create fully func­tional enzy­mes with gene­ra­tive AI.
The Intel­li­gent Archi­tec­ture™ plat­form is the result of these years of research.
Enzy­mes can be rede­si­gned as if on a drawing board: First, the ideal proper­ties of the enzyme are descri­bed, carefully conside­ring the end application.
The enzy­mes are then desi­gned from scratch or exis­ting natu­ral protein scaf­folds are redesigned.
This enables deve­lo­pers of new prote­ins to build precis­ely fitting mole­cu­les from the very first atoms.
This inno­va­tion has been made possi­ble by the deve­lo­p­ment of new gene­ra­tive AI and physi­cal models that are constantly impro­ving at a rapid pace with expe­ri­men­tal vali­da­tion in labo­ra­to­ries to create unique enzy­mes. “AI-powered protein design is curr­ently one of the most exci­ting and dyna­mic areas for venture capi­tal. Biomat­ter’s inno­va­tive approach to desig­ning funda­men­tally new enzy­mes allows them to break the boun­da­ries of natu­ral enzy­mes, leading to breakth­roughs in biotech­no­logy. We are deeply impres­sed by the strength of the team and are convin­ced that Biomat­ter is a pioneer in the field of AI-based protein design,” says Dr. Oliver Schoppe, Prin­ci­pal at UVC Part­ners. Appli­ca­tion of unique enzy­mes in various indus­tries Using the Intel­li­gent Archi­tec­ture™ plat­form, Biomat­ter crea­tes custo­mi­zed enzy­mes for various indus­tries, inclu­ding chemi­cal biopro­duc­tion, agri­cul­ture, food and medicine.
Custo­mers include compa­nies such as Thermo Fisher Scien­ti­fic, BASF and Neogen.
Kirin, a global leader in nutri­tion and health, achie­ved a breakth­rough in infant nutri­tion with Biomat­ter’s solu­tion: The colla­bo­ra­tion yiel­ded amazing results in the effi­ci­ent produc­tion of human milk oligos­ac­cha­ri­des (HMOs).
The focus here was speci­fi­cally on one of the most important HMOs in human milk (lacto-N-fuco­pen­ta­ose I; LNFP I for short).
HMOs are criti­cal to infant health and provide nume­rous bene­fits such as support­ing gut health, streng­thening the immune system and protec­ting against infection.
The ability to produce HMOs like LNFP I on an indus­trial scale means that more infants world­wide can have access to these bene­fits. About Biomat­ter Biomat­ter is a synthe­tic biology company that crea­tes new enzy­mes for medi­cal and indus­trial applications.
Through part­ner­ships with global compa­nies (inclu­ding Thermo Fisher Scien­ti­fic, BASF, Neogen) across multi­ple indus­tries, Biomat­ter is brin­ging new products and tech­no­lo­gies to market enab­led by its unique enzymes.
This funding round marks a signi­fi­cant mile­stone for Biomat­ter and posi­ti­ons the company well for the comple­tion of its next major mile­sto­nes and future growth.
More at www.biomatter.com 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 colla­bo­ra­tion gives UVC Part­ners the oppor­tu­nity to provide start­ups with unique access to talent, indus­try clients and other finan­cial part­ners. www.uvcpartners.com

News

Munich, Germany, West­mins­ter, Colo­rado — Dcubed, a German NewSpace provi­der, has successfully closed a Series A finan­cing round that was over­sub­scri­bed by 26%.
Eight well-known inves­tors from France, Sweden, Germany and the US parti­ci­pa­ted in the round, inclu­ding Expan­sion and BayBG as lead inves­tors as well as HTGF, Aure­lia Foundry, Ventis, Rymd­ka­pi­tal and Decisive Point Europe.
The funds will be stra­te­gi­cally deployed to quadru­ple the produc­tion of satel­lite actua­tors by the end of 2024 to meet the expec­ted demand of over 100,000 satel­lite laun­ches in the coming years.
In addi­tion, Dcubed aims to extend its leader­ship in space manu­fac­tu­ring tech­no­lo­gies criti­cal to the deve­lo­p­ment of high-power satel­li­tes, space solar power, lunar bases and the acce­le­ra­tion of space exploration.
To support these plans, Dcubed is also expan­ding its presence in the U.S., NewSpace’s largest market, by opening an office in West­mins­ter, Colo­rado.
The new office will be headed by Andria Fortier as Mana­ging Direc­tor, who will over­see opera­ti­ons in the US and foster stra­te­gic rela­ti­onships with Ameri­can custo­mers and partners.
Dcubed also plans to demons­trate a world first in 2025 by 3D prin­ting a high-perfor­mance solar panel in free space.
The initia­tive is supported by the Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Coun­cil of the Euro­pean Commis­sion with 9.5 million euros.
“Despite a tense global finan­cial envi­ron­ment, inves­tors signi­fi­cantly over­sub­scri­bed our Series A round.
This finan­cing round demons­tra­tes the marke­t’s high confi­dence in our capabilities.
Toge­ther with our global inves­tors, we now have a solid foun­da­tion to drive future growth in the booming space market.
With the new finan­cing, we will quadru­ple the produc­tion of our current product.
At the same time, we are stri­ving for the ‘next big thing’ in space by taking a pionee­ring role in the field of manu­fac­tu­ring in space.
With the opening of our US office, we are tapping into the most dyna­mic space ecosys­tem in the world to further expand our global foot­print and deve­lop space inno­va­tions for years to come,” explains Thomas Sinn, CEO of Dcubed.
“Deep tech and NewSpace start-ups need to show that they can make money while pursuing a big vision.
Dcubed has done this impres­si­vely in recent years.
As lead inves­tor in the seed round, I am very plea­sed about the closing of the Series A and see my invest­ment thesis confirmed,” says Chris­tian Ziach, Prin­ci­pal at HTGF. “Space is one of the fastest growing markets.
The market volume is expec­ted to quadru­ple from around 500 billion dollars to 2 tril­lion dollars in just ten years,” comm­ents Ted Elvhage, Gene­ral Part­ner at Expan­sion Aero­space Ventures.
Dcubed also plans to demons­trate a world first in 2025 by 3D prin­ting a high-perfor­mance solar module in free space. The initia­tive is supported by the Euro­pean Inno­va­tion Coun­cil of the Euro­pean Commis­sion with 9.5 million euros. About Dcubed Dcubed, a NewSpace company based in Munich, Germany, makes space missi­ons acces­si­ble by deve­lo­ping dura­ble and afforda­ble release actua­tors, solar arrays and deploya­ble components.
Utili­zing paten­ted shape memory tech­no­logy and proprie­tary origami struc­tures, Dcube­d’s products are supe­rior in cost, mass and volume while offe­ring increased relia­bi­lity, dura­bi­lity and reusability.
Serving a global custo­mer base in over 20 count­ries on 4 conti­nents, Dcubed offers imme­diate product avai­la­bi­lity through its Euro­pean supply chain and is ready to help you realize more cost-effec­tive and frequent space missions.
By deve­lo­ping tech­no­lo­gies to manu­fac­ture large struc­tures directly in space, Dcubed is at the fore­front of space manu­fac­tu­ring and is truly doing great things in space. About High-Tech Grün­der­fonds The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported more than 750 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 6 billion in the HTGF port­fo­lio in more than 2,000 follow-up finan­cing rounds. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 180 compa­nies. 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 indus­tries. www.htgf.de

News

Wetz­lar / Feld­kir­chen-Wester­ham / Munich — Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor, in asso­cia­tion with sonn­tag corpo­rate finance one of Germany’s leading M&A advi­sory bouti­ques for medium-sized compa­nies, is support­ing the owners of roofing specia­list JNS Dach­tech­nik GmbH (“JNS”) in its merger with the Wierig Group (“Wierig”), a port­fo­lio company of Vidia Equity (“Vidia”).
Alex­an­der Neureit­her from the owner family will remain invol­ved in the future joint venture in his role as Mana­ging Direc­tor and as part of a growth partnership.
JNS, based in Feld­kir­chen-Wester­ham, was foun­ded in 1982 and is a long-stan­ding specia­list in the water­pro­ofing and reno­va­tion of flat roofs and the instal­la­tion of photo­vol­taic systems.
With a service port­fo­lio ranging from consul­ting and service work to project plan­ning and execu­tion, JNS mainly serves commer­cial and public custo­mers in the Alpine region, parti­cu­larly in the Munich and Rosen­heim area as well as in Upper Bava­ria and Austria.
The company’s high-profile custo­mer base includes nume­rous DAX-listed and inter­na­tio­nal corpo­ra­ti­ons as well as public-sector clients, inclu­ding JNS, which was respon­si­ble for the reno­va­tion of the roofs of the Deut­sches Museum in Munich and Schloss Elmau in Krün.
JNS curr­ently employs around 50 people and most recently gene­ra­ted a total output of around 14 million euros.
Wierig is an estab­lished family busi­ness with over 130 years of history and specia­li­zes in the water­pro­ofing and reno­va­tion of flat roofs and photo­vol­taic systems for indus­trial and commer­cial customers.
With over 200 employees at five loca­ti­ons in Germany, Wierig offers complete solu­ti­ons from plan­ning and execu­tion to conti­nuous roof main­ten­ance and monitoring.
Vidia is a medium-sized invest­ment company based in Munich that specia­li­zes in invest­ments in the field of indus­trial climate solu­ti­ons to promote decarbonization.
In Decem­ber 2023, Vidia Climate Fund I acqui­red a majo­rity stake in the Sieburg-based Wierig Group with the stra­tegy of lever­aging opera­tio­nal value crea­tion poten­tial and incre­asing the Group’s clout through selec­ted add-on acquisitions.
The merger of JNS and Wierig repres­ents the next mile­stone in the successful imple­men­ta­tion of this strategy.
Both compa­nies are united by their charac­ter as a family busi­ness and their focus on indus­trial flat roofs.
In future, the group will be able to offer custo­mers opera­ting nati­on­wide an even more compre­hen­sive range of services. In-depth exper­tise for succes­sion plan­ning in the trades Decar­bo­niza­tion in the wake of climate change is a global mega­trend, and the instal­la­tion indus­try is a key pillar in tack­ling it on a natio­nal level.
The tradi­tio­nally medium-sized and frag­men­ted skil­led trades sector is simul­ta­neously confron­ted with chal­lenges such as regu­la­tory chan­ges, a shortage of skil­led workers and a lack of company succession.
For affec­ted compa­nies, merging with larger groups is ther­e­fore often an option.
For the Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor project team, consis­ting of Sebas­tian Ring­leb and Dennis Minnert, the growth part­ner­ship they supported is part of a series of tran­sac­tions in this context. Sebas­tian Ring­leb, Part­ner in charge at Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor, says: “The roof is beco­ming incre­asingly important for property owners. Espe­ci­ally in the indus­trial sector, compa­nies rely on their produc­tion and storage faci­li­ties being fully protec­ted from the weather. The incre­asing preva­lence of photo­vol­taic systems for energy gene­ra­tion further increa­ses the rele­vance. The indus­try can ther­e­fore look forward to a posi­tive future. The part­ner­ship between JNS and Wierig will not only streng­then the market posi­tion of both compa­nies, but will also make an important contri­bu­tion to the energy tran­si­tion and the decar­bo­niza­tion of the buil­ding sector.” About Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor and sonn­tag corpo­rate finance Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor GmbH, in asso­cia­tion with sonn­tag corpo­rate finance GmbH, is one of the leading M&A advi­sory firms in the German SME sector. The team of almost 30 experts accom­pa­nies medium-sized entre­pre­neurs exclu­si­vely through the entire sales process. “Our task is to safe­guard life’s work,” is how we see oursel­ves. In doing so, custo­mers bene­fit from a unique approach that has won multi­ple awards from the busi­ness press, and which protects the iden­tity of their compa­nies to a special degree. Thanks to their excel­lent access to medium-sized compa­nies, Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor and sonn­tag corpo­rate finance have also estab­lished them­sel­ves as a strong part­ner at the side of renow­ned natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal major compa­nies and inves­tors in acqui­si­ti­ons. This is also demons­tra­ted by the top posi­tion recently achie­ved at the Merger­mar­ket League Table. With a total of ten accom­pa­nied tran­sac­tions in the first quar­ter of 2024, the M&A consul­tancy ranks first in Germany.
www.nachfolgekontor.de | www.sonntagcf.com About JNS Dach­tech­nik GmbH jns-dachtechnik.de

News

Frank­furt a. Main — Infle­xion, a leading Euro­pean mid-market private equity firm, is plea­sed to announce that it has part­ne­red with the foun­ders of Tier­arzt Plus Part­ner (“TPP”), Germany’s largest group of vete­ri­nary prac­ti­ces, to support the company’s contin­ued growth and expan­sion. The invest­ment is being made by Infle­xi­on’s Buyout Fund VI. TPP was foun­ded in 2018 and has almost 100 vete­ri­nary prac­ti­ces throug­hout Germany with around 1,700 employees. The company works with local vete­ri­na­ri­ans to provide leading animal health services, prima­rily for small animals, and supports them with compre­hen­sive trai­ning, indus­try best prac­ti­ces and signi­fi­cant invest­ment in tech­no­logy. The market for vete­ri­nary services in Germany remains frag­men­ted and offers considera­ble poten­tial for further conso­li­da­tion and growth. Infle­xion plans to leverage its exten­sive indus­try expe­ri­ence to work with TPP’s foun­ding manage­ment and share­hol­ders to acce­le­rate the company’s growth. In parti­cu­lar, Infle­xion will support further invest­ments in the digi­ta­liza­tion of the company, in trai­ning and in the expan­sion of the vete­ri­nary prac­tice network in Germany, both through acqui­si­ti­ons and by opening new green­field sites. “As the largest and most successful vete­ri­nary network in Germany, TPP offers an excel­lent plat­form for future growth and deve­lo­p­ment. We look forward to combi­ning our exten­sive expe­ri­ence in this sector with the exper­tise of TPP’s foun­ders and an outstan­ding manage­ment team to further grow the busi­ness,” explains Martin Preuss (photo © Infle­xion), since March 2024 Part­ner and Head of DACH at Infle­xion. Fabian Kröll, Co-Foun­der and CEO, TPP, said: “We look forward to working with Infle­xion to conti­nue inves­t­ing in the growth of our busi­ness and the deve­lo­p­ment of our network. Our foun­ding and leader­ship team will remain on board and we will stay true to our mission of crea­ting the best expe­ri­ence for animals and people every day.” About Infle­xion Infle­xion is a leading Euro­pean mid-market private equity firm that invests in high-growth, entre­pre­neu­rial compa­nies with ambi­tious manage­ment teams, typi­cally valued between €50m and €1bn, and works in part­ner­ship with these compa­nies to acce­le­rate growth. Infle­xion has € 12 billion AUM and invests up to € 600 million of equity per invest­ment in majo­rity tran­sac­tions with various funds, but also in mino­rity tran­sac­tions with Euro­pe’s largest specia­li­zed fund. www.https://www.inflexion.com

News

Stockholm/Hamburg — The Swedish soft­ware company Funnel AB has acqui­red the German AdTriba GmbH, a provi­der of marke­ting attri­bu­tion solutions.
A team led by Hamburg HEUKING part­ner Dr. Jörg Schewe advi­sed Funnel AB compre­hen­si­vely on all legal and tax aspects of the transaction.
The take­over is a further deve­lo­p­ment of the coope­ra­tion between the two compa­nies, which has alre­ady exis­ted for seve­ral years.
The acqui­si­tion of AdTriba streng­thens Funnel’s posi­tion as a leading provi­der of marke­ting intel­li­gence soft­ware in Europe.
Funnel provi­des a plat­form that makes it possi­ble to coll­ect, harmo­nize and visua­lize data from various marke­ting sources.
AdTriba offers a solu­tion to measure and opti­mize the contri­bu­tion of each marke­ting chan­nel to busi­ness success.
By inte­gra­ting AdTriba into the Funnel plat­form, Funnel’s custo­mers can now also analyze and improve the effec­ti­ve­ness of their marke­ting campaigns across diffe­rent channels.
Funnel AB is an inter­na­tio­nal soft­ware company head­quar­te­red in Stock­holm that has specia­li­zed in provi­ding clear dash­boards to help compa­nies coll­ect, report and export infor­ma­tion since its foun­da­tion in 2014.
With more than 2,000 custo­mers in over 60 count­ries, inclu­ding well-known brands such as Adidas, Sony, Uber, Triv­ago and Home Depot, Funnel AB employs around 350 people at loca­ti­ons in Stock­holm, Dublin, London and Boston.
Funnel AB has so far recei­ved more than 100 million US dollars in finan­cing from seve­ral well-known inves­tors over seve­ral finan­cing rounds.
AdTriba GmbH is a German soft­ware company based in Hamburg that was foun­ded in 2015.
With around 20 employees, it offers a marke­ting attri­bu­tion solu­tion that makes it possi­ble to measure and opti­mize the influence of each indi­vi­dual marke­ting chan­nel on the custo­mer jour­ney and to deter­mine the ROI of campaigns.
AdTriba GmbH has more than 30 clients in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land, inclu­ding well-known brands such as Flix­bus, Deuba, Axel Sprin­ger Verlag, Douglas, Free­now and Montblanc.
Advi­sors Funnel AB / Funnel Holding AB: HEUKING Dr. Jörg Schewe (lead, M&A/Corporate), Dr. Henrik Lay (Tax), both Hamburg, Dr. Lutz Keppe­ler (IT/GDPR), Colo­gne, Caro­line Frohn­wie­ser (M&A/Corporate), Simon Pommer, LL.M. (Tax), Dr. Julia Fied­ler, LL.B., Theresa Arndt, LL.M. (both Labor Law, Employ­ment), Larissa Krebs (Corpo­rate, Finance), all Hamburg, Dr. Ruben Schnei­der (IT/GDPR), Cologne
Further advi­sors Funnel AB / Funnel Holding: Advo­kat­fir­man Vinge KB (Stock­holm) Matthias Pannier, Johan Winner­blad Filip Magnus­son, Adrian Filipovic

News

Munich — A Munich-based team of the global law firm Good­win has advi­sed Kipu Quan­tum GmbH (“Kipu”) on the stra­te­gic acqui­si­tion of the PlanQK plat­form for quan­tum appli­ca­ti­ons from Anaqor AG.
The PlanQK plat­form makes quan­tum compu­ting acces­si­ble in various sectors and serves a broad range of users from leading compa­nies such as BASF, DB Systel GmbH, T‑LABS and TRUMPF.
The bund­ling of compe­ten­cies of Kipu Quan­tum and PlanQK will signi­fi­cantly simplify the connec­tion of quan­tum compu­ting in various sectors such as the phar­maceu­ti­cal, chemi­cal, logi­stics and finan­cial indus­tries, thus enab­ling an early quan­tum advantage.
Kipu Quan­tum is a German company deve­lo­ping ground­brea­king, appli­ca­tion- and hard­ware-speci­fic quan­tum algo­rithms for a variety of industries.
PlanQK is an open, commu­nity-based plat­form for quan­tum applications.
With 30 successfully proven use cases and more than 100 part­ners, PlanQK is a pioneer in the field of quan­tum platforms.
PlanQK was initia­ted in 2019, conti­nuously deve­lo­ped toge­ther with leading univer­si­ties and compa­nies and supported as a light­house project by the German govern­ment. Advi­sor Kipu Quan­tum: Good­win LLP Corporate/Private Equity: Silvio McMi­ken (Counsel/ Photo), Florian Hirsch­mann (Part­ner, both lead), Tobias Schulz (Asso­ciate, Munich) Tax: Oded Schein (Part­ner), Phil­ipp Lauer (Asso­ciate, Munich) 

News

Berlin — KD Pharma Group (“KD Pharma”), a leading CDMO in the field of phar­maceu­ti­cal and nutri­tio­nal lipids and port­fo­lio company of Capi­ton, announ­ces the acqui­si­tion of the Marine Lipids busi­ness of dsm-firmenich.
As part of the tran­sac­tion, dsm-firmenich will acquire a mino­rity stake in KD Pharma and become a co-share­hol­der along­side the Capi­ton Omega Conti­nua­tion Fund vehic­les and other mino­rity shareholders.
The tran­sac­tion will close during 2024, subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory appr­ovals, and includes dsm-firmenich’s Marine Lipids fish oil omega‑3 busi­ness for the dietary supple­ment and phar­maceu­ti­cal markets, toge­ther with the manu­fac­tu­ring faci­li­ties in Piura, Peru, and Mulgrave, Canada.
This tran­sac­tion will create a well-equip­ped player in the marine lipids market by combi­ning the best of the two compa­nies and their respec­tive exper­tise with the scale of dsm-firmenich’s sites in Piura and Mulgrave and the high concen­tra­tion capa­bi­lity of KD Pharma.
The enlar­ged KD Pharma Group will bene­fit from the expan­ded product range and custo­miza­tion capa­bi­li­ties supported by the increased produc­tion capacity.
Oscar Groet, CEO of KD Pharma, said: “We are deligh­ted to welcome dsm-firmenich’s Marine Lipids port­fo­lio to KD Pharma, a move that fits perfectly with our stra­te­gic vision to become the tech­no­logy leader in lipids.”
Further infor­ma­tion can be found at KD Pharma Group News.
https://kdpharmagroup.com/ capi­ton AG and KD Pharma Group were advi­sed by Jeffe­ries as buyer advi­sor, CMS Hasche Sigle, Baker McKen­zie, A&O Shear­man, EY, BDO, Herter & Co.
— A Teneo Company, Roland Berger and Howden M& A.
The tran­sac­tion was nota­ri­zed by Dr. Patrick Auer­bach (NEON) and is subject to custo­mary regu­la­tory approvals.

News

Frank­furt a. Main — Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP has advi­sed 3i Group plc (“3i”) on the acqui­si­tion of its stake in Weener Plas­tics (“Weener”) for an enter­prise value of EUR 838 million in Silgan Holdings Inc (“Silgan”).
Weener, head­quar­te­red in Ede, the Nether­lands, employs more than 4,000 people and has 23 produc­tion faci­li­ties in 15 count­ries worldwide.
The company is a global manu­fac­tu­rer of inno­va­tive plas­tic pack­a­ging solu­ti­ons with a strong focus on dosing, pack­a­ging and capping.
Weener designs, deve­lops and produ­ces high and multi-value closures, caps, roll-ons, jars and bott­les for the perso­nal care, food, home care and health­care industries.
The acqui­si­tion is still subject to regu­la­tory appr­ovals and is expec­ted to be comple­ted in Q4 2024. Advi­sors to 3i Group plc: Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP 
The Will­kie team was led by part­ners Georg Linde (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and Dr. Axel Wahl (Corporate/M&A, Munich) and included part­ners Dr. Jasmin Dett­mar (Finance), Dr. Patrick Meiisel, Dr. Bettina Bokeloh (Tax, all Frank­furt), Dr. Richard Roeder The Will­kie team was led by part­ners Georg Linde (Corporate/M&A, Frank­furt) and Dr. Axel Wahl (Corporate/M&A, Munich) and compri­sed part­ners Dr. Jasmin Dett­mar (Finance), Dr. Patrick Meiisel, Dr. Bettina Bokeloh (Tax, all Frank­furt), Dr. Richard Roeder (compli­ance, Munich) and Philip Girar­det (anti­trust and compe­ti­tion law, London), coun­sel Sebas­tian Bren­ner (corporate/M&A), Martin Waśkow­ski (employ­ment law) and Johan­nes Schmidt (liti­ga­tion, all Frank­furt) as well as asso­cia­tes Dr. Chris­tina Papa­di­mi­triou-Kowal­c­zyk, Leota Walter, Nico­las Kers­ten, Jonas Volk, (Corporate/M&A) Aurel Hille (Anti­trust and Compe­ti­tion Law), Martin Reichert (Finance), Marcel Seemaier (Tax), Chris­tian Herzig Roldán (Corporate/Capital Markets), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Schlutz (Compli­ance, all Frank­furt), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Schatz, (Corporate/M&A), Laurin Havlik (Compli­ance, all Munich) and Frie­de­rike Hamm­wöh­ner (Anti­trust and Compe­ti­tion Law, Brussels).
Further advi­sors KNPZ Rechts­an­wälte (Hamburg): Dr. Kai-Uwe Plath (Part­ner), Dr. Enno ter Haze­borg (Senior Asso­ciate) Hout­hoff (Amsterdam/Rotterdam): Kyoko Tollen­aar, Bram Caudri (both part­ners), Ivar Brou­wer (senior asso­ciate) About Will­kie Will­kie Farr & Gallag­her LLP provi­des leading legal solu­ti­ons to complex, busi­ness-criti­cal issues span­ning markets and industries.
Our appro­xi­m­ately 1,200 lawy­ers in 15 offices world­wide provide inno­va­tive, prag­ma­tic and sophisti­ca­ted legal services in some 45 prac­tice areas. Find out more at www.willkie.com.  

News

Munich, Zurich and Geneva — Liberta Part­ners, a Munich-based multi-family holding company, has acqui­red the leading Swiss e‑commerce company DeinDeal AG (“DeinDeal”) was taken over by Ringier.
Since 2015, Ringier has held a majo­rity stake in DeinDeal invol­ved.

Your­Deal was foun­ded in 2010 and has estab­lished itself as the leading Swiss online market­place for fashion, home & living, travel and life­style products and services.
The company specia­li­zes in flash sales with daily offers that are available exclu­si­vely via www.deindeal.ch, the DeinDealapp and www.my-store.ch are sold.

With loca­ti­ons in Zurich and Geneva, the company gene­ra­ted DeinDeal gene­ra­ted sales of over CHF 100 million, making it one of the top 10 e‑commerce portals in Switzerland.
Every year, the company sends more than 1,000,000 parcels nati­on­wide in less than two days, ensu­ring a fast and relia­ble service for custo­mers of Your­Deal.

Florian Korp (photo © Liberta Part­ners) of Liberta Part­ners: “DeinDe­al’s inno­va­tive approach and strong market presence are the ideal basis for further expan­ding the company’s leading posi­tion in the Swiss e‑commerce market.” Rainer Traub of Liberta Part­ners: “We are deligh­ted to welcome Dr. Tobias Heller and Dr. Phil­ipp Wahl, two highly expe­ri­en­ced and accom­plished retail and e‑commerce execu­ti­ves, as the new mana­ging direc­tors of DeinDeal to further drive growth and lead the company to new heights.“Robin Lingg, outgo­ing Chair­man of the Manage­ment Board of DeinDeal AG: “Your­Deal has made great progress with Ringier as majo­rity share­hol­der and we are convin­ced that with Liberta Part­ners we have found the right part­ner for the next growth phase of the company.
I would like to thank Allen and John Kriefthe foun­ders and part­ners as well as the entire manage­ment team for their commit­ment, passion and energy, which they have inves­ted so successfully in the deve­lo­p­ment of DeinDeal over the last few years.”

All parties have agreed not to disc­lose further details of the tran­sac­tion.About DeinDeal AG DeinDeal AG is a leading Swiss online market­place offe­ring a wide range of products and services, inclu­ding exclu­sive offers and discounts in various cate­go­ries such as fashion, elec­tro­nics, travel and lifestyle.
Since its foun­ding in 2010, DeinDeal has become synony­mous with quality and value in the Swiss e‑commerce sector, serving milli­ons of satis­fied customers.
The company stri­ves to provide a seam­less shop­ping expe­ri­ence charac­te­ri­zed by a user-friendly plat­form, excep­tio­nal custo­mer service and a select range of high-quality products.
DeinDeal has not only set the stan­dard in online retail with its inno­va­tive approach, but has also made a name for itself among Swiss consu­mers that they trust.
The company is constantly evol­ving to meet the chan­ging needs of its custo­mers and ensure a dyna­mic and enga­ging shop­ping experience.
For more infor­ma­tion visit:www.deindeal.chÜber Liberta Part­ners Liberta Part­ners is a multi-family holding company based in Munich. The company makes targe­ted invest­ments in compa­nies in German-spea­king count­ries, parti­cu­larly in succes­sion situa­tions and group spin-offs, with clear opera­tio­nal and stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial. These compa­nies are actively deve­lo­ped as part of the “100% Core & Care” concept and bene­fit from the entre­pre­neu­rial exper­tise of Liberta Part­ners. The Liberta Part­ners team consists of 20 employees working in the areas of M&A, Corpo­rate Deve­lo­p­ment and Legal & Admi­nis­tra­tion, supported by an active indus­try advi­sory board. You can find further infor­ma­tion at: www.liberta-partners.comAbout Ringier

Ringier is a Swiss media and tech­no­logy company.
The Group compri­ses around 140 compa­nies that operate nume­rous leading media brands, digi­tal plat­forms and market­places in 20 countries.
Almost 80 percent of its opera­ting profit comes from the digi­tal business.
This makes Ringier one of the leading Euro­pean media companies.
For 190 years, the family-owned company has focu­sed on entre­pre­neur­ship, colla­bo­ra­tion, inno­va­tion, trust and courage. www.ringier.com

 

News

Hamburg — The German soft­ware company One Data raises €32 million in a Series B finan­cing round.
Lead inves­tors Vsquared Ventures, HV Capi­tal and Molten Ventures were compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed by YPOG on this finan­cing round of One Data, in which exis­ting inves­tors also parti­ci­pa­ted again.
The German soft­ware company has deve­lo­ped a tech­no­logy desi­gned to simplify the hand­ling of data.
One Data is a data manage­ment company foun­ded in Passau in 2013 under the name One Logic.
One Data’s AI-powered Data Product Buil­der enables compa­nies to create, manage and share data products while saving around 80% of time.
It uses AI tech­no­logy to coll­ect, analyze and connect data points to increase the quality of insights gained.
It supports compa­nies from all indus­tries, inclu­ding retail, manu­fac­tu­ring, phar­maceu­ti­cals, chemi­cals and automotive.
In the DACH region, seve­ral large compa­nies rely on One Data’s solu­tion, inclu­ding steel manu­fac­tu­rer Thys­sen­krupp, vaccine manu­fac­tu­rer BioNTech and specialty glass manu­fac­tu­rer Schott.
One Data will use the finan­cing to further streng­then its leading posi­tion in data product manage­ment, expand stra­te­gic part­ner­ships and extend its soft­ware busi­ness to new inter­na­tio­nal markets.
Advi­sors Lead inves­tors Vsquared Ventures, HV Capi­tal and Molten Ventures: YPOG Dr. Adrian Haase (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Hamburg Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Berlin Anna Eick­meier (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin Alex­an­dra Stei­fen­sand (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin/Hamburg Dr. Chris­toph Cordes (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Asso­ciate, Berlin Gerrit Breet­holt (Transactions),Associate, Hamburg Falk Bothe (Funds), Asso­ciate, Berlin Florian Bacher (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin About Vsquared Ventures Vsquared Ventures supports inno­va­tive entre­pre­neurs deve­lo­ping breakth­rough tech­no­lo­gies to solve some of the worl­d’s most pres­sing chal­lenges and become global leaders.
Vsquared Ventures invests in deep tech compa­nies, focu­sing on new space, new compu­ting, energy tran­si­tion, robo­tics and manu­fac­tu­ring, new compu­ting and sens­ing, next-gene­ra­tion AI and soft­ware, and tech-bio.
Vsquared Ventures has built one of the stron­gest deep tech port­fo­lios in Europe, inclu­ding indus­try disrup­t­ors Isar Aero­space, IQM Quan­tum Compu­ting, Zama.ai, Customcells, Neura Robo­tics and The Explo­ra­tion Company.
www.vsquared.vc About HV Capi­tal HV Capi­tal is one of the leading early-stage and growth inves­tors in Europe. HV has many years of expe­ri­ence in iden­ti­fy­ing Euro­pean tech­no­logy pioneers with great poten­tial for success. This also includes the first gene­ra­tion of German start-ups, which have achie­ved a company valua­tion of over 1 billion dollars, and more recent successful compa­nies such as Flix­bus, Enpal, SumUp and Isar Aero­space. HV Capi­tal is conti­nuously looking for more inno­va­tive start­ups across all indus­tries such as FinTech, SaaS, climate tech and consu­mer goods and has alre­ady inves­ted in around 225 inter­net and tech­no­logy compa­nies. HV Capi­tal supports start-ups with capi­tal between €500,000 and €60 million and is one of the few venture capi­ta­lists in Europe that can finance these compa­nies across all growth phases. HV Capi­tal has offices in Munich and Berlin and a team of more than 40 profes­sio­nals who bring diverse perspec­ti­ves and exper­tise in venture capi­tal. https://www.hvcapital.com About Molten Ventures Foun­ded in 2006, Molten Ventures is a venture capi­tal firm head­quar­te­red in London, United Kingdom.
The company focu­ses on the Euro­pean tech­no­logy sector and invests prima­rily in commer­cial services, digi­tal health and well­ness, deep tech, hard­ware and elec­tro­nics, consu­mer services, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, cloud-based systems, enter­prise solu­ti­ons, SaaS and media.
https://www.moltenventures.com 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 Germany. Today, YPOG employs more than 120 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax consul­tants, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. www.ypog.law

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Berlin — HERO Soft­ware raises €40 million in Series B finan­cing round with Eight Roads Ventures as lead investor.
YPOG provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to Eight Road Ventures on the transaction.
Fede­ra­ted Hermes and exis­ting inves­tor Cusp Capi­tal also parti­ci­pa­ted in the round.
HERO Soft­ware was foun­ded in 2020 by Dr. Michael Kess­ler and Phil­ipp Lyding in Hano­ver and offers a SaaS plat­form speci­ally deve­lo­ped for medium-sized craft businesses.
The start-up company is the leading provi­der of busi­ness soft­ware for trade busi­nesses in the DACH region.
With the fresh capi­tal, HERO Soft­ware plans to invest in its team and new talent, expand into new markets and further deve­lop its SaaS offering.
HERO’s goal is to provide craft busi­nesses with the best soft­ware to make small and medium-sized craft busi­nesses more successful in the long term. About Eight Roads Ventures Eight Roads Ventures is a global venture capi­tal firm that helps entre­pre­neurs grow.
With offices in Europe, Asia and the US, Eight Roads Ventures has more than 50 years of venture capi­tal inves­t­ing expe­ri­ence, $11 billion in assets under manage­ment and over 300 port­fo­lio compa­nies, inclu­ding Alibaba, Amen­i­tiz, Apps­Flyer, Chewy, Fareye, Fever, Flywire, Fire­blocks, Funnel, Gloat, Hibob, Icer­tis, Light­house, Neo4j, Owkin, Paidy, Spen­desk, Tibber, Toast, Wall­apop and Xoom.
https://eightroads.com/en/ Advi­sor Eight Roads Ventures: YPOG Dr. Benja­min Ullrich (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin Dr. Lutz Schrei­ber (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Part­ner, Hamburg Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, Berlin Tobias Lovett (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Senior Asso­ciate, Berlin Matthias Treude (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Asso­ciate, Hamburg Farina Weber (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin Dr. Florian Witt­ner (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Asso­ciate, Hamburg About YPOG YPOG is a law firm specia­li­zing in tax and commer­cial law, active 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 Germany. The firm and its part­ners are ranked natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, Cham­bers and Part­ners and Leaders League. Today, YPOG employs more than 120 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax consul­tants, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. https://www.ypog.law

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Amsterdam/Munich — The funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe (“Equis­tone Funds”) announ­ced the sale of their majo­rity stake in Heras, an estab­lished pan-Euro­pean full-service provi­der of perma­nent and mobile peri­me­ter protec­tion solutions.
The new majo­rity owner is the Garda Group, which also specia­li­zes in peri­me­ter protection.
Heras was foun­ded in 1952 with its head­quar­ters in Oirschot, the Nether­lands, and is now repre­sen­ted throug­hout Europe with loca­ti­ons in a total of eight countries.
With its compre­hen­sive port­fo­lio of peri­me­ter protec­tion solu­ti­ons — from plan­ning and produc­tion to instal­la­tion, main­ten­ance and repair — the company serves an inter­na­tio­nal custo­mer base in more than 20 markets and curr­ently employs around 1,000 people.
With the tran­sac­tion now agreed, Heras will become part of the Garda Group, which is curr­ently active in Scan­di­na­via and Germany.
The Group’s brands include a.o. Garda Sikring, Heda Secu­rity, KIBO Secu­rity, Great Secu­rity, Frei­hoff Group, Gleich Group, Schmid Alarm and vi2vi.
Since the Equis­tone funds acqui­red a majo­rity stake in 2019, Heras’ stra­te­gic focus has been
primarily
on deve­lo­ping the busi­ness in the high-secu­rity sector and the range of services for custo­mers from the public and private sectors, parti­cu­larly in the area of criti­cal infrastructure.
This deve­lo­p­ment was addi­tio­nally supported by two stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons in Denmark and Germany.
The part­ner­ship with the Equis­tone funds also focu­sed on estab­li­shing a Group-wide ESG stra­tegy, as well as signi­fi­cant invest­ments in the produc­tion sites for perma­nent and mobile product solu­ti­ons in the Dutch dome­stic market and in Belgium and France. Hubert van Wolfs­win­kel, Part­ner in Equis­to­ne’s Amster­dam office, comm­ents: “It has been a plea­sure for the Equis­tone funds to support Heras in the stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment of the company and the team over the past five years. Parti­cu­lar atten­tion was paid to streng­thening Heras’ focus on the important areas of high secu­rity and service solu­ti­ons, estab­li­shing a compre­hen­sive ESG stra­tegy and moder­ni­zing the produc­tion sites. Heras is now ideally posi­tio­ned to successfully conti­nue the successful course initia­ted toge­ther with the Equis­tone funds as a pan-Euro­pean property protec­tion specia­list under the aegis of the new owner.”
Moritz Treude (photo)
, Direc­tor in Equis­to­ne’s Munich office, adds: “Heras has perfor­med excel­lently during the holding period of the Equis­tone funds, in parti­cu­lar due to the stra­te­gic realignment. With the support of the Equis­tone funds, the company has inves­ted in state-of-the-art produc­tion, inclu­ding auto­ma­ted machi­nery and equip­ment and robo­tiza­tion — which today is reflec­ted in higher quality, capa­city and more effi­ci­ent and sustainable production.”
Emma­nuel Rigaux, CEO of Heras, says: “Since the launch of the joint part­ner­ship with the Equis­tone funds in 2019, Heras has comple­ted a remar­kable trans­for­ma­tion and is now excel­lently posi­tio­ned in the Euro­pean market. Toge­ther with Garda Group as our new part­ner, with whom we share our values, vision and growth stra­tegy, we will seam­lessly build on the succes­ses of the last five years and take Heras’ deve­lo­p­ment to a new level.” Jon Ola Stokke, CEO of Garda Group
says: “We are very plea­sed to welcome Heras and its expe­ri­en­ced team to the Garda Group. Heras is a well-mana­ged, inno­va­tive company whose recent invest­ments in incre­asing the capa­city, quality and effi­ci­ency of its faci­li­ties will bene­fit our custo­mers. Like us, Heras shares a focus on sustaina­bi­lity and works with its part­ners across the value chain to reduce CO2 emis­si­ons and imple­ment a circu­lar economy. With this acqui­si­tion, we gain new exper­tise, as well as a broa­der product range and modern tech­ni­cal solu­ti­ons. At the same time, we are streng­thening our Group presence in Scan­di­na­via and in important new regi­ons such as the UK, Bene­lux and France. In addi­tion, we can now offer our custo­mers in Germany peri­me­ter protec­tion solu­ti­ons along­side our exis­ting tech­ni­cal secu­rity solutions.”
The tran­sac­tion is subject to custo­mary closing condi­ti­ons, inclu­ding the consul­ta­tion process with the Dutch works coun­cil and rele­vant regu­la­tory approvals.
Comple­tion of the tran­sac­tion would be the fifth over­all sale in 2024, conti­nuing a series of successful exits by the Equis­tone funds. About Equis­tone Part­ners Europe The funds advi­sed by Equis­tone Part­ners Europe are among the most active Euro­pean equity inves­tors with a team of more than 35 invest­ment profes­sio­nals across seven offices in the Nether­lands, Germany, Switz­er­land, France and the UK. The Equis­tone funds invest prima­rily in estab­lished medium-sized compa­nies with a good market posi­tion, above-average growth poten­tial and an enter­prise value of between EUR 50 and 500 million. Since its foun­da­tion in 2002, the funds have inves­ted equity in more than 180 tran­sac­tions. The port­fo­lio of Equis­tone funds curr­ently compri­ses around 40 compa­nies across Europe. www.equistonepe.com. About Heras https://www.heras.co.uk/ About Garda Group https://gardasikring.no

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Frank­furt a. M. — Bernd Brei­ter as mana­ging part­ner of BigCi­ty­Beats GmbH and Beyond Capi­tal Part­ners GmbH were successfully advi­sed by Mayland on the sale of the assets of BigCi­ty­Beats GmbH (“BCB”) to Lafay­ette Mittel­stand Capital.
BCB is a German company based in Frank­furt, specia­li­zing in the orga­niza­tion and marke­ting of music events.
Foun­ded by Bernd Brei­ter in 2005, the company is best known for its event series “World Club Dome”, which orga­ni­zes large festi­vals in arenas, stadi­ums and unusual loca­ti­ons such as cruise ships and airplanes.
The events combine music, life­style and enter­tain­ment and attract top inter­na­tio­nal DJs and nume­rous visitors.
The World Club Dome has alre­ady made it into the top 10 in the DJ MAG voting of the worl­d’s most popu­lar festi­vals seve­ral times (#1 in Germany).
In addi­tion to live events, BCB also opera­tes its own radio station and publishes music.
The company has made a name for itself in the inter­na­tio­nal club scene with inno­va­tive concepts and spec­ta­cu­lar event locations.
As part of the deal, all of BCB’s assets were trans­fer­red to the newly foun­ded WORLD CLUB DOME GmbH, in which Bernd Brei­ter will conti­nue to hold a mino­rity stake.
In this way, the world-famous and estab­lished “World Club Dome” brand will retain Brei­ter’s exten­sive network and expe­ri­ence, while Lafay­ette will conti­nue to deve­lop the company through capi­tal, stra­te­gic advice and opera­tio­nal support and further expand the inter­na­tio­nal reach of the festi­val series.
As part of a compe­ti­tive auction, MAYLAND approa­ched both stra­te­gic inves­tors and finan­cial investors.
The process was successfully concluded in a very short time with the sale to Lafayette.
Follo­wing the successful sale of Next Events GmbH in 2019, orga­ni­zer of the world-famous festi­val “Paroo­ka­ville”, this was another successful tran­sac­tion for MAYLAND advi­sing a far-reaching music event format based in Germany. Lafay­ette Mittel­stand Capi­tal is an invest­ment company from Luxem­bourg that invests in medium-sized compa­nies based in the DACH region.
The company supports these compa­nies with capi­tal, manage­ment exper­tise and stra­te­gic advice to promote their growth and long-term value creation.
Invest­ments are concen­tra­ted in various indus­tries with a focus on sustainable busi­ness models and poten­tial for opera­tio­nal impro­ve­ment. About Beyond Capi­tal Part­ners We are an owner-mana­ged invest­ment company based in Frank­furt am Main that acqui­res majo­rity stakes in profi­ta­ble medium-sized compa­nies from the DACH region via the funds it advi­ses, with a focus on the asset-light sectors of B2B services, IT services, soft­ware, health­care & well-being, life­style and entertainment.
Our aim is to conti­nue the success story of the German-spea­king Mittelstand.
This has been the driving idea behind Beyond Capi­tal Part­ners since its first acqui­si­tion in 2015.
From the very begin­ning, it was about more than just capi­tal. https://beyondcapital-partners.com Consul­tant Bernd Brei­ter, Mana­ging Part­ner and Beyond Capi­tal Part­ners GmbH: MAYLAND AGAboutMAYLAND AG MAYLAND AG is an inde­pen­dent, owner-mana­ged global M&A and corpo­rate finance consul­tancy. We regu­larly deve­lop indi­vi­dual tran­sac­tion struc­tures for our clients for the purchase and sale of compa­nies or parts of compa­nies and arrange any finan­cing requi­red for these tran­sac­tions. In addi­tion, we assist our clients in raising equity and debt capi­tal. Due to nume­rous comple­ted tran­sac­tions, the MAYLAND team has exten­sive sector know­ledge in various indus­tries, which is comple­men­ted by many years of expe­ri­ence as well as a solid inter­na­tio­nal network of equity and debt inves­tors. Charac­te­ri­zed by an entre­pre­neu­rial mind­set, we use considera­ble resour­ces within the scope of our manda­tes to analyze busi­ness models in detail and thus lead tran­sac­tions to success, which we always succeed in doing.
Further infor­ma­tion in German, English and Chinese can be found at www.mayland.de.

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Zurich/ Munich — IMPAG Group, an inter­na­tio­nally reco­gni­zed chemi­cal distri­bu­tion company, announ­ces that it has comple­ted a change in its inves­tor struc­ture as part of its stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment and to acce­le­rate growth in a conso­li­da­ting market.
Deut­sche Privat Equity (DPE) takes over the shares of Enzian AG as the new majo­rity investor.
This step is part of the IMPAG Group’s long-term growth stra­tegy, which aims to further conso­li­date its market posi­tion and create added value as a solu­tion provi­der for its stake­hol­ders, espe­ci­ally its custo­mers, supply part­ners and employees.
The change enables the IMPAG Group to streng­then its agility and inno­va­tive power and to drive forward its corpo­rate vision in a targe­ted manner by further deve­lo­ping its offe­ring and expan­ding its services.
The new inves­tor struc­ture with DPE supports IMPAG Group’s ambi­ti­ons to expand its presence in the Euro­pean market and diver­sify its busi­ness areas through targe­ted acqui­si­ti­ons and partnerships.
IMPAG Group stri­ves to further streng­then its value-added posi­tion in the life science and mate­rial science sectors and to be percei­ved as a prefer­red part­ner for its global stakeholders.
The Board of Direc­tors and the Execu­tive Board of IMPAG Group are convin­ced that the change of inves­tor supports the stra­te­gic direc­tion of the company and forms the basis for further growth and long-term success.
“A change of inves­tor should always be driven by strength and not by neces­sity. IMPAG has deve­lo­ped across natio­nal borders, has estab­lished a strong market posi­tion in Europe and, with its ambi­tious plans for the future, is now ready for a new, strong inves­tor and part­ner. We are convin­ced that in DPE we have gained a strong part­ner with a compa­ra­ble under­stan­ding of values who will support the successful further deve­lo­p­ment of the IMPAG Group in the long term,” confirms IMPAG CEO Remo Bernardi.
Andreas Schmid, Part­ner at DPE, empha­si­zes: “We are convin­ced that we can expand on the basis of the exis­ting plat­form, the IMPAG Group, both through further orga­nic growth initia­ti­ves and through targe­ted buy-and-build acqui­si­ti­ons to become a leading pan-Euro­pean specia­list distri­bu­tor for chemi­cals.” DPE is a German capi­tal manage­ment company head­quar­te­red in Munich that invests in medium-sized growth compa­nies, prima­rily in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land, with the invest­ment funds it manages.
DPE supports its port­fo­lio compa­nies with a part­ner­ship approach, capi­tal, expe­ri­ence and respect for entre­pre­neu­rial action in order to realize their future potential.
The IMPAG Group, head­quar­te­red in Zurich and with subsi­dia­ries in Switz­er­land, Germany, Poland, France, Austria and Spain, is a chemi­cal distri­bu­tion company that supplies and supports the life science and mate­rial science indus­tries in Europe with raw mate­ri­als and services.

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Frank­furt (DE)/ Vienna (AT)/ Turn­hout (BEL)/ Wars­zawa (POL) — Dot2Dot, a leading Polish manu­fac­tu­rer of premium folding cartons and port­fo­lio company of Abris Capi­tal Part­ners (Warsaw), is to become part of the Van Genech­ten Pack­a­ging Group.
The pack­a­ging specia­list from Belgium is thus driving forward conso­li­da­tion in the pack­a­ging sector.
— MP Corpo­rate Finance, leading inter­na­tio­nal M&A advi­sor for the Euro­pean indus­trial sector, exclu­si­vely advi­sed Abris Capi­tal Part­ners on the sale of Dot2Dot.
Dot2Dot, head­quar­te­red in Danz­ing and with an addi­tio­nal produc­tion site in Warsaw, is regarded as a leading provi­der of inno­va­tive and sustainable folding carton pack­a­ging in the premium segment in its home market of Poland.
With its outstan­ding inno­va­tive strength in design and produc­tion as well as the highest ESG stan­dards, Dot2Dot serves a diverse custo­mer base that includes multi­na­tio­nal blue-chip manu­fac­tu­r­ers as well as compa­nies from the beauty, perso­nal care, food and non-food sectors.
Since 2015, Dot2Dot has been owned by the inter­na­tio­nal private equity firm Abris Capi­tal Part­ners, which has trans­for­med the company into one of the big play­ers in the pack­a­ging sector through a targe­ted buy & build strategy.
With around 350 employees and annual sales of EUR 55 million, Dot2Dot is now the largest inde­pen­dent premium folding carton manu­fac­tu­rer in Central and Eastern Europe. Stra­te­gic merger of two indus­try leaders With the now successfully reali­zed exit, Abris Capi­tal Part­ners is trans­fer­ring its stake to Van Genech­ten Pack­a­ging from Belgium, which is thus signi­fi­cantly expan­ding its alre­ady leading posi­tion in the fast-growing and highly attrac­tive Eastern Euro­pean market.
With an annual turno­ver of around EUR 450 million, Van Genech­ten is one of the largest inde­pen­dent pack­a­ging manu­fac­tu­r­ers in Europe, focu­sing on so-called FMCG pack­a­ging (Fast Moving Consu­mer Goods).
In addi­tion to the company head­quar­ters in Turn­hout, Belgium, the pack­a­ging specia­list opera­tes twelve folding carton sites, an extru­sion site and a design and produc­tion center for refe­rence cartons and is ther­e­fore active in nine count­ries world­wide. Ongo­ing conso­li­da­tion as a clear driver in the inter­na­tio­nal pack­a­ging market For MP Corpo­rate Finance, the merger of the two Euro­pean play­ers marks the third successfully comple­ted tran­sac­tion in the fiber-based pack­a­ging sector within ten months and the 81st accom­pa­nied tran­sac­tion in the pack­a­ging sector. “The sale of Dot2Dot to Van Genech­ten is another exam­ple of how the pack­a­ging sector is conti­nuing to conso­li­date at a Euro­pean level. The growing attrac­ti­ve­ness of the Eastern Euro­pean market for many pack­a­ging play­ers is also noti­ce­ably driving M&A acti­vity and under­lines the trend towards near­sho­ring, which has been brought to the fore by Covid,” says
Alex­an­der Kubo, Mana­ging Part­ner at MP Corpo­rate Finance. Edgar Koles­nik, Part­ner at Abris Capi­tal Part­ners, says: “In the search for a new growth part­ner for Dot2Dot, MP Corpo­rate Finance has once again demons­tra­ted its exten­sive indus­try exper­tise. The MP team mana­ged the sales process excel­lently, demons­t­ra­ting a deep under­stan­ding of market dyna­mics and inves­tors. Parti­cu­larly in such a highly compe­ti­tive inter­na­tio­nal auction, stra­te­gic insight is crucial in addi­tion to commit­ment and professionalism.”
In addi­tion to Dot2Dot, MP Corpo­rate Finance recently also successfully reali­zed the sale of the inter­na­tio­nal listed Aluflex­pack Group and the sale of the Italian MS Pack­a­ging to Hino­josa from Spain. About MP Corpo­rate Finance MP Corpo­rate Finance is the leading inter­na­tio­nal M&A consul­tancy specia­li­zing in the indus­trial sector.
As an expe­ri­en­ced part­ner for medium-sized compa­nies and manage­ment teams, private equity decis­ion-makers as well as entre­pre­neu­rial confi­dants, MP hand­les complex tran­sac­tions on both the sell and buy side and provi­des support in the context of capi­tal procu­re­ment, buy & build stra­te­gies, carve-outs and throug­hout the entire private equity lifecycle.
MP was foun­ded in Vienna in the 1990s by Roman Göd and Gregor Nischer as the first Euro­pean M&A firm with a sector-focu­sed advi­sory approach.
Today, the company employs more than 75 expe­ri­en­ced hands-on experts at five loca­ti­ons world­wide — in Vienna, Frank­furt, London, Istan­bul and Chicago — making it the largest indus­trial M&A team in Europe.
With its unique sector focus, MP has successfully advi­sed on more than 700 indus­trial tran­sac­tions for invest­ment compa­nies, SMEs and corpo­ra­ti­ons to date.
www.mp-corporatefinance.com

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Hamburg — Global law firm Norton Rose Fulbright has advi­sed Chap­ters Group AG on the forma­tion of Alta­mount Soft­ware GmbH and on its invest­ment in GBS Europa GmbH. Alta­mount Soft­ware GmbH was foun­ded toge­ther with Andreas Phil­ippi, the former CEO of HR services provi­der West­house, and focu­ses on the deve­lo­p­ment and sale of secu­rity, GRC and finan­cial services soft­ware. With the acqui­si­tion of the shares in the secu­rity soft­ware company GBS, the Chap­ters Group is laying the foun­da­ti­ons for expan­ding an indus­try soft­ware plat­form with Alta­mount Soft­ware. Chap­ters Group AG is a holding company based in Hamburg that invests in small and medium-sized compa­nies from various sectors with a long-term, entre­pre­neu­rial approach. The Chap­ters Group focu­ses on compa­nies that offer their custo­mers so-called “mission criti­cal” services. The GROUP Busi­ness Soft­ware (GBS) Europa GmbH is a provi­der of solu­ti­ons and services for IBM and Micro­soft colla­bo­ra­tion plat­forms. The company offers Compe­tence Centers for Secu­rity, Moder­niza­tion, Mobi­lity and Portal & BPM. The custo­mer base compri­ses more than 5,000 custo­mers with 4 million users. GBS Europe is active in Europe, North America and Asia. The Euro­pean head­quar­ters are loca­ted in Frank­furt am Main, the North Ameri­can head­quar­ters in Atlanta, USA. Advi­sor Chap­ters Group AG: Norton Rose Fulbright led by Hamburg coun­sel Dr. Kars­ten Alex (photo © Norton Rose Fulbright) and part­ner Patrick Narr (both Corpo­rate / M&A). Malte Meyer (Senior Asso­ciate, Corpo­rate / M&A), Sebas­tian Sievers (Asso­ciate, Corpo­rate), Dr. Tim Scha­per (Part­ner), Dr. Tobias Teich­ner (Senior Asso­ciate) (both Anti­trust), Dr. Inge­mar Kart­heu­ser (Coun­sel, IT/Data Protec­tion), Dr. Frank Webern­dör­fer (Part­ner, Employ­ment), Dr. Max Mahl­mann (Asso­ciate, Employ­ment) (all Hamburg) and Tiffany Zilliox (Senior Asso­ciate, Munich, IP). The Chap­ters Group was advi­sed in-house by Thomas Hottung (Legal Coun­sel). About Norton Rose Fulbright Norton Rose Fulbright is a global commer­cial law firm. With more than 3,500 lawy­ers at over 50 loca­ti­ons world­wide in Europe, the USA, Canada, Latin America, Asia, Austra­lia, Africa and the Middle East, we advise leading natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies. We offer our clients compre­hen­sive advice in all major indus­tries. These include Finan­cial Insti­tu­ti­ons; Energy; Infra­struc­ture, Mining and Commo­di­ties; Trans­por­ta­tion; Tech­no­logy and Inno­va­tion; and Life Scien­ces and Health­care. Our global Risk Advi­sory Group combi­nes this exten­sive indus­try expe­ri­ence with its exper­tise in legal, regu­la­tory, compli­ance and gover­nance matters. This enables us to provide our clients with prac­ti­cal solu­ti­ons to the legal and regu­la­tory risks they face. The Swiss asso­cia­tion Norton Rose Fulbright helps to coor­di­nate the acti­vi­ties of Norton Rose Fulbright members, but does not provide legal advice to clients. Norton Rose Fulbright has offices in more than 50 cities world­wide, inclu­ding London, Hous­ton, New York, Toronto, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Sydney and Johan­nes­burg. www.nortonrosefulbright.com/legal-notices.  

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Berlin — TRAIT, the inno­va­tive trai­ning app, has recei­ved around €1 million in a seed finan­cing round from HTGF, the angel club better ventures and other private inves­tors. The funding will support the further deve­lo­p­ment of their AI trai­ning plat­form, which offers a perso­na­li­zed and empa­the­tic trai­ning expe­ri­ence for runners. The Berlin-based start-up has made it its mission to help people achieve their indi­vi­dual trai­ning goals and lead a more sustainable, active and fulfil­ling life. At the heart of the company is the desire to combine science-based trai­ning with a sense of commu­nity. The team’s rese­arch found that people weren’t reaching their goals because of a lack of statis­tics or trai­ning sessi­ons, but because their plans either lacked flexi­bi­lity or they didn’t have a support network when they needed it. These are two important issues that TRAIT addres­ses so that no one is left behind when life gets in the way. The start-up relaun­ched its trai­ning app for runners today under the new name “TRAIT”. The previous version of the app achie­ved considera­ble growth with highly indi­vi­dua­li­zed running trai­ning plans and a virtual coach — down­loads increased by 178% annu­ally. The team around foun­ders Raphael Jung and Matthias Ettrich built on this with the aim of provi­ding runners with even more tail­o­red support. The seed funding will enable TRAIT to realize its vision of an empa­the­tic and adap­tive trai­ning envi­ron­ment that focu­ses not only on perfor­mance but also on the well-being of runners. The foun­ders want to set a new stan­dard in the indus­try with their app by empha­si­zing the importance of human inter­ac­tion and social support. “With TRAIT, we have deve­lo­ped an app that beha­ves as empa­the­ti­cally and under­stan­din­gly as a human coach would. We help people to find access to sport again. We use sports science and AI trai­ning and combine them with social “stan­ding up for each other”. With the support of HTGF, selec­ted busi­ness angels from better ventures and other private inves­tors, we are ready to revo­lu­tio­nize the way people think about being fit,” explains Raphael Jung, co-foun­der and CEO. “We are exci­ted about TRAI­T’s vision and approach to create an empa­thic and adap­tive AI trai­ning plat­form for athle­tes that streng­thens people not only physi­cally but also mentally,” says Johan­nes Dier­kes, Invest­ment Mana­ger at HTGF. About TRAIT TRAIT is based in Berlin and was foun­ded by Raphael Jung and Matthias Ettrich. Since 2021, the company has opera­ted under the name “Twaiv” and focu­sed on AI-gene­ra­ted, adap­tive trai­ning plans before relaun­ching under the name TRAIT in July 2024. Since its foun­da­tion, the company has expe­ri­en­ced rapid growth with an annual increase in down­loads of 178%. Trait has recei­ved around € 1 million in seed finan­cing from HTGF, the angel club better ventures and other inves­tors. About High-Tech Grün­der­fonds The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial and has supported more than 750 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 6 billion in the HTGF port­fo­lio in more than 2,000 follow-up finan­cing rounds. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 180 compa­nies. 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 industries.

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Düssel­dorf — KRÜGER GROUP has acqui­red Hermes Süss­stoff AG, based in Zurich.
The KRÜGER GROUP and its subsi­dia­ries have long been active along the entire produc­tion chain for sweeten­ers and are globally networked.
With the acqui­si­tion of Hermes Süss­stoff AG from the Klos­ter­frau Health­care Group, the KRÜGER GROUP has further expan­ded its posi­tion in the field of calo­rie-free sweeteners.
The KRÜGER GROUP, based in Bergisch Glad­bach, is a globally estab­lished family busi­ness in the food industry.
KRÜGER deve­lops, produ­ces and markets its products with around 5,600 employees at 21 loca­ti­ons in ten countries.
The Group owns brands such as KABA, Scho­get­ten, Trumpf, Fritt and Hafervoll.
Hermes Süss­stoff AG was foun­ded in 1904 and markets and produ­ces the inter­na­tio­nally renow­ned brands Herme­se­tas and SteviaS­weet in addi­tion to the sweete­ner Assugrin.
The tran­sac­tion has alre­ady been completed.
The busi­ness opera­ti­ons of Hermes Süss­stoff will conti­nue unch­an­ged after the takeover.
McDer­mott regu­larly advi­ses the KRÜGER GROUP on inter­na­tio­nal tran­sac­tions as well as natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal anti­trust and compe­ti­tion law issues.
Advi­sors KRÜGER GROUP: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Düssel­dorf Dr. Thomas Ammer­mann (Corporate/M&A), Chris­tian Krohs (Anti­trust Law), Paul McGrath (Employ­ment Law, London), Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel, Tax Law, Frank­furt); Asso­ciate: Julian Rößler-Weis (Anti­trust Law) MLL Legal, Zurich (Swiss Law): Andrea Sieber (Corporate/M&A), Dr. Simon Holzer (IP), Renato Bucher (Compe­ti­tion Law), Asso­ciate Phil­ipp Falk (Corporate/M&A) Advi­sors KRÜGER GROUP Inhouse: Dr. Martin Fröh­lich (M&A), Dr. Kai Danel­zik (Corpo­rate), Kai Piepen­stock (Tax) About McDer­mott Will & Emery McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm with over 1,400 lawy­ers in more than 20 offices in Europe, North America and Asia. Our lawy­ers cover the entire spec­trum of commer­cial and corpo­rate law with their advice. The German prac­tice is mana­ged by McDer­mott Will & Emery Rechts­an­wälte Steu­er­be­ra­ter LLP. https://www.mwe.com/de

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Koblenz / Vienna - The Koblenz-based Sdui Group, one of the leading provi­ders of educa­tion tech­no­logy in Europe, has acqui­red the educa­tion plat­form FoxE­du­ca­tion with its brands School­Fox, Kids­Fox and TeamFox.
Fox Educa­tion Services GmbH previously belon­ged to GoStu­dent, one of the worl­d’s leading tuto­ring provi­ders and educa­tion platforms.
At the same time, Sdui has recei­ved a further 21 million euros from inves­tors. Summi­teer and HV Capi­tal are leading the new finan­cing round with broad support from new and exis­ting inves­tors — inclu­ding Haniel, Brigh­teye, Michael Hinde­rer and HTGF.
With the acqui­si­tion of FoxE­du­ca­tion, Sdui streng­thens its posi­tion as a leading educa­tion tech­no­logy provi­der in Europe and now serves over 22,000 schools and daycare centers.
In addi­tion, Sdui has raised a further 21 million euros from exis­ting and new investors.
Summi­teer and HV Capi­tal are leading the new finan­cing round with broad support from new and exis­ting inves­tors — inclu­ding Haniel, Brigh­teye, Michael Hinde­rer and HTGF.
Toge­ther with the 25 million euros from the first finan­cing round (Series A), the EdTech provi­der has raised a total of 46 million euros.
The company is inves­t­ing part of this sum in the acqui­si­tion of FoxEducation.
With the acqui­si­tion of FoxE­du­ca­tion, the Sdui Group intends to estab­lish itself as a market-leading EdTech provi­der in the field of commu­ni­ca­tion and messa­ging for schools and daycare centers in German-spea­king countries.
The company is active in all three count­ries of the DACH market with a broad product portfolio.
With the acqui­si­tion of FoxE­du­ca­tion, the Sdui Group serves a custo­mer base of 22,000 educa­tio­nal insti­tu­ti­ons throug­hout Europe.
Simi­lar to Sdui, FoxE­du­ca­tion also offers inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons to improve commu­ni­ca­tion between teachers, educa­tors, students and parents.
In the future, Sdui and FoxE­du­ca­tion will combine their exper­tise to further improve their products.
Both compa­nies also expect this to lead to stron­ger growth.
FoxE­du­ca­tion has alre­ady had three successful years of growth: the educa­tion plat­form was acqui­red by GoStu­dent in Septem­ber 2021 and grew by over 70 percent under the company’s management.
While FoxE­du­ca­ti­on’s growth repres­ents a signi­fi­cant achie­ve­ment for GoStu­dent, FoxE­du­ca­ti­on’s capa­bi­li­ties have evol­ved in a diffe­rent direc­tion than GoStu­den­t’s core busi­ness of perso­na­li­zed tutoring.
For this reason, GoStu­dent has been able to leverage fewer imme­diate syner­gies with FoxE­du­ca­tion than with its broa­der port­fo­lio: TusMe­dia, Seneca and Studienkreis.
Deter­mi­ned to drive educa­tion forward through the use of tech­no­logy, the sale of FoxE­du­ca­tion to Sdui Group is a stra­te­gic move aimed at impro­ving commu­ni­ca­tion between schools, parents and students and streng­thening the EdTech ecosys­tem in the DACH region.
“The acqui­si­tion of FoxE­du­ca­tion is an important stra­te­gic move that signi­fi­cantly streng­thens the Sdui Group’s presence in the DACH region. With a growing, holi­stic product offe­ring, this exci­ting acqui­si­tion will enable Sdui to better serve educa­tio­nal insti­tu­ti­ons in German-spea­king count­ries and conso­li­date our posi­tion as the largest digi­ta­liza­tion part­ner for educa­tio­nal insti­tu­ti­ons in Europe.
The EUR 46 million we have raised in total will also enable us to conti­nue to invest in pionee­ring educa­tion tech­no­logy,” says Daniel Zacha­rias, foun­der and CEO of the Sdui Group. 

 

News

Wetz­lar / Kiel / Hamburg — INTRAG Inter­net Regio­nal GmbH (“INTRAG”), a specia­list in regio­nal online marke­ting with a focus on small and medium-sized enter­pri­ses, is to become part of the OMERGY Group (“OMERGY”) as part of a stra­te­gic growth partnership.
With this tran­sac­tion, the inno­va­tive provi­der of online marke­ting products based in Hamburg is expan­ding its service port­fo­lio and streng­thening its market posi­tion in the field of regio­nal online marketing.
Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor, toge­ther with sonn­tag corpo­rate finance one of Germany’s leading M&A advi­sory bouti­ques for medium-sized compa­nies, successfully advi­sed INTRAG on the merger.
Foun­ded in Kiel in 1999, INTRAG specia­li­zes in the marke­ting and provi­sion of online marke­ting services.
It focu­ses in parti­cu­lar on compa­nies that want to expand their local online presence in a targe­ted manner.
INTRAG offers its custo­mers a compre­hen­sive digi­tal service port­fo­lio that includes search engine marke­ting (SEO and SEA) as well as effec­tive online adver­ti­sing in the form of website design and corpo­rate videos.
INTRA­G’s core product is the SEO opti­miza­tion of Google busi­ness profiles, supported by a speci­ally programmed SEO tool set and AI-based appli­ca­ti­ons for SEO content crea­tion. Conti­nuing the life’s work With the recent merger of INTRAG and OMERGY, both compa­nies are taking their growth to a new level: by inte­gra­ting INTRAG, the more than 2,100 active OMERGY custo­mers bene­fit from both the digi­tal SEO marke­ting tools and INTRA­G’s many years of regio­nal expertise.
OMERGY, form­erly adzLo­cal and majo­rity-owned by Munich-based private equity firm PINOVA Capi­tal since June 2021, uses its unique tech­no­lo­gi­cal plat­form to support local compa­nies throug­hout Germany with a compre­hen­sive online marke­ting mix of Google Ads, website design and cont­act track­ing to acquire new custo­mers, which in turn will bene­fit the appro­xi­m­ately 8,500 INTRAG customers.
The previous INTRAG owners, Burk­hard and Hart­mut Wehr­meyer, are acqui­ring a mino­rity stake in the OMERGY Group as part of the tran­sac­tion and will conti­nue to closely support INTRA­G’s further growth under the aegis of OMERGY.
Toge­ther with CEO Simone Baade-Doerf­ner and COO Cars­ten Schmidt, Hart­mut Wehr­meyer will help shape the Group’s product port­fo­lio as CPO and new member of the OMERGY manage­ment board.
“In OMERGY, we have found a part­ner with whom we can lead our company into a promi­sing, high-growth future. A merger from which both sides will bene­fit signi­fi­cantly. I look forward to accom­pany­ing the next steps of the part­ner­ship and thus promo­ting the growth of INTRAG and OMERGY,” explains Hart­mut Wehr­meyer, former owner and Mana­ging Direc­tor of INTRAG.
“The market for digi­tal marke­ting is growing rapidly — and the incre­asing use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence is natu­rally fueling this deve­lo­p­ment further. Digi­tal marke­ting tools are ther­e­fore beco­ming incre­asingly important for compa­nies across all sectors. With the merger, both compa­nies are ideally posi­tio­ned to bene­fit from these market oppor­tu­ni­ties in the long term,” comm­ents David Weid­mann, Part­ner and respon­si­ble Project Mana­ger at Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor. About Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor and sonn­tag corpo­rate finance Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor GmbH, toge­ther with sonn­tag corpo­rate finance GmbH, is one of the leading M&A consul­ting firms in the German SME sector. The team of almost 30 experts accom­pa­nies medium-sized entre­pre­neurs exclu­si­vely through the entire sales process. “Our task is to safe­guard life’s work,” is how we see oursel­ves. In doing so, custo­mers bene­fit from a unique approach that has won multi­ple awards from the busi­ness press, and which protects the iden­tity of their compa­nies to a special degree. Thanks to their excel­lent access to medium-sized compa­nies, Nach­fol­ge­kon­tor and sonn­tag corpo­rate finance have also estab­lished them­sel­ves as a strong part­ner at the side of renow­ned natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal major compa­nies and inves­tors in acqui­si­ti­ons. This is also demons­tra­ted by the top posi­tion recently achie­ved at the Merger­mar­ket League Table. With a total of ten accom­pa­nied tran­sac­tions in the first quar­ter of 2024, the M&A consul­tancy ranks first in Germany.
www.nachfolgekontor.de | www.sonntagcf.com About INTRAG Inter­net Regio­nal GmbH www.intrag.de About OMERGY GmbH https://www.omergy.de/

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Tübingen/ Berlin — YPOG provi­ded compre­hen­sive legal advice to the lead inves­tor Vesa­lius Bioca­pi­tal IV in the € 15 million Series C finan­cing round of Hepa­Re­ge­niX GmbH. Exis­ting inves­tors such as Novo Holdings, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim Venture Fund and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds also parti­ci­pa­ted in the investment.

Hepa­Re­ge­niX GmbH is a company in the field of clini­cal deve­lo­p­ment of novel thera­pies for the treat­ment of acute and chro­nic liver dise­a­ses. Since its launch in 2017, Hepa­Re­ge­niX has successfully disco­vered and deve­lo­ped seve­ral drug candi­da­tes for the treat­ment of acute and chro­nic liver dise­a­ses based on a novel mole­cu­lar target Mitogen-Acti­va­ted Protein (MAP) Kinase Kinase 4 (MKK4). HRX-215 is a small mole­cule inhi­bi­tor of mitogen-acti­va­ted protein (MAP) kinase kinase 4 (MKK4). This subs­tance has the poten­tial to signi­fi­cantly support liver rege­ne­ra­tion in pati­ents with liver meta­sta­ses or primary liver tumors.

The new funding will support the Phase Ib/IIa clini­cal trial, which will focus on impro­ving liver heal­ing and preven­ting liver failure.

Advi­sor to Hepa­Re­ge­niX: YPOG

Dr. Martin Scha­per (Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Part­ner, Berlin, Dr. Lutz Schrei­ber (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Part­ner, Hamburg, Benja­min Müller (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin, Matthias Treude (IP/IT/Data Protec­tion), Asso­ciate, Hamburg, Cyra Ditt­ber­ner (Tran­sac­tions), Asso­ciate, Berlin

About Vesa­lius Bioca­pi­tal IV

Vesa­lius Bioca­pi­tal is an estab­lished Euro­pean life scien­ces venture capi­tal inves­tor with a long track record of consis­tent returns, inves­t­ing in the best/­first-class Euro­pean biopharma and health­tech companies.

The company invests in attrac­tive compa­nies at an advan­ced stage of deve­lo­p­ment in the fields of drug deve­lo­p­ment, medi­cal tech­no­logy and diagno­stics as well as eHealth/mHealth, prima­rily in Europe. The port­fo­lio compa­nies address unmet medi­cal and market needs and operate on the basis of strong intellec­tual property protection.

About YPOG

YPOG is a law firm specia­li­zing in tax and commer­cial law, active 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 Germany. The firm and its part­ners are ranked natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, Cham­bers and Part­ners and Leaders League. Today, YPOG employs more than 120 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax consul­tants, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. http://www.ypog.law

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London/ Berlin — The Euro­pean family office Imker Capi­tal Part­ners from London has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in the Berlin-based company AMV. the foun­ders of AVM, provi­der of the well-known Fritz­box routers. Imker Capi­tal Part­ners is supported by promi­nent figu­res from the busi­ness world, inclu­ding Dutch­man Teun van Rappard. Van Rappar­d’s father, Rolly van Rappard, is a co-foun­der of the well-known private equity firm CVC.

AMV, foun­ded by four students in Berlin in 1986, is regarded as a model company in the German IT sector. It has always specia­li­zed in in-house deve­lo­p­ments and is conside­red a pearl of the German IT indus­try. The company, which specia­li­zes in in-house deve­lo­p­ments and is best known for its “Fritz­box”, gene­ra­ted reve­nue of €580 million in 2023 with its 890 employees. Indus­try experts esti­mate AVM’s enter­prise value at up to € 1 billion.

AVM has now arran­ged the gene­ra­tio­nal change for the company. The foun­ders and mana­ging part­ners Johan­nes Nill, Peter Faxel and Ulrich Müller-Albring will remain mino­rity share­hol­ders and members of the company’s advi­sory board.

The inves­tor Imker Capi­tal Part­ners acqui­res the majo­rity of the shares. The foun­ders Johan­nes Nill, Peter Faxel and Ulrich Müller-Albring remain loyal to AVM as share­hol­ders. In future, you will hold a mino­rity inte­rest of an undis­c­lo­sed amount.

The finan­cial terms of the deal have not yet been disc­lo­sed. It is known that Nill, Faxel and Müller-Albring will leave the manage­ment board on Septem­ber 1. The trio will then accom­pany the company’s further deve­lo­p­ment in a newly formed advi­sory board. Regu­la­tory appr­oval is requi­red before the tran­sac­tion can be comple­ted, but the deal is expec­ted to be fina­li­zed in the second half of the current year.

The neces­sary gene­ra­tio­nal change has been “actively and syste­ma­ti­cally approa­ched”, Nill, curr­ently still CEO and spokes­man of the manage­ment board at AVM, is quoted as saying in a press release. Imker Capi­tal Part­ners shares the foun­ders’ vision for the future of AVM.

Advi­sors to AVM foun­ders: Skad­den, Arps, Slate, Meag­her & Flom
Led by Dr. Jan Bauer and Dr. Rüdi­ger Schmidt-Bendun.
The law firm KNPZ was consul­ted for IP and IT law.

Advi­sor Imker Capi­tal Part­ners: Weil, Gotshal & Manges
Dr. Ansgar Wimber provi­des legal advice. As with the recent advice to Advent Inter­na­tio­nal in the context of the take­over of Aareon by TPG and CDPQ, this mandate was also acqui­red and mana­ged from Weil’s Frank­furt office.

Imker Capi­tal Part­ners is conside­red a well-connec­ted finan­cial investor

Imker Capi­tal Part­ners, head­quar­te­red in London, also holds a stake in SAP Fioneer via the Luxem­bourg-based company Rucio. Teun van Rappard, a promi­nent Dutch­man, is one of the share­hol­ders of Imker. His father, Rolly van Rappard, is a co-foun­der of the globally active private equity company CVC, which holds a stake in the Douglas perfu­mery chain in Germany and makes invest­ments in Europe such as the Maltese book­ma­ker Tipico. Teun van Rappard is a regu­lar guest at the World Econo­mic Forum in Davos, but remains largely with­drawn from the public eye.

News

Munich/Baden — Funds advi­sed by Bregal Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal (“BU”) acquire a majo­rity stake in Baden-based BSI Soft­ware AG, the leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for custo­mer rela­ti­onship manage­ment (CRM) and custo­mer expe­ri­ence (CX) in its focus indus­tries. As part of BU’s invest­ment, Capvis Equity V LP, the fund advi­sed by the Swiss company Capvis AG, sold its shares after four years of successful part­ner­ship with BSI. The BSI manage­ment team remains inves­ted and conti­nues its successful work toge­ther with BU.

Holi­stic soft­ware plat­form for CRM & CX

For over 25 years, BSI has been deli­ve­ring inno­va­tive soft­ware solu­ti­ons for compa­nies that want to lead the way in digi­ta­liza­tion and custo­mer centri­city. More than 500 employees work “with heart and soul” for their custo­mers and the “BSI Custo­mer Suite”, which now compri­ses seven inte­gra­ted products. The modern cloud solu­tion is prima­rily used by deman­ding custo­mers from the finan­cial services, insu­rance, energy & utility and retail sectors to digi­tize rela­ti­onships with milli­ons of end custo­mers in a custo­mer-orien­ted, effi­ci­ent and intel­li­gent way. The BSI Custo­mer Suite comes with an Indus­try Cloud, which inte­gra­tes in-depth indus­try know­ledge with speci­fic proces­ses and regu­la­ti­ons into the soft­ware. Exis­ting IT systems are always fully inte­gra­ted via various stan­dard connec­tors to enable a high degree of auto­ma­tion and a consis­tent data flow. The soft­ware and data are stored in Swiss or German data centers.

Markus Brunold, CEO of BSI comm­ents: “BSI connects people and soft­ware. The BSI Custo­mer Suite combi­nes custo­mer focus and indus­try exper­tise based on a mature no-code/­low-code plat­form. With this recipe for success, we are conti­nuing our growth stra­tegy in Europe to inspire more customers.”

Successful part­ner­ship with Capvis in recent years

When Capvis joined the company in 2020, the aim was to conti­nue BSI’s success story and at the same time provide further impe­tus for growth. Over the past four years, new soft­ware products have been deve­lo­ped, state-of-the-art cloud archi­tec­tures rolled out and the indus­try modu­les expan­ded. BSI was also able to acquire three compa­nies and expand the func­tion­a­lity of the Custo­mer Suite with Snap­view (GDPR-compli­ant video consul­ting), InSign (elec­tro­nic signa­tures of the highest secu­rity level) and Riskine (soft­ware solu­tion for consul­ting proces­ses at banks and insu­rance companies).

André Perwas, Part­ner at Capvis, adds: “We were deligh­ted when the foun­ders and manage­ment deci­ded to join Capvis in 2020. We have achie­ved a lot in this part­ner­ship and are convin­ced that BSI will also successfully shape the next chap­ter of growth.”

Part­ner­ship with BU conti­nues to focus on custo­mer-orien­ted growth and supports BSI’s expan­sion in Europe
With BU, BSI has gained a part­ner with outstan­ding expe­ri­ence in the soft­ware sector. BU is the largest mid-cap inves­tor head­quar­te­red in the DACH region and has been active in the invest­ment busi­ness since 2015.

“Of course, our custo­mers and our products will remain the focus of our further growth stra­tegy,” explains Markus Brunold, CEO of BSI. He explains: “With BU, we can simul­ta­neously drive forward inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and expand in our focus indus­tries within Europe.

Chris Rusche, co-foun­der and board member of BSI adds “the growing size allows us to conti­nue to invest in our people and products. All our custo­mers bene­fit from BSI’s success with a strong, compre­hen­sive, Euro­pean soft­ware plat­form for CRM and CX”.

Phil­ipp Struth, Part­ner at BU (photo), says: “BSI impres­sed us not only with its inno­va­tive product port­fo­lio, but above all with its unique corpo­rate culture, which has turned a very large part of its work­force into true co-entre­pre­neurs. We are hono­red to be able to help shape and support BSI’s future growth as a BU.”

The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the finan­cial terms of the tran­sac­tion. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is still subject to the appr­oval of the rele­vant authorities.

About Bregal Entre­pre­neu­rial Capital

Bregal Unter­neh­mer­ka­pi­tal (“BU”) is a leading private equity firm with offices in Zug, Munich and Milan. With a total of €7.0 billion in capi­tal raised since its foun­da­tion, BU is the largest mid-cap inves­tor head­quar­te­red in the DACH region. The funds advi­sed by BU invest in medium-sized compa­nies based in Germany, Switz­er­land, Italy and Austria. With the mission to be the prefer­red part­ner for entre­pre­neurs and family busi­nesses, BU focu­ses on part­ner­ships with market leaders and “hidden cham­pi­ons” with strong manage­ment teams and growth poten­tial. Since its foun­da­tion in 2015, the funds advi­sed by BU have inves­ted over €3.0 billion in more than 100 compa­nies with over 27,000 employees. More than 7,700 jobs were crea­ted in the process. BU supports entre­pre­neurs and fami­lies as a stra­te­gic part­ner to further deve­lop, inter­na­tio­na­lize and digi­ta­lize their compa­nies, helping them to create sustainable value respon­si­bly and with a view to the next generation.
For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.bregal.ch/ or follow us on LinkedIn.

About BSI

With the BSI Custo­mer Suite, the Swiss soft­ware manu­fac­tu­rer BSI offers a holi­stic, AI-supported plat­form for the digi­ta­liza­tion of custo­mer rela­ti­onships. BSI provi­des ever­y­thing that an excel­lent custo­mer expe­ri­ence needs for banking, insu­rance, retail and energy & utili­ties. In addi­tion to his many years of indus­try exper­tise, this also includes BSI’s CRM system with a gene­ra­tive 360° custo­mer view and a BSI Compa­n­ion. Around 230 corpo­rate custo­mers use BSI’s soft­ware to reach their more than 150 million end custo­mers throug­hout Europe. Since its foun­da­tion in Switz­er­land in 1996, the company has estab­lished itself as the market leader in its focus sectors in the DACH region. Its custo­mers include renow­ned compa­nies such as ADAC, the Raiff­ei­sen Banking Group, Signal Iduna, Post­Fi­nance and Merkur Versi­che­rung. Soft­ware and people working toge­ther — that’s what BSI stands for.
www.bsi-software.com

About Capvis

Capvis AG in Baar is the exclu­sive advi­sor to the Capvis funds, which prima­rily acquire majo­rity stakes in leading medium-sized tech­no­logy compa­nies. Its acti­vi­ties are based on many years of expe­ri­ence in crea­ting local and global market leaders in the fields of health­care, indus­trial tech­no­logy and advan­ced services and soft­ware. Close coope­ra­tion with strong manage­ment teams ensu­res that the compa­nies’ poten­tial is fully exploi­ted and long-term value is crea­ted. Capvis has been active in the private equity sector for more than 30 years and has inves­ted more than 4 billion euros in 63 compa­nies. The remar­kable number of 10 IPOs docu­ments the quality of the invest­ments mana­ged and deve­lo­ped by Capvis.
www.capvis.com

News

Frein­berg (Austria)/ Munich — The manage­ment consul­tancy Dr. Wiesel­hu­ber & Part­ner (W&P), which specia­li­zes in family busi­nesses, has advi­sed the Pale­tar family, owners of the Schwarz­mül­ler Group, on the sale of a stake to the Krone Group (Bernard Krone Holding SE & Co. KG) as part of a stra­te­gic alli­ance. Schwarz­mül­ler, Euro­pean manu­fac­tu­rer of special vehic­les in the commer­cial vehicle sector (around € 500 million turno­ver), is brin­ging its produc­tion sites in Germany, Hungary, the Czech Repu­blic and Austria under the umbrella of the Krone Commer­cial Vehicle Group as part of the indus­trial partnership.

Beate Pale­tar (photo© Schwarz­mül­ler Group), owner of the Schwarz­mül­ler Group, also empha­si­zes the importance of the tran­sac­tion: “W&P initia­ted and prepared the part­ner­ship with the Krone Group in the best possi­ble way and thus made an important contri­bu­tion to streng­thening Schwarz­mül­ler”. Supported by exper­tise from Krone, the Schwarz­mül­ler Group will conti­nue to operate under the exis­ting manage­ment. Appr­oval of the invest­ment by the anti­trust autho­ri­ties is expec­ted in the near future.

W&P’s Christan Groschupp, Part­ner Debt & Capi­tal Advi­sory, Phil­ippe Piscol, Part­ner M&A, and Dr.-Ing. Dirk Artelt, Mana­ging Part­ner Indus­trial Goods, played a key role in the tran­sac­tion: “The trus­ting rela­ti­onship between two tradi­tio­nal family busi­nesses is the start­ing point for a strong part­ner­ship ‚” says Chris­tian Groschupp. The Schwarz­mül­ler Group brands will conti­nue to operate inde­pendently in order to main­tain an indi­vi­dual custo­mer approach.

Schwarz­mül­ler Group

The Schwarz­mül­ler Group is the largest Euro­pean niche supplier of trai­lers and bodies. The company builds more than 150 vehicle types with the aim of guaran­te­e­ing its custo­mers added value in the appli­ca­tion. In its long history since 1871, Schwarz­mül­ler has become the leading specia­list for indi­vi­dual trans­por­ta­tion solu­ti­ons. With vehicle types of the two brands Schwarz­mül­ler and Hüffer­mann, the group supplies the cons­truc­tion indus­try, infra­struc­ture compa­nies, the raw mate­ri­als and recy­cl­ables indus­try and long-distance trans­port compa­nies in 20 countries.

KRONE Commer­cial Vehicle Group

With 60,000 units produ­ced, the KRONE Commer­cial Vehicle Group is a major Euro­pean manu­fac­tu­rer of trai­lers and semi-trai­lers for the trans­por­ta­tion indus­try and sees itself as a compre­hen­sive mobi­lity consul­tant. The Emsland-based family busi­ness covers the most important segments in road freight trans­port with its product range. At six plant loca­ti­ons with around 3,500 employees, the KRONE GROUP’s commer­cial vehicle divi­sion has deve­lo­ped signi­fi­cant core compe­ten­cies in the fields of digi­ta­liza­tion, auto­ma­tion, sustaina­bi­lity and elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, in addi­tion to its produc­tion exper­tise in semi-trai­lers, axles and swap systems. The sales volume in the segment, which is made up of product and service sales, amounts to over EUR 2 billion (as at 2022/2023).

Dr. Wiesel­hu­ber & Partner

Dr. Wiesel­hu­ber & Part­ner (W&P) is the leading cross-indus­try top manage­ment consul­tancy for family busi­nesses. She specia­li­zes in the entre­pre­neu­rial fields of stra­tegy, digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion, busi­ness perfor­mance and restruc­tu­ring & corpo­rate finance, which also includes (distres­sed) M&A. From its offices in Munich, Hamburg, Stutt­gart and Düssel­dorf, Dr. Wiesel­hu­ber & Part­ner offers its clients compre­hen­sive indus­try and metho­do­lo­gi­cal exper­tise with the aim of sustain­ably and perma­nently incre­asing the growth and compe­ti­ti­ve­ness, profi­ta­bi­lity and enter­prise value of its clients. www.wieselhuber.de

News

Neubeuern/Karlsruhe — ORCA Soft­ware GmbH (“ORCA”), based in Neubeu­ern and a leading soft­ware company in the cons­truc­tion indus­try, is under­go­ing a change of owner­ship. The foun­der and sole share­hol­der of ORCA Soft­ware GmbH and its sister company ORCA-online GmbH, Heinz Nießen, has sold all of his shares indi­rectly to funds mana­ged by LEA Part­ners (“LEA”) for reasons of age.

Heinz Nießen, foun­der and sole share­hol­der of ORCA Soft­ware GmbH and ORCA-online GmbH, is selling all his shares for reasons of age. Toge­ther with the LEA port­fo­lio compa­nies PROJEKT PRO and SOFTTECH, ORCA will signi­fi­cantly advance the market leader­ship in the DACH region for commer­cial cons­truc­tion soft­ware and acce­le­rate the digi­ta­liza­tion of the cons­truc­tion indus­try. The total of 15,000 custo­mers will bene­fit in future from the unique exper­tise of over 250 employees to further increase their econo­mic and plan­ning success

“In LEA, we have found a strong, relia­ble part­ner to lead the ORCA Group into the future. Of course, it’s diffi­cult when you hand over your life’s work to new hands,” says Heinz Nießen, who will also be step­ping down as Mana­ging Direc­tor, “but the LEA team is the perfect fit, both perso­nally and profes­sio­nally, to give ORCA the right impe­tus to conti­nue the impres­sive growth trajec­tory of recent years with the entire team.”

LEA plans to conti­nue the company at the Neubeu­ern site with the exis­ting manage­ment team. The purchase agree­ment, the terms of which the parties have agreed not to disc­lose, is to be comple­ted by the end of August at the latest.

The remai­ning Mana­ging Direc­tor, Manfred Scholz, adds: “We are deligh­ted for our entire team and our custo­mers that LEA has a long-term approach to estab­li­shing ORCA even more stron­gly as a premium brand in the cons­truc­tion soft­ware sector and to conti­nuously improve our port­fo­lio of products and services.”

Toge­ther with the exis­ting LEA port­fo­lio compa­nies in the cons­truc­tion soft­ware sector, PROJEKT PRO (project manage­ment and control­ling soft­ware) and SOFTTECH (AVA and visua­liza­tion soft­ware), ORCA will be able to drive forward the expan­sion of its market leader­ship in the DACH region for commer­cial cons­truc­tion soft­ware and acce­le­rate digi­ta­liza­tion. In future, the compa­nies will be able to combine their exper­tise in commer­cial solu­ti­ons and visua­liza­tion soft­ware to make the cons­truc­tion indus­try more effi­ci­ent and inno­va­tive. In future, custo­mers will bene­fit from the unique exper­tise of over 250 employees to further increase their econo­mic and plan­ning success.

Nils Berger, LEA Part­ners: “The digi­ta­liza­tion of the cons­truc­tion indus­try is one of the most exci­ting and biggest tasks that LEA Part­ners has been passio­nate about for years. With over 30 years of expe­ri­ence as a market leader in the AVA sector, ORCA is another important buil­ding block in achie­ving this goal of an abso­lute market leader. By working toge­ther with PROJEKT PRO and SOFTTECH, we can expand and opti­mize our soft­ware product offe­ring for the custo­mer groups. We are deligh­ted to be able to accom­pany the ORCA team on their future path as a spar­ring part­ner and investor.”

About ORCA Soft­ware GmbH

Foun­ded in 1990, ORCA Soft­ware GmbH is a leading soft­ware company in the cons­truc­tion indus­try. Over 110 employees work at the Neubeu­ern site near Rosen­heim. The ORCA AVA and AUSSCHREIBEN.DE product brands prima­rily support archi­tects, engi­neers, specia­list plan­ners and product manu­fac­tu­r­ers with intui­tive tools that offer opti­mum data quality and plan­ning relia­bi­lity. As a well-connec­ted part­ner, ORCA actively promo­tes the topics of BIM, digi­ta­liza­tion and sustaina­bi­lity in the cons­truc­tion indus­try. Further infor­ma­tion can be found at www.orca-software.com.

About LEA Partners

LEA Part­ners, as an entre­pre­neu­rial equity part­ner, supports foun­ders and manage­ment teams at diffe­rent stages of deve­lo­p­ment in their growth and achie­ve­ment of a leading market posi­tion. With a 30+ team in Karls­ruhe, one of Euro­pe’s largest tech­no­logy clus­ters, LEA has mana­ged invest­ments in more than 70 tech­no­logy compa­nies since 2002. More at www.leapartners.de

 

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