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News-Kategorie: Deals

Leica takes over Meister Camera Shops — end of an era

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Wetzlar/ Hamburg — As of Novem­ber 1, 2023, the Meis­ter Camera stores in Hamburg, Berlin and Munich will operate under the umbrella of Leica Camera AG. This finally brings the era of inde­pen­dent Leica stores in Germany to an end. With its motto “Ever­y­thing Leica can deli­ver, we have in stock,” Came­ra­Meis­ter has very often been a last resort for Leica photo­graph­ers who have always had to be very pati­ent with Leica’s deli­very deadlines.

Baker McKen­zie advi­sed Leica Camera Deutsch­land GmbH on the acqui­si­tion of three Leica Stores in Hamburg, Berlin and Munich, which were previously mana­ged by Meis­ter Camera. 135 years after the foun­ding of the “Meis­ter Droge­rie”, which later became Meis­ter Camera, and after more than 50 years of coope­ra­tion with Leica, owner Martin Meis­ter has deci­ded to sell his busi­ness to Leica.

Baker McKen­zie advi­sed Leica on corpo­rate and real estate aspects of the tran­sac­tion, inclu­ding the coor­di­na­tion and nego­tia­tion of the acqui­si­tion. “With this acqui­si­tion, our client Leica can now conti­nue its long­stan­ding success story toge­ther with the exis­ting store teams in Hamburg, Berlin and Munich,” commen­ted Eva Kriech­bau­mer, co-lead of the transaction.

Leica is a premium manu­fac­tu­rer of came­ras and sports optics products head­quar­te­red in Wetz­lar, Germany. With this acqui­si­tion, Leica conti­nues to expand its distri­bu­tion network, which now includes eleven Leica Stores in Germany.

Legal advi­sor Leica: Baker McKenzie

Lead: Corporate/M&A: Eva Kriech­bau­mer (Senior Asso­ciate, Munich), Dr. Andreas Lohner (Part­ner, Munich)
Team: Corporate/M&A: Dr. Jon Marcus Meese (Part­ner, Munich)
Real Estate: Dr. Daniel Bork (Part­ner, Düssel­dorf), Moritz Jander (Asso­ciate, Düsseldorf)

Baker McKenzie’s Corporate/M&A prac­tice regu­larly advi­ses on dome­stic and inter­na­tio­nal tran­sac­tions. Most recently, Baker McKen­zie advi­sed Trans­com on its acqui­si­tion of time­frame, Sika AG on its acqui­si­tion of MBCC Group from Lone Star and sale of MBCC’s concrete admix­tures busi­ness to Cinven, Senwes Ltd. in its acqui­si­tion of four agri­cul­tu­ral machi­nery dealers in the new German states, AURELIUS in its acqui­si­tion of LSG Group from Deut­sche Luft­hansa AG, Nokian Tyres plc in its sale of the Russian busi­ness to Tatneft PJSC, First Solar in its sale of the global O&M busi­ness to Nova­Source, Flui­dra in its acqui­si­tion of Mera­nus Group and Magna in its acqui­si­tion of the Veoneer Active Safety business.

VR Equity sells stake in dried herb specialist Groneweg to Thrive Foods

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Frank­furt am Main/Greven — Frank­furt-based private equity firm VR Equi­typ­art­ner has reached a binding agree­ment to sell its signi­fi­cant mino­rity stake in Grone­weg Group (Greven), a leading global specia­list in high-quality freeze-dried and air-dried herbs, vege­ta­bles and fruits. The merger with U.S.-based Thrive Foods will create a strong and compe­ti­tive player in food freeze-drying — from fruits, vege­ta­bles and spices to pet food and probio­tics. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to custo­mary closing condi­ti­ons, inclu­ding regu­la­tory appr­ovals. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose details of the contract.

Grone­weg was foun­ded in 1969 and is a global player in freeze-dried herbs. The wide range of products includes herbs, spices, vege­ta­bles and fruits. With an inter­na­tio­nal sales team at six loca­ti­ons in Europe, North America and Latin America, the Grone­weg Group has a broad distri­bu­tion network. Groneweg’s know-how covers the entire value chain, from the high-quality raw mate­ri­als secu­red in contract farming, through prepa­ra­tion, drying and further proces­sing, to the sale of the finis­hed products. Strict inter­nal test­ing systems and inten­sive coope­ra­tion with suppli­ers have also enab­led the company to conti­nu­ally expand its market position.

Thrive Foods is a manu­fac­tu­rer of freeze-dried products such as fruits and vege­ta­bles, prote­ins, pet foods, probio­tics, enzy­mes and prepared foods. The company curr­ently has loca­ti­ons in Mode­sto, Cali­for­nia; Ameri­can Fork, Utah; and Albion, New York.

The sellers of the Grone­weg Group are Ursula Grone­weg with her two daugh­ters and VR Equi­typ­art­ner. In the course of the tran­sac­tion with the Ameri­can company Thrive Foods, they are giving up their shares in full.

“We are happy about this next important step in the deve­lo­p­ment of our company. I am sure our company foun­der Dieter Grone­weg would have been deligh­ted to see his life’s work as part of this new group of compa­nies revo­lu­tio­ni­zing the market,” says Ursula Grone­weg. Grone­weg Mana­ging Direc­tor Karl-Heinz Waszik adds: “Over the past few years, we have imple­men­ted a strin­gent growth stra­tegy with our top manage­ment and share­hol­ders and worked perma­nently on the deve­lo­p­ment of new products. This is now paying off: Grone­weg Group is a perfect part­ner for our common goals with Thrive Foods.”

VR Equi­typ­art­ner had acqui­red a signi­fi­cant mino­rity stake in Novem­ber 2017. Since then, a consis­tent growth stra­tegy has been pursued, with market entry in further Euro­pean count­ries, an expan­sion of the company’s presence throug­hout North America and the further acqui­si­tion of shares in compa­nies in Latin America. In addi­tion, the product range has been expan­ded and new stra­te­gic supply part­ner­ships have ensu­red a high level of supply capa­bi­lity, which has proved very successful, parti­cu­larly in the chal­len­ging past years.

“We have achie­ved a lot in the five years we have been toge­ther with the foun­ding family,” says Peter Sachse (photo), mana­ging direc­tor of VR Equi­typ­art­ner. “It is hard to imagine a better stra­te­gic fit than the acqui­si­tion of Grone­weg by Thrive Foods. In addi­tion to the geogra­phi­cal expan­sion, the two compa­nies comple­ment each other perfectly in terms of product ranges and asso­cia­ted know-how. From our perspec­tive, this is a forward-looking decis­ion with the best pros­pects for further growth.”

About VR Equitypartner

VR Equi­typ­art­ner is one of the leading equity finan­ciers in Germany, Austria and Switz­er­land. The company supports medium-sized family busi­nesses in a goal-orien­ted manner and with deca­des of expe­ri­ence in the stra­te­gic solu­tion of complex finan­cing issues. Invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties include growth and expan­sion finan­cing, corpo­rate succes­sion or share­hol­der chan­ges. VR Equi­typ­art­ner offers majo­rity and mino­rity invest­ments as well as mezza­nine finan­cing. As a subsi­diary of DZ BANK, the central insti­tu­tion of the coope­ra­tive banks in Germany, VR Equi­typ­art­ner consis­t­ently puts the sustaina­bi­lity of corpo­rate deve­lo­p­ment ahead of short-term exit thin­king. VR Equitypartner’s port­fo­lio curr­ently compri­ses around 60 commit­ments with an invest­ment volume of EUR 400 million.
www.vrep.de.

The tran­sac­tion team of VR Equi­typ­art­ner: Tim Feld, Hedwig Holken­brink, Daniel Seifert, Jens Osthoff

Advi­sor VR Equitypartner:

M&A: Square­field (Dr. Boris Hippel, Dorian Bindemann)

Finance: Grant Thorn­ton (Klaus Schaldt, Johan­nes Kost, Felix Bickel Carioni)

Tax: Grant Thorn­ton (Dr. Stefan Hahn, Dr. Nico­las Brüggen)

Legal: Noerr (Dr. Martin Neuhaus, Gerrit Henze, Florian Döpking, Hannah Best­ing, Phil­ipp Buchs, Clau­dia Rinkens)

 

zvoove Group acquires Dutch software provider RecruitNow

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Lohne — zvoove Group, the leading provi­der of digi­ta­liza­tion solu­ti­ons for staf­fing and clea­ning compa­nies in Europe, has acqui­red Recruit­Now, the market leader in the Nether­lands for ATS (Appli­cant Track­ing Systems) and recrui­ting solu­ti­ons for tempo­rary staf­fing compa­nies. Follo­wing the merger with ERP specia­list Pivo­ton last year, this makes the zvoove Group number one in the Dutch market for digi­tiza­tion solu­ti­ons in tempo­rary staf­fing and clea­ning services.

ATS solu­ti­ons play a criti­cal role in mana­ging and auto­ma­ting the recruit­ment process. Indus­try leader Recruit­Now is a fast-growing company with over 150 clients in the tempo­rary staf­fing indus­try and is based in Amers­fo­ort, the Nether­lands. The flag­ship product “Cock­pit” is a recruit­ment soft­ware with CRM that combi­nes job boards and online campaigns in one plat­form and signi­fi­cantly auto­ma­tes and acce­le­ra­tes the recruit­ment process.

Based in Amers­fo­ort, the Nether­lands, Recruit­Now is a fast-growing company serving more than 150 clients in the staf­fing services environment.

zvoove Group is the market-leading provi­der of digi­tiza­tion solu­ti­ons for person­nel and faci­lity service provi­ders in Europe, among others. After adding ERP manage­ment specia­list Pivo­ton from the Nether­lands to the group in 2022(KWM advi­ses on the acqui­si­tion of Pivo­ton), zvoove Group beco­mes number one in the Dutch market with the acqui­si­tion of RecruitNow.

zvoove Group and KWM were also supported by local advi­sory teams in the transaction.

Advi­sors to zvoove Group GmbH: King­wood & Wood Malle­sons (KWM)


Markus Herz,
 Photo(Part­ner, Lead), Hanno Brandt (both Corporate/M&A)

About zvoove
The zvoove Group is the leading provi­der of SaaS solu­ti­ons for HR and buil­ding service provi­ders in Europe. In a dyna­mic ecosys­tem of service provi­ders, employees and compa­nies, zvoove impro­ves the world of work through end-to-end digi­ta­liza­tion for service provi­ders, more job oppor­tu­ni­ties and career pros­pects for employees and a secure work­force for compa­nies. Over 4,200 custo­mers and more than 55,000 end users alre­ady rely on zvoove. With zvoove’s solu­ti­ons, they manage 700,000 employees, 12 billion euros in annual payroll, and over one million inco­ming appli­ca­ti­ons per year. zvoove employs over 400 people at 13 loca­ti­ons in Europe.

About Recruit­Now
Recruit­Now, based in Amers­fo­ort, the Nether­lands, is the provi­der of the leading ATS solu­tion Cock­pit. Recruit­Now offers opti­miza­tion of the recrui­ting process and provi­des control, clarity and effec­ti­ve­ness. Custo­mers turn to Recruit­Now for relia­ble, best-in-class solu­ti­ons to simplify complex proces­ses. As a result of this achie­ve­ment, the company has grown to 60 employees and over 150 custo­mers in recent years.

Digital Publishing: LionsHome Acquires Franke Media

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Hamburg / Berlin / Oister­wijk — Lions­Home, toge­ther with its majo­rity share­hol­der Water­land Private Equity, is working at full speed on the further deve­lo­p­ment of a Euro­pean digi­tal publi­shing group: Follo­wing the successful inte­gra­tion of the product compa­ri­son plat­form Fashiola, Lions­Home has now acqui­red the Dutch opera­tor of deal & coupon portals Franke Media B.V..

Lions­Home GmbH from Berlin, which has been in exis­tence since 2014, has deve­lo­ped into a leading product compa­ri­son plat­form for Home & Living and is now one of the largest Euro­pean furnis­hing portals with over three million users in ten count­ries every month. In 2022, the majo­rity invest­ment by growth inves­tor Water­land marked the start of the deve­lo­p­ment of a leading Euro­pean commerce content group that will aggre­gate a wide range of digi­tal publi­shing models, e‑commerce & e‑service verti­cals, and geogra­phic markets under one roof. A first mile­stone in this stra­tegy was reached within a very short time in mid-2022 with the acqui­si­tion of Fashiola, which makes the online offe­rings of a large number of leading fashion brands compa­ra­ble for its users in more than 25 countries.

Franke Media, a leading opera­tor of deal & coupon portals, has now joined the group as its newest member, having built the most visi­ted discount websites in the Nether­lands and Belgium since its incep­tion in 2012. On Acties.nl and Deals.be, every month more than 1.5 million unique visi­tors find coupons and promo­ti­ons that come from part­ner­ships with major natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal brands such as bol.com, Amazon, ASOS, H&M, Nike and HEMA. The seller of the shares is foun­der Vince Franke, who will remain on board as CEO of Franke Media and will take a reverse stake in the Group as part of the transaction.

“At Water­land, we have always focu­sed on long-term and successful buy & build stra­te­gies, estab­li­shing tomorrow’s market leaders in exci­ting growth markets — Lions­Home is no excep­tion. The Group is ideally posi­tio­ned to become one of the leading part­ners for commerce content adver­ti­sing with broad coverage of verti­cal and geogra­phic e‑commerce markets as well as digi­tal publi­shing models. We look forward to working with Vince Franke and his team — they are very ambi­tious and excel­lently posi­tio­ned in terms of SEO exper­tise,” said Dr. Cars­ten Rahlfs, Mana­ging Part­ner at Water­land (Photo © Waterland).

“The acqui­si­tion of Franke Media marks another important step towards our vision of support­ing users across all chan­nels in their purcha­sing decis­i­ons,” added Michael Röcker, CEO of Lions­Home and the Group. “By expan­ding our Deals & Coupons capa­bi­li­ties, we will be able to offer our part­ners even more attrac­tive adver­ti­sing oppor­tu­ni­ties in the future.”

“We are very exci­ted to be working with Lions­Home and Fashiola to build a leading Euro­pean digi­tal publi­shing group. Our goals align perfectly with those of Lions­Home and Water­land,” explains Vince Franke, foun­der and CEO of Franke Media. “Thanks to this part­ner­ship, we can acce­le­rate our inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion and help even more online shop­pers in Europe save on their online purchases.”

About Lions­Home

With around 100 million users a year, product compa­ri­son website opera­tor Lions­Home is one of Europe’s leading digi­tal publi­shing houses. Lions­Home offers an inno­va­tive online service to browse furni­ture and home access­ories as well as fashion from a variety of stores at a glance and compare offers. The company was foun­ded in 2014 by Chris­toph Köni­ger and Michael Röcker in Berlin and has since become one of the fastest growing digi­tal brands in the home & living sector. Lions­Home was named a Digital100 winner by Simi­lar­Web in 2022, making it one of the top ten fastest-growing digi­tal brands in the Home & Living segment. The add-on Fashiola was acqui­red in July 2022 and expan­ded the product port­fo­lio into the fashion segment.

About Franke Media B.V.

Franke Media, based in Oister­wijk, is one of the leading compa­nies in the Dutch affi­liate marke­ting world and opera­tes Acties.nl and Deals.be, the most visi­ted discount websites in the Nether­lands and Belgium. Across all plat­forms, more than 1.5 million users a month become aware of the wide range of discount and special offers on the web pages. The team ensu­res that visi­tors always find the most inte­res­t­ing and favorable discounts and special offers, ensu­ring satis­fied custo­mers and maxi­mum results for part­ners. Part­ner­ships exist with nume­rous major natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal brands, inclu­ding bol.com, Amazon, ASOS, H&M, Nike and HEMA, among others.

About Water­land

Water­land is an inde­pen­dent private equity invest­ment firm that helps compa­nies realize their growth plans. With substan­tial finan­cial support and indus­try exper­tise, Water­land enables its port­fo­lio compa­nies to achieve acce­le­ra­ted growth both orga­ni­cally and through acqui­si­ti­ons. Water­land has offices in the Nether­lands (Bussum), Belgium (Antwerp), France (Paris), Germany (Hamburg, Munich), Poland (Warsaw), the UK (London, Manches­ter), Ireland (Dublin), Denmark (Copen­ha­gen), Norway (Oslo), Spain (Barce­lona) and Switz­er­land (Zurich). Curr­ently, appro­xi­m­ately 14 billion euros in equity funds are under management.

Water­land has consis­t­ently outper­for­med with its invest­ments since its incep­tion in 1999. The firm ranks fourth globally in the HEC/Dow Jones Private Equity Perfor­mance Rankings (Janu­ary 2023) and seventh among global private equity firms in the Preqin Consis­tent Perfor­mers in Global Private Equity & Venture Capi­tal Report 2022.
www.waterland.de

 

Investment holding Armira invests in FACTOR ELEVEN in Hamburg

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Munich/ Hamburg — Munich-based invest­ment holding Armira has bought into German start-up Factor Eleven. Its main share­hol­ders are giving up a majo­rity stake in the company. The company was foun­ded in 2014 by Alex­an­der Anhuth and is based in Hamburg. Previous main share­hol­ders and sellers of Factor Eleven are a family holding of the foun­der and CEO, Alex­an­der Anhuth, and a family holding of the entre­pre­neur and inves­tor Werner Dreesbach.

Factor Eleven says it is a leading tech­no­logy company that provi­des adver­ti­sers with a one-stop soft­ware solu­tion for their cross-chan­nel campaigns. Foun­ded in 2014 by Alex­an­der Anhuth, the company uses proprie­tary algo­rithms and deli­vers not only Brand Safety, but also metrics-based and trans­pa­rent billing. FACTOR ELEVEN is conti­nuously deve­lo­ping its own tech­no­logy stack to auto­mate and simplify the process from campaign plan­ning to billing. Campaigns can be plan­ned and booked by all adver­ti­sers in both mana­ged and self-service (soft­ware-as-a-service) mode. At the same time, the plat­form hand­les digi­tal campaigns for over one thousand compa­nies. Custo­mers and part­ners include well-known compa­nies from the corpo­rate, agency and SME sectors. The company curr­ently employs just under 100 people and is active on the Austrian and French markets in addi­tion to the German market. Other inter­na­tio­nal markets will follow.

The invest­ment holding company Armira invests prima­rily in tech­no­logy compa­nies. It offers closed-end alter­na­tive invest­ment funds that acquire equity inte­rests in medium-sized compa­nies in Germany and, where appro­priate, in Austria and Switz­er­land. The focus is on family busi­nesses and tech­no­logy. The focus is on the long-term deve­lo­p­ment of the companies.

Advi­sor Armira: Rödl & Partner

During the entire tran­sac­tion, Armira was advi­sed by a tran­sac­tion team from Rödl & Part­ner specia­li­zing in finan­cial issues. In addi­tion to conduc­ting a finan­cial due dili­gence, the team provi­ded ongo­ing advice on issues rele­vant to the purchase price in the share purchase agree­ment from the start of the project to signing. Part­ner Matthias Zahn was respon­si­ble for the over­all project manage­ment. Asso­ciate Part­ner Michal Wilc­zek was respon­si­ble for the execu­tion on this M&A deal. www.roedl.de.

Advi­sors to Armira Invest­ment Holding: White & Case (London)

Gareth Eagles (Finance), Marcus Booth (Private Equity), Dr. Matthias Kiese­wet­ter (M&A/Corporate; Hamburg), Emma Foster, Andreas Lischka (Frank­furt; both Finance), Phil­lip Vava­li­dis (Dubai), Hugo Schwarz Leite (both Private Equity), Markus Fischer (Finance; both Frank­furt), Moritz Müller-Butt­mann (M&A/Corporate; Hamburg); Asso­cia­tes: Oliver Trot­man, Jacob Heath (both Finance), Adnan Bekdur (all London), Thomas Jacques (both Private Equity), Tigran Saak­yan (both Dubai), Moritz Schnei­der, Dr. Nico Frehse, Thors­ten Eggert (all Corporate/M&A; all Hamburg)
Taxess (Frank­furt): Gerald Thomas (tax law) — known from the market

Advi­sor Factor Eleven: CMS Hasche Sigle (Munich)

Stefan-Ulrich Müller, Dr. Jessica Mohaupt-Schnei­der, Photo (© CMS) (both lead)
Dr. Jacob Siebert (all Corporate/Private Equity), Jörg Schr­ade (Tax Law), Dr. Markus Kaulartz (IT/Data Protec­tion), Stefan Lüft (IP), Dr. Bene­dikt Forsch­ner (Labor Law), Dr. André Frische­meier (Banking and Finance Law), Stefan Lehr (Anti­trust Law), Dr. Stefan Höß (Real Estate Law/Public Law), Dr. Chris­toph Küster (Corporate/Private Equity), Dr. Chris­toph Ceele (Labor Law); Asso­cia­tes: Tobias Kalski, Sebas­tian Hummel, Marie­louise Emmer, Matthias Unger, Dr. Chris­tian Seebur­ger (all Corporate/Private Equity), Eduard Kosavtsev (Tax Law), Dr. Felix Glocker, Katha­rina Hirzle (both IT/Data Protec­tion), Annika Linde­mann (IP), Sarah Schä­fer (Labor Law), Hatice Akyel (Banking and Finance Law)

 

Global Savings Group (GSG) and Pepper join forces

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Munich, Germany — Global Savings Group (GSG) and Pepper.com (Pepper) have signed an agree­ment to unite the world’s largest shop­ping commu­nity with Europe’s leading shop­ping recom­men­da­ti­ons and shop­ping rewards company. The tran­sac­tion repres­ents the largest deal in the indus­try in 2022 and crea­tes a Euro­pean cham­pion with a global presence.

Toge­ther, GSG and Pepper will form a multi­na­tio­nal tech­no­logy company that will empower shop­pers in more than 20 markets to make better purcha­sing decis­i­ons. GSG and Pepper will jointly operate the world’s largest shop­ping commu­nity, shop­ping refer­ral and rewards plat­form, connec­ting brands and retail­ers with consu­mers on more than 2 billion shop­ping trips annually.

“We are very exci­ted about this land­mark deal, which streng­thens our leading posi­tion in Europe. Toge­ther with Pepper, we will play an even more signi­fi­cant role in the daily lives of consu­mers and trans­form and shape the future of our indus­try by crea­ting a unique, impactful and even more compre­hen­sive port­fo­lio of shop­ping solu­ti­ons with tremen­dous reach and bene­fits for consu­mers, brands, retail­ers and media compa­nies. Toge­ther we will expand our trans­for­ma­tive influence and drive GSG’s growth,” says Dr. Gerhard Traut­mann, CEO of GSG.

“Our main focus has always been to provide our commu­ni­ties with the best and most compre­hen­sive shop­ping solu­ti­ons to save money. Our colla­bo­ra­tion with GSG will greatly acce­le­rate this process by enab­ling us to broa­den our offe­ring. Toge­ther, we have more than 20 years of expe­ri­ence in helping people make better buying decis­i­ons, and toge­ther we will provide even more rewar­ding shop­ping expe­ri­en­ces. Our loyal custo­mers and many more will bene­fit from our combi­ned content and tech­no­lo­gies,” comm­ents Fabian Spiel­ber­ger, CEO of Pepper.

GSG and Pepper are both market leaders in their fields and have expan­ded their shop­ping solu­ti­ons through stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons and orga­nic growth. Follo­wing the acqui­si­tion of UK loyalty specia­list Pouch in 2018, GSG acqui­red iGraal and Shoop, the leading French and German cash­back provi­ders, in 2020 and 2021 respec­tively, and most recently the Coupons.com brand and domain in the US. Pepper has always shared GSG’s goal of conso­li­da­ting the industry’s fast-growing market and has been expan­ding inter­na­tio­nally since 2014. Today, Pepper opera­tes market-leading social commerce plat­forms such as Dealabs, hotuk­de­als and myde­alz. Toge­ther, GSG and Pepper plan to deve­lop and deploy addi­tio­nal tech­no­lo­gies to build the leading plat­form for purcha­sing solu­ti­ons and services and to conti­nuously drive future growth in current and new markets and categories.

About GSG
GSG is Europe’s leading shop­ping rewards company with an inter­na­tio­nal presence in more than 20 markets. The company’s goal is to provide consu­mers with access to the best savings oppor­tu­ni­ties, cash­back, deals, product inspi­ra­tion, reviews, ther­eby enab­ling them to make opti­mal buying decis­i­ons. Foun­ded in 2012, GSG is head­quar­te­red in Munich, Germany, and employs more than 700 people in 12 offices around the world.

About Pepper
Pepper.com is the world’s largest shop­ping commu­nity. From its head­quar­ters in Berlin and offices in Guad­a­la­jara, London, Lyon and Winni­peg, Pepper Media Holding opera­tes market-leading social commerce plat­forms such as Dealabs, hotuk­de­als and myde­alz, which are used by 25 million consu­mers each month and influence 12,000 purchase decis­i­ons per minute. The company was foun­ded in 2014 by Fabian Spiel­ber­ger and Paul Nikkel.

Advi­sor Global Savings Group: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Munich
Dr. Phil­ipp Schäuble (lead, employ­ment law), Dr. Gero Burwitz (tax law), Jilali Maazouz (employ­ment law, Paris); asso­cia­tes: Fran­ziska Leub­ner (employ­ment law), Anne-Lorraine Méreaux (employ­ment law, Paris)

Rheinmetall takes over Spanish ammunition manufacturer Expal Systems

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Düsseldorf/ Frank­furt a. M. — Herbert Smith Freeh­ills advi­sed Düssel­dorf-based Rhein­me­tall AG on the conclu­sion of a purchase agree­ment with Maxam­Corp. Holding S.L., Madrid, to acquire all shares in Expal Systems S.A., a global muni­ti­ons manu­fac­tu­rer. The closing of the tran­sac­tion, which is expec­ted to take place by summer 2023, is subject to anti­trust and other regu­la­tory reviews. The agree­ment between Rhein­me­tall and Maxam­Corp. The agreed purchase price is based on an enter­prise value of EUR1.2 billion.

Herbert Smith Freeh­ills advi­sed Rhein­me­tall with an inter­na­tio­nal team led by part­ners Dr. Sönke Becker (Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf) and Alberto Fras­quet (Corporate/M&A, Madrid).

Advi­sor Rhein­me­tall: Herbert Smith Freeh­ills Düsseldorf/ Frank­furt
Dr. Sönke Becker (photo) (Lead, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Marcel Nuys (Compe­ti­tion), Dr. Marius Boewe (Regu­la­tory), Dr. Stef­fen Hoer­ner (Tax), Dr. Julius Brandt (Corporate/Capital Markets); Marjel Dema (Senior Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A); Coun­sel: Dr. Chris­tian Johnen, Lena von Richt­ho­fen (both Corporate/M&A); Dr. Florian Huer­kamp (Compe­ti­tion); Asso­cia­tes: Tatiana Guens­ter (Tax), Mirko Gleits­mann, Caro­line Wendt (both Compe­ti­tion), Kris­tin Kattwin­kel, David Rasche (both Regulatory)

Madrid: Alberto Fras­quet (Lead, Corporate/M&A), Henar Gonza­lez (Compe­ti­tion), Tomas Diaz Mielen­hau­sen (Real Estate); Coun­sel: Marta Este­ban (Corporate/M&A), Pablo Garcia Mexia (Dispu­tes), Álvaro Gross (Real Estate), Esther Lumbre­ras (Public Law); Asso­cia­tes: Amparo de Leyva, Alejan­dro Hillage, Jacobo Jimé­nez-Poyato Narváez, Carmen Muñoz, Alvaro Silva (all Corporate/M&A), Igna­cio Jimé­nez-Poyato Narváez, Pablo de Vega Tremps (both Employ­ment), Beatriz Madri­gal, Lucía Tarra­cena Figar (both Real Estate), Miguel Ángel Barroso López, Monica de Hevia, Cata­lina Hierro (all Public Law), Jose Munoz (Compe­ti­tion), Miguel Alvar­gon­za­lez, Chris­tina Diez de Rivera, Jose Maria Faz (all Finance)

New York: James Robin­son (Corporate/M&A), Joseph Falcone (Dispu­tes); Asso­cia­tes: Lina Velez (Finance, Corporate/M&A), Tyler Hendry (Employ­ment)
Milan: Fran­ce­sca Morra, Iria Calvino; Asso­ciate: Giacomo Gavotti (all Corporate/M&A)
London: Vero­nica Roberts; Asso­cia­tes: Max Kauf­man, Agos­tino Bignardi (all Regulatory)
Kuala Lumpur & Singa­pore: Glynn Cooper; Asso­cia­tes Prakash Selvam, John Ling (all Corporate/M&A)
Brussels: Kyria­kos Foun­tou­ka­kos (Compe­ti­tion)

GreenGate Partners advises COBE on the sale of its shares to Etribes Group

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Munich — Etri­bes Group GmbH acqui­res 100% of the shares in COBE GmbH.
COBE GmbH offers speci­ally deve­lo­ped, brand-speci­fic UX iden­tity methods (UXi) and thus expands the imple­men­ta­tion exper­tise of Etri­bes’ digi­tal consul­ting deut-
lich. Green­Gate Part­ners advi­sed the share­hol­ders of COBE GmbH on the sale of all ge-
busi­ness shares.

COBE GmbH is a specia­list in UI/UX design and soft­ware deve­lo­p­ment with around 90 full-time employees spread across Munich and Osijek (Croa­tia). Since its foun­ding in 2012, COBE — Crea­tors Of Beau­tiful Expe­ri­en­ces — has supported a range of corpo­rate clients from ProSiebenSat.1 and Voda­fone to Bosch, BMW and REWE in the deve­lo­p­ment of digi­tal products. In doing so, the company combi­nes a user-cente­red design approach with proprie­tary, brand-speci­fic UX iden­tity (UXi) methods.
With the inte­gra­tion of the UX/UI design and product deve­lo­p­ment agency COBE into the Etri­bes Group, Etri­bes has signi­fi­cantly streng­the­ned its imple­men­ta­tion exper­tise in the areas of UX/UI design, service design, web and mobile deve­lo­p­ment. Toge­ther, COBE and Etri­bes are even more attrac­tive for DAX corpo­ra­ti­ons and German SMEs.

As part of the tran­sac­tion, Green­Gate Part­ners advi­sed the sellers on the sale of their shares in COBE GmbH to Etri­bes Group GmbH.

Advi­sor COBE GmbH: Green­Gate Part­ners Rechts­an­walts­ge­sell­schaft mbH
Dr. Tobias Schön­haar, LL.M. (part­ner)
Marc René Spitz, LL.M. (USC) (Part­ner)
Advi­sor Etri­bes Group GmbH: honert hamburg PartG mbB
Dr. Jan-Chris­tian Heins (Part­ner) Dr. Fran­ziska Stro­bel, LL.M. (LSE)

About Green­Gate Partners
Green­Gate Part­ners is a tech­no­logy law firm with parti­cu­lar exper­tise around venture capi­tal and tran­sac­tions. From our offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers offer their clients first-class advice at eye level.
The scope of consul­ting in the venture capi­tal area is compre­hen­sive and ranges from the foun­ding to the indi­vi­dual finan­cing rounds to the exit. Clients include dome­stic and foreign venture capi­tal funds, stra­te­gic inves­tors, busi­ness angels as well as foun­ders, start-ups or managers.

Main Capital sells artegic to UNITED Marketing Technologies by DuMont

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Düssel­dorf, Germany — Main Capi­tal Part­ners has successfully comple­ted the stra­te­gic sale of arte­gic, a specia­list in marke­ting auto­ma­tion soft­ware, to marke­ting tech­no­logy provi­der UNITED Marke­ting Tech­no­lo­gies (“UNITED”), a DuMont Media Group company. The sale marks the third successful company sale by Main Capi­tal Part­ners in 2022.

The acqui­si­tion by UNITED repres­ents another successful exit for Main Capi­tal Part­ners. With this acqui­si­tion, UNITED is further expan­ding its posi­tion in the field of marke­ting tech­no­logy. artegic’s marke­ting auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons comple­ment UNITED’s current marke­ting tech­no­logy port­fo­lio, which includes a cloud-based plat­form for social media manage­ment and an omnich­an­nel content platform.

arte­gic, head­quar­te­red in Bonn, Germany, was foun­ded in 2005. Since then, arte­gic has become a leading Euro­pean provi­der of cross-chan­nel, SaaS-based marke­ting auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons and digi­tal CRM. arte­gic offers its custo­mers a strong service package for the concep­tion, imple­men­ta­tion and auto­ma­tion of indi­vi­dual marke­ting campaigns. These solu­ti­ons enable first-class digi­tal dialog marke­ting via e‑mail and mobile.

The merger will enable UNITED and arte­gic to jointly acce­le­rate their growth trajec­tory in the field of marke­ting tech­no­logy. The part­ner­ship also combi­nes DuMont’s resour­ces and expe­ri­ence in media and marke­ting with artegic’s inno­va­tive soft­ware solution.

Main Capi­tal inves­ted in arte­gic in 2016 and has since supported the company on its orga­nic growth path. The focus was the trans­for­ma­tion from a tran­sac­tion-driven busi­ness model to a highly scalable and fast-growing SaaS model. Working with Main Capi­tal, arte­gic has nearly tripled its SaaS reve­nue and increased its SaaS growth rate from a low single-digit percen­tage to over 33% in 2022/23.

Chris­tian Fried­richs, Mana­ging Direc­tor of UNITED by DuMont, commen­ted: “UNITED is taking a stra­te­gi­cally important step with the acqui­si­tion of arte­gic. We look forward to working with artegic’s manage­ment team and lever­aging our shared synergies.”

Stefan von Lieven, Mana­ging Direc­tor of arte­gic, commen­ted: “In UNITED, we have found a strong part­ner that has built up in-depth know­ledge in the field of marke­ting tech­no­logy throug­hout its corpo­rate history. As a group, we can offer our custo­mers a broa­der range of comple­men­tary solu­ti­ons in this area. We are very proud of this part­ner­ship and would like to thank Main Capi­tal Part­ners for their stra­te­gic support and exper­tise over the past years.”

Sven van Berge Henegou­wen, Part­ner at Main Capi­tal Part­ners, commen­ted: “We congra­tu­late arte­gic and UNITED on this successful part­ner­ship. The company has under­gone an impres­sive busi­ness model trans­for­ma­tion that has resul­ted in SaaS growth rates of over 33%. We believe arte­gic has found a strong part­ner in UNITED for the next phase of growth.”

UNITED Marke­ting Tech­no­lo­gies by DuMont — www.united-mt.com

UNITED Marke­ting Tech­no­lo­gies by DuMont compri­ses all of DuMont’s invest­ments, which were bund­led for the first time in 2017 in its own Marke­ting Tech­no­logy busi­ness unit. Today, the UNITED group includes the compa­nies face­lift (100 percent), censhare (100 percent), quintly (100 percent) and arte­gic (75.1 percent) — all with a focus on scalable soft­ware-as-a-service busi­ness models in the MarTech context. Curr­ently, 470 employees work at a total of seven loca­ti­ons world­wide for UNITED Marke­ting Tech­no­lo­gies, which combi­nes the advan­ta­ges of large holists and a large number of small specia­lists. The port­fo­lio and size of the UNITED compa­nies thus give DuMont a unique posi­tio­ning in the global MarTech land­scape. UNITED Marke­ting Tech­no­lo­gies is a 100 percent subsi­diary of the family-owned company DuMont.

arte­gic — www.artegic.com/de
arte­gic was foun­ded in 2005 and employs over 70 people. The company offers SaaS marke­ting auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons that enable custo­mers to deve­lop and auto­mate complex digi­tal campaigns in real time. The custo­mer base includes Payback, BMW, DHL, Ameri­can Express and a total of one third of the German DAX companies.

Main Capi­tal Partners

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a leading soft­ware inves­tor in the Bene­lux, DACH region and the Nordic count­ries. Main has nearly 20 years of expe­ri­ence in streng­thening soft­ware compa­nies and works closely with the manage­ment teams of its port­fo­lio compa­nies as a stra­te­gic part­ner to realize sustainable growth and build excel­lent soft­ware groups. Main employs over 55 people and has offices in The Hague, Stock­holm, Düssel­dorf, Antwerp and the USA (Boston). As of Octo­ber 2021, Main has over €2.2 billion in assets under manage­ment. Main has inves­ted in more than 150 soft­ware compa­nies to date. These compa­nies have crea­ted jobs for about 9000 employees.

Main Capital acquires Wanko and FleetGO for new logistics software group

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Frank­furt a.M. — Main Capi­tal Part­ners acqui­res Wanko Infor­ma­ti­ons­lo­gis­tik GmbH and FleetGO Group. The two compa­nies will be merged under the name FleetGO Group to form a new compre­hen­sive logi­stics soft­ware group. The manage­ment of both compa­nies took a mino­rity stake in the tran­sac­tion. McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed Main Capi­tal Part­ners on both tran­sac­tions. A team led by Norman Wasse and Dustin Schwerdt­fe­ger advi­sed Main Capi­tal first on the acqui­si­tion of Wanko Infor­ma­ti­ons­lo­gis­tik GmbH and subse­quently on the acqui­si­tion of FleetGO Group.

Wanko Infor­ma­ti­ons­lo­gis­tik is a logi­stics soft­ware part­ner for route plan­ning, warehouse manage­ment and tele­ma­tics, foun­ded in 1972. FleetGO provi­des modern tele­ma­tics solu­ti­ons for compa­nies. Foun­ded in 2010, the company main­ta­ins offices in Düssel­dorf and Istan­bul in addi­tion to its head­quar­ters in Hattem, the Nether­lands. Both compa­nies have a substan­tial and well-estab­lished track record as market leaders in their respec­tive sectors. They both focus on the supply chain soft­ware market in Germany and the Nether­lands respectively.

Main Capi­tal Part­ners is a stra­te­gic inves­tor focu­sed on enter­prise soft­ware in Bene­lux, DACH and Scan­di­na­via. The company mana­ges assets of around 2.2 billion euros.

The McDer­mott team led by part­ners Norman Wasse and Dustin Schwerdt­fe­ger, which is parti­cu­larly expe­ri­en­ced with soft­ware and tech tran­sac­tions, has alre­ady advi­sed Main Capi­tal on various tran­sac­tions and finan­cings, most recently on the acqui­si­tion and finan­cing of Form­So­lu­ti­ons and Data­Plan by mach­gruppe, Audimex by Swedish port­fo­lio company Blika Solu­ti­ons, and Cryptshare AG by its port­fo­lio company Point­s­harp. Just recently, the team also advi­sed on the dual tran­sac­tion to acquire Plato and IQS.

Advi­sors to Main Capi­tal Part­ners: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frankfurt
Norman Wasse, LL.M. (Lead, Corporate/M&A), Dustin Schwerdt­fe­ger (Finan­cing, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Gudrun Germa­kow­ski (Labor Law, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Johan­nes Honzen (Real Estate Law), Dr. Chris­tian L. Masch (IT/IP, Munich), Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel, Tax Law); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Marion von Grön­heim, Lisa Schick­ling (Wanko tran­sac­tion only), Isabelle Suzanne Müller (all Corporate/M&A), Lukas Deutz­mann (Labor Law, Cologne/Düsseldorf), Fran­ziska Leub­ner (Labor Law, Munich — Wanko tran­sac­tion only), Isabella Kätzl­meier (IT/IP, Munich), Hannah Henseling (Real Estate Law), Markus Hunken­schrö­der (Finan­cing, Düssel­dorf), Johanna Grei­ßel (Tax Law — FleetGO tran­sac­tion only), Feli­ci­tas Faber (Liti­ga­tion, Munich — FleetGO tran­sac­tion only), Doro­thea Zimny (Public Law, Düssel­dorf — FleetGO tran­sac­tion only)

Addi­tio­nally invol­ved in the FleetGO tran­sac­tion were: McDer­mott Will & Emery, London/Brussels
Calum Thom, Linda Zeman (both Lead, Corporate/M&A), Gary Howes (Coun­sel, Life Scien­ces), Paul McGrath (Employ­ment; all London), Hendrik Viaene (Anti­trust and Compe­ti­tion, Brussels); Asso­cia­tes: Chris Marshall, Rosie Mist, Emmy Clode (all Corporate/M&A), Char­lotte Moor­house (Employ­ment), Sanjeet Johal (Real Estate), Sarah Gabbai (Tax; all London), Hanne­lore Wiame (Anti­trust and Compe­ti­tion, Brussels)

HSA Lawy­ers: Gert-Jan van Dalen, Eva Roel­andt (Dutch law)

About McDer­mott Will & Emery

McDer­mott Will & Emery is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm with more than 1,200 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. For more infor­ma­tion, please visit: https://www.mwe.com/de/

 

Deloitte advises sale of hit label Telamo to BMG

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Berlin — On August 2, 2022, the share­hol­ders of Telamo Musik & Unter­hal­tung GmbH (“Telamo”) signed an agree­ment for the sale and assign­ment of all shares in Telamo to BMG Rights Manage­ment GmbH (“BMG”). The tran­sac­tion, which is still subject to appr­oval by the Austrian Fede­ral Compe­ti­tion Autho­rity, will create one of Germany’s largest label divi­si­ons across genres, accor­ding to the parties involved.

Telamo co-foun­der Ken Otremba says, “Since incep­tion, our goal has been to create the opti­mal and most modern condi­ti­ons for our artist:ing. We are proud and exci­ted to now offer a new chap­ter with the best set-up. Telamo conti­nues all previous part­ner­ships, now offe­ring access to more new worlds — dome­sti­cally and internationally.”

A multi­di­sci­pli­nary team of Deloitte and Deloitte Legal advi­sed the majo­rity share­hol­der of Telamo, artcom-Gesell­schaft für Kommu­ni­ka­tion mbH (“artcom”), compre­hen­si­vely in the areas of finan­cial valua­tion, in all legal (partly also tax law) issues of the tran­sac­tion and was able to provide effi­ci­ent advice from a single source through cross-divi­sio­nal cooperation.
Marko Wünsch, sole share­hol­der of artcom says: “We have been working with Deloitte in a trus­ting manner for many years. At all times, we have not only recei­ved first-class advice, but also prepa­ra­tion and support.”

About artcom

artcom is the parent company of a German group of compa­nies that includes Shop24Direct, a retailer specia­li­zing in Schlager.

About BMG

BMG, a Bertels­mann company, is the fourth largest music company in the world, the first new global player in the music busi­ness of the strea­ming age, and a record label and music publisher in one. With 19 offices in 12 core music markets, BMG repres­ents more than three million titles and recor­dings, inclu­ding many of the most renow­ned and successful artists, song­wri­ters and music catalogs.

About Telamo

Since its foun­ding in August 2012, Telamo has attrac­ted top-class estab­lished artists and disco­vered and deve­lo­ped promi­sing talents. The focus of the publi­ca­ti­ons is the Schlager/MOR in all its facets — natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal. Accor­ding to GfK-Enter­tain­ment, Munich-based Telamo was the most successful and highest-selling indie and pop label in 2021 for the fourth year in a row. Eight of the top 25 German Schlager/Deutschpop artists are under contract with Telamo. The label’s artists:inside include Giovanni Zarrella, Eloy de Jong, Mari­anne Rosen­berg, Ross Antony, Die Amigos, Thomas Anders and Florian Silber­ei­sen, Daniela Alfi­nito and Fantasy.

Advi­sor TELEAMO: Deloitte Legal
Dr. Julia Peter­sen, Photo (Lead Corpo­rate M&A, Berlin), Dr. Moritz Erkel (Corporate/ M&A, Berlin)
Deloitte: Stef­fen Säuber­lich (Lead Part­ner Finan­cial Advi­sory, Berlin), Stef­fen Meier (Finan­cial Advi­sory, Berlin), Olga Metcher (Tax, Düsseldorf)
BMG: Stefa­nie Briefs (Senior Legal Coun­sel, Labor Law), Dr. Martin Dann­hoff (SVP Corpo­rate Legal, Corpo­rate M&A), André Schley (SVP Tax Germany, Taxes), Johan­nes Borg­dorf (Direc­tor, Center of Exper­tise, Finance), all Bertels­mann SE & Co. KGaA, Gütersloh

Winfried Carli, Partner at Sherman Sterling

Hundt family and Allgaier Werke transfer majority stake to Westron Group

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Uhingen/ Munich — Shear­man & Ster­ling advi­sed Allgaier Group on finan­cing law in connec­tion with the trans­fer of a majo­rity stake to West­ron Group and a compre­hen­sive restruc­tu­ring of its finan­cial liabilities.

With this tran­sac­tion, the Hundt family of share­hol­ders and Allgaier Werke GmbH trans­fer 88.9 percent of their busi­ness shares to the West­ron Group. In connec­tion with the tran­sac­tion, the West­ron Group contri­bu­ted addi­tio­nal equity to Allgaier Werke GmbH, thus streng­thening the finan­cial stabi­lity of the Allgaier Group.

The Allgaier Group is a system supplier for the inter­na­tio­nal auto­mo­tive indus­try as well as a deve­lo­per of stan­dar­di­zed and indi­vi­dual solu­ti­ons for the process engi­nee­ring indus­try based in Uhin­gen, Baden-Würt­tem­berg. The company employs 1,700 people.

West­ron Group is an indus­trial company whose invest­ment divi­sion focu­ses on the auto­mo­tive and tech­no­logy sectors.

The team led by part­ner Winfried M. Carli last advi­sed Allgaier Group 2021 on a compre­hen­sive restructuring.

Advi­sors to Allgaier Group: Shear­man & Sterling
The Shear­man & Ster­ling team included part­ner Winfried M. Carli and asso­ciate Nils Holzg­refe (both Munich Finance).

About Shear­man & Sterling

Shear­man & Ster­ling is an inter­na­tio­nal law firm with 25 offices in 13 count­ries and appro­xi­m­ately 850 lawy­ers. In Germany, Shear­man & Ster­ling has offices in Frank­furt and Munich. The firm is one of the inter­na­tio­nal market leaders in advi­sing on complex cross-border tran­sac­tions. World­wide, Shear­man & Ster­ling prima­rily advi­ses inter­na­tio­nal corpo­ra­ti­ons and large natio­nal compa­nies, finan­cial insti­tu­ti­ons, and large mid-sized compa­nies. www.shearman.com.

AUCTUS acquires laboratory equipment specialist a1-envirosciences

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Munich — The private equity inves­tor AUCTUS has acqui­red the a1-envi­ro­sci­en­ces Group, which includes a1-envi­ro­sci­en­ces GmbH of Düssel­dorf and a1-envi­ro­sci­en­ces Ltd. of Warring­ton (UK). The seller was the British company Diploma plc. AUCTUS acqui­res a1 Group to support its contin­ued orga­nic growth by, among other things, adding new product lines and ente­ring addi­tio­nal geogra­phic areas. In addi­tion, growth is also to be acce­le­ra­ted through acqui­si­ti­ons of further labo­ra­tory supply specia­lists by way of a Europe-wide buy-and-build concept.

a1-envi­ro­sci­en­ces is a respec­ted specia­list in medi­cal test­ing and analy­sis tech­no­logy, as well as quaran­tine tech­no­logy for medi­cal labo­ra­to­ries. a1 has loca­ti­ons in Germany, Great Britain, France, Belgium and the Nether­lands. In this context, a1’s busi­ness model includes consul­ting, sales, user trai­ning and main­ten­ance of sold systems in order to provide a compre­hen­sive service.

AUCTUS is a Munich-based invest­ment company. With a fund capi­tal under manage­ment of more than EUR 800 million and curr­ently 47 plat­form compa­nies from various indus­tries, AUCTUS is one of the leading inves­tors in the German small- and mid-cap sector. The port­fo­lio curr­ently conta­ins 47 plat­form compa­nies from various indus­tries in and outside Europe.

Diploma plc is an inter­na­tio­nally active group of compa­nies with a focus on the life scien­ces, seals and controls sectors.

Advi­sors to AUCTUS Capi­tal Part­ners AG: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek:

Boris Dürr (Lead Part­ner, Corpo­rate Law / M&A), Munich
Marcel Greu­bel (Corpo­rate Law, M&A), Munich
Peter Michael Schäff­ler (Tax Law), Munich
Chris­tian Schild (Corpo­rate Law, M&A), Munich
Andreas Schruff (Corpo­rate Law, M&A), Munich
Dr. Markus Rabe (Banking & Finance), Munich
Dr. Henrik Lay (Tax Law), Hamburg
Dr. Sarah Slavik-Schulz (Tax Law), Hamburg
Sandra Pfis­ter (Banking & Finance), Hamburg
Andreas Wien­cke (Banking & Finance), Frankfurt

Advi­sor Diploma plc: Simmons & Simmons

Dr Stephan Ulrich (Lead/Client Part­ner, Corporate/M&A, Dusseldorf)
Slaven Kova­ce­vic (Lead/Counsel, Private Equity/M&A, Dusseldorf)
Sabine Krause (Super­vi­sing Asso­ciate, Private Equity/M&A, Dusseldorf)
Sam Bert­ling (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A, Dusseldorf)
Dr Bernulph von Crails­heim (Part­ner, Tax, Frankfurt)
Elmar Weinand (Coun­sel, Tax, Frankfurt)
Dr Jens Gölz (Part­ner, Finan­cial Markets, Frankfurt)
Peter Louzen­sky (Super­vi­sing Asso­ciate, Finan­cial Markets, Munich)
Dr Martin Gramsch (Coun­sel, Anti­trust, Munich)
Edward Baker (Part­ner, Private Equity/M&A UK, London)
Char­lotte Moor­house (Asso­ciate, Private Equity/M&A UK, London)

SoftBank acquires stake in IoT services provider 1NCE

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Düssel­dorf / Colo­gne — Japan’s Soft­Bank Corp. has taken a signi­fi­cant stake in Colo­gne-based IoT service provi­der 1NCE GmbH. The compa­nies simul­ta­neously signed an exclu­sive distri­bu­tion agree­ment for the Asia-Paci­fic (APAC) region. Soft­Bank will exclu­si­vely distri­bute 1NCE in 19 markets in the APAC region, inclu­ding Austra­lia, Japan, Malay­sia and Singa­pore. 1NCE will also open sales and tech­ni­cal offices in Singa­pore and Tokyo.

Soft­Bank Corp., head­quar­te­red in Tokyo, is a leading Japa­nese provi­der of tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons and infor­ma­tion tech­no­lo­gies. In fiscal 2021/2022, Soft­Bank posted sales of 5.7 tril­lion yen.

Foun­ded in 2017 by Alex­an­der P. Sator and Deut­sche Tele­kom AG, 1NCE, head­quar­te­red in Colo­gne, Germany, specia­li­zes in IoT connec­ti­vity via a flat rate and offers mobile connec­ti­vity and soft­ware services in coope­ra­tion with network opera­tors in more than 110 count­ries to date.

The Herbert Smith Freeh­ills team led by Dr. Sönke Becker recently advi­sed Soft­Bank Robo­tics Group Corp. on the sale of its French subsi­diary to United Robo­tics Group.

Advi­sors to Soft­Bank Corp.: Herbert Smith Freeh­ills, Düsseldorf
Dr. Sönke Becker (Lead), Lena von Richt­ho­fen (Coun­sel, both Corpo­rate), Dr. Marius Boewe (Regu­la­tory), Moritz Kunz (Labor Law, Frank­furt), Dr. Marcel Nuys (Anti­trust), Joseph Fisher (Corpo­rate, Tokyo); Asso­cia­tes: Marjel Dema, Dr. Niko­laus Moench, Janis Rentrop (all Corpo­rate), Kris­tin Kattwin­kel (Regu­la­tory), Dr. Simone Zieg­ler (Labor Law, Frank­furt), Juliana Penz-Evren (Anti­trust, Brussels), Naoko Adachi (Tokyo), Jarry Tay (Kuala Lumpur, both Corporate)

Oakley Capital and co-shareholders sell Contabo to KKR

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Munich — Oakley Capi­tal Fund IV and other co-share­hol­ders have sold their shares in Cont­abo to KKR. Cont­abo is a fast-growing cloud infra­struc­ture and hosting provi­der based in Munich, Germany, offe­ring simple, easy-to-use cloud services to small busi­nesses, deve­lo­pers, prosumers and gamers. With a global network of 24 data centers on four conti­nents, Cont­abo serves a diverse mix of more than 250,000 custo­mers across a wide range of indus­tries. Kirk­land & Ellis advi­sed Oakley Capi­tal Fund IV and other co-share­hol­ders on the sale of Cont­abo to KKR.

The exit will gene­rate a gross return in excess of 10x MM and over 100% IRR to Fund IV. As part of the tran­sac­tion, Oakley Capi­tal Fund V (“Fund V”) will acquire a mino­rity stake in Cont­abo along­side majo­rity inves­tor KKR, to bene­fit from the anti­ci­pa­ted future growth of the busi­ness. t

Advi­sors to Oakley Capi­tal Fund IV and other co-share­hol­ders: Kirk­land & Ellis, Munich

Dr. Benja­min Leyen­de­cker (photo), Dr. David Huth­ma­cher, Dr. Chris­toph Jerger (all lead, all Private Equity/M&A), Dr. Anna Schwan­der (Corpo­rate), Dr. Thomas S. Wilson (Anti­trust & Compe­ti­tion, Brussels); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Thomas Diek­mann, Dr. Marcus Comman­deur, Lukas Fell­höl­ter, Juliane Hubert, Dr. Tamara Zehen­t­bauer (all Private Equity/M&A)

Advi­sors to Oakley Capi­tal Fund V: Kirk­land & Ellis, London

Jacob Traff, David Higgins (both lead); Asso­ciate: Kars­ten Silber­na­gel (all Private Equity/M&A)

About Kirk­land & Ellis
With more than 3,000 lawy­ers in 19 offices world­wide, Kirk­land & Ellis is one of the leading inter­na­tio­nal commer­cial law firms. The Munich team provi­des focu­sed advice in the areas of private equity, M&A, corpo­rate, capi­tal markets, restruc­tu­ring, finan­cing and tax law.

Dr. Benjamin Ullrich YPOG

YPOG advises Consumer Edge on the acquisition of Qentnis

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Colo­gne, Germany, June 09, 2022 — Data insight company Consu­mer Edge has acqui­red Qent­nis GmbH. As a result, the two compa­nies now operate jointly in the USA and Europe, two of the world’s most important consu­mer markets.

Consu­mer Edge is a leading data analy­tics company focu­sed on the inter­na­tio­nal consu­mer market, based in New York, USA. The acqui­si­tion of the Berlin-based startup is Consu­mer Edge’s response to the growing demand for accu­rate, always-on consu­mer spen­ding data and expands its compre­hen­sive offe­ring of multi­na­tio­nal, consu­mer-focu­sed alter­na­tive data and rese­arch solu­ti­ons to the pan-Euro­pean market.

About Consu­mer Edge

Foun­ded in 2009 by CEO Bill Peco­ri­ello, Consu­mer Edge is a data analy­tics solu­ti­ons provi­der focu­sed on the global consu­mer market. They provide key play­ers in the invest­ment and busi­ness land­scape with best-in-class alter­na­tive data products and tools to enable advan­ced stra­te­gic decis­ion making. Consu­mer Edge’s suite of products, consis­ting of data feeds, templa­tes, and visua­liza­tion plat­forms, provi­des opti­mal insight into consu­mer beha­vior by linking nume­rous privacy-compli­ant data types across geogra­phies. This allows for actionable insights that are supported by the near real-time market intel­li­gence and bench­mar­king capa­bi­li­ties available at the retailer, brand and item levels. https://consumer-edge.com

About Qent­nis GmbH

Qent­nis is a German, Berlin-based data company that provi­des unique insights for insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors and corpo­ra­ti­ons. Qent­nis’ core busi­ness is the coll­ec­tion, proces­sing, allo­ca­tion and aggre­ga­tion of anony­mi­zed tran­sac­tion data. The offer is aimed at insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, the private equity sector and compa­nies that want to learn more about market and company trends in order to form and vali­date invest­ment hypo­the­ses. Qent­nis was foun­ded in 2019 by Bene­dikt Ernst and Simon Kröger with IONIQ Group as the main inves­tor. https://www.qentnis.com

Advisor:inside Consu­mer Edge: YPOG
Dr. Benja­min Ullrich, Photo (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Partner
Dr. Johan­nes Janning (Co-Lead, Tran­sac­tions), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Jona­than Görg (Tran­sac­tions), Associate
Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Anna Eick­meier (IP/IT, Data Protec­tion), Senior Associate
Stefan Rich­ter (Tax), Partner
Ann-Kris­tin Loch­mann (Tax), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Dr. Chris­toph Lütten­berg (Corpo­rate), Associate

The YPOG team worked closely with a team from Lowen­stein Sand­ler, led by Alex D. Leibo­witz, on U.S. legal matters and part­ne­red with boutique law firms Push Wahlig Work­place Law on employ­ment law matters, and KNPZ Attor­neys at Law on busi­ness law matters.

About YPOG
YPOG is a specia­list tax and commer­cial law firm opera­ting in the core areas of Corpo­rate, Funds, Liti­ga­tion, Tax, Tran­sac­tions, IP/IT, Notary Services, Banking + Finan­cial Services and FinTech + Block­chain. 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 natio­nally and inter­na­tio­nally ranked by JUVE, Best Lawy­ers, Legal 500, Focus, and Cham­bers and Part­ners. Today, YPOG employs more than 90 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. www.ypog.law as well as www.linkedin.com/company/ypog.

Exit for DPE: Telefónica Tech acquires BE-terna for up to EUR 350m.

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Madrid/ Munich — Tele­fó­nica Tech has acqui­red BE-terna, a leading Euro­pean provi­der of Micro­soft cloud solu­ti­ons for cloud-based indus­trial appli­ca­ti­ons, for up to €350 million (inclu­ding poten­tial profit sharing). The acqui­si­tion posi­ti­ons Tele­fó­nica Tech as one of the leading Euro­pean provi­ders of Micro­soft solu­ti­ons and secu­res its presence in Germany, Austria, Switz­er­land, the Adria­tic and Scan­di­na­via. — Gütt Olk Feld­haus advi­sed DPE Deut­sche Private Equity and other co-inves­tors on the sale of BE-terna Group to Tele­fó­nica Tech. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is subject to anti­trust clearance.

Tele­fó­nica Tech will acquire 100 percent of the shares of BE-terna Group from Deut­sche Private Equity and other mino­rity share­hol­ders. The tran­sac­tion is subject to a valua­tion of BE-terna at 13.7 times gross opera­ting income (EV/OIBDA), taking into account syner­gies and expec­ted 2022 results. BE-terna gene­ra­ted pro forma sales of €121 million in 2021, show­ing a year-on-year growth rate of 30 percent. The tran­sac­tion will be comple­ted in the coming weeks follo­wing clearance by the German compe­ti­tion authorities.

BE-terna was foun­ded in 2005 and has a highly quali­fied team of more than 1,000 employees at 28 loca­ti­ons, inclu­ding Germany, Austria, Switz­er­land, the Adria­tic and Scan­di­na­via. As one of the five largest cloud Micro­soft Dyna­mics part­ners in Europe, BE-terna specia­li­zes in driving digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion prima­rily based on Micro­soft solu­ti­ons, but also works with Infor, UI Path and Qlik to opti­mize busi­ness proces­ses for diffe­rent industries.

The acqui­si­tion expands Tele­fó­nica Tech’s geogra­phic reach and profes­sio­nal and mana­ged services capa­bi­li­ties across Europe and under­lines its ambi­tion to become a leading provi­der of tech­ni­cal services in Europe. The acqui­si­tion of BE-terna once again demons­tra­tes Tele­fó­nica Tech’s growth story, with reve­nues approa­ching the 1 billion euro mark at the end of 2021 and growing by 33.6 percent year-on-year.

Advi­sor to Tele­fó­nica Tech: Clif­ford Chance
Lead part­ner Stefan Bruder, photo © Clif­ford Chance (Frank­furt) and Simon Schmid (Düssel­dorf, both Corporate/M&A).

Inhouse at Tele­fó­nica, Diego Colchero Paetz (Gene­ral Coun­sel Tele­fó­nica Tech) and Miguel Basterra Marti­nez de San Vicente (Direc­tor Legal M&A Tele­fó­nica) led the tran­sac­tion team.

Legal advi­sors to DPE Deut­sche Private Equity: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Dr. Kilian Helm­reich (Part­ner, M&A/Private Equity, Lead), Isabelle Vran­cken (Senior Asso­ciate), Karl Ehren­berg (Senior Asso­ciate), Dr. Domi­nik Forst­ner (Asso­ciate, all Corporate/M&A)

About Gütt Olk Feldhaus

Gütt Olk Feld­haus is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm based in Munich. We provide compre­hen­sive advice on commer­cial and corpo­rate law. Our focus is on corpo­rate law, M&A, private equity and finan­cing. In these specia­list areas we also take on the litigation.

About Clif­ford Chance

Clif­ford Chance, one of the world’s leading law firms, is present for its clients with around 3,400 legal advi­sors in all major busi­ness centers around the world.
In Germany, Clif­ford Chance is repre­sen­ted by around 300 lawy­ers, audi­tors, tax advi­sors and soli­ci­tors in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt am Main and Munich.

ISOVOLTA AG acquires “Aerospace” from Gurit Holding

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Kassel — The globally active ISOVOLTA Group has acqui­red Gurit (Kassel) GmbH from Gurit Holding. Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek advi­sed ISOVOLTA Group on the acqui­si­tion of all shares in Gurit (Kassel) GmbH from Gurit Holding AG.

With around 1,500 employees, the globally active ISOVOLTA Group is a specia­list for elec­tri­cal insu­la­tion mate­ri­als, tech­ni­cal lami­na­tes and compo­si­tes and a part­ner for more than 20 indus­tries. One important area is avia­tion, where light­weight mate­ri­als for aircraft cabin inte­ri­ors are produ­ced in Wiener Neudorf/AT and in Harrisburg/USA. The ISOVOLTA Group has now acqui­red the “Aero­space” busi­ness unit of the Swiss listed company Gurit Holding AG, based in Kassel, Germany, with 80 employees, Gurit (Kassel) GmbH. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

The ISOVOLTA Group is part of Constan­tia Indus­tries AG and has been a leading inter­na­tio­nal manu­fac­tu­rer of elec­tri­cal insu­la­tion mate­ri­als, tech­ni­cal lami­na­tes and compo­site mate­ri­als for over 70 years. The company employs over 1,500 people at nume­rous produc­tion and sales loca­ti­ons in various count­ries (inclu­ding Austria, Europe, China, North America) on three conti­nents. ISOVOLTA products are used in more than 20 indus­tries, from elec­tro­nics and e‑mobility to aero­space and mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring. In Austria, the company employs around 370 people in Wiener Neudorf and Wern­dorf near Graz.

The subsi­dia­ries of Gurit Holding AG, Wattwil/Switzerland, (SIX Swiss Exch­ange: GUR) specia­lize in the deve­lo­p­ment and manu­fac­ture of advan­ced compo­si­tes, compo­si­tes manu­fac­tu­ring equip­ment and core kitting services. The product range includes struc­tu­ral core mate­ri­als, fiber-rein­forced prepregs, formu­la­ted products such as adhe­si­ves, resins, and struc­tu­ral compo­site tech­no­logy. Gurit supplies global growth markets such as the wind turbine indus­try, aero­space, marine, rail and many more. Gurit opera­tes manu­fac­tu­ring faci­li­ties and offices in Austra­lia, Canada, China, Denmark, Ecua­dor, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Switz­er­land, Turkey, the United King­dom and the United States.

Legal advi­sors to ISOVOLTA AG: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek:
Dr. Mathias Schrö­der, LL.M.,
Fabian Becker, LL.M.,
Peter M. Schäff­ler (all corpo­rate law, M&A), all Munich
Kers­tin Deiters, LL.M., EMBA,
Prof. Dr. Martin Reufels (both Labor Law), both Cologne
Dr. Thomas Jansen (IP/IT and Data Protection),
Bettina Nehe­i­der (Public Law),
Dr. Leonie Schwarz­meier, LL.M. (Tenancy Law),
Dr. Ruth Schnei­der (Compe­ti­tion and Distri­bu­tion Law), all Munich
Bodo Dehne (Foreign Trade Law), Düsseldorf

Proventis supports sale of German tsd to Spanish SeproTec

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Munich — Sepro­Tec Multi­l­in­gual Solu­ti­ons has acqui­red 100% of the shares in tsd Tech­nik-Spra­chen­dienst GmbH from Dina Frei­bott (photo), who has deve­lo­ped the company over the past 30 years into one of the world’s 30 leading language service provi­ders based in Germany. Domi­ni­que Puls and Stefan Puls as tsd manage­ment team will keep their roles in the company as mana­ging direc­tors and will be part of the future setup of SeproTec.

Proven­tis Part­ners exclu­si­vely advi­sed tsd Tech­nik-Spra­chen­dienst GmbH, Cologne/Germany, on the sale to Sepro­Tec Multi­l­in­gual Solu­ti­ons, Madrid/Spain.

McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed the share­hol­der of tsd Tech­nik-Spra­chen­dienst GmbH on the sale of the company to Sepro­Tec Multi­l­in­gual Solu­ti­ons of Spain.

The role of Proven­tis Partners

Proven­tis Part­ners acted as exclu­sive M&A advi­sor to the share­hol­der, Dina Frei­bott (photo) and her manage­ment team, consis­ting of Domi­ni­que and Stefan Puls, on the sale of tsd. The consul­ting services included the selec­tion of poten­tial buyers, discus­sions and nego­tia­ti­ons with the buyer, the coor­di­na­tion of the due dili­gence as well as the struc­tu­ring and nego­tia­tion of the econo­mic terms of the execu­ted share deal. The tran­sac­tion team of Proven­tis Part­ners consis­ted of Rainer Wieser (Part­ner, Munich), and Andreas König (Direc­tor, Munich).

The LSP market

Accor­ding to an analy­sis of the LSP market conduc­ted by Proven­tis Part­ners, the indus­try is facing a surge in supply as consu­mer demand for faster, more acces­si­ble media and other types of loca­liza­tion services increa­ses. There are six tech­no­logy trends: machine trans­la­tion (MT), auto­ma­ted work­flows (AW), auto­ma­ted quality assu­rance (AQA), trans­la­tion memory ™, trans­la­tion manage­ment systems (TMS), and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI)-based systems. There are two main reasons for this: decre­asing profit margins and the need for faster turn­around of trans­la­tion projects. Tech­no­logy enables a variety of tools and services that can increase opera­tio­nal effi­ci­en­cies to coun­ter­act the conti­nual price erosion in the market­place, largely due to the proli­fe­ra­tion of strea­ming services and the incre­asing volume and speed at which audio, visual and textual content is consu­med in multi­ple languages around the globe.

Tran­sac­tion analy­ses of the last three years unders­core these trends: In 71 mergers and acqui­si­ti­ons and private place­ments, the total volume of language tech­no­logy tran­sac­tions amoun­ted to EUR 1.2 billion. Cross-border acti­vity in the sector remains strong, with 41% inter­na­tio­nal invest­ment from 24 buyer nati­ons in 22 target count­ries. Most tran­sac­tions were made in the USA, China, Japan and Israel. Nearly two-thirds of all tran­sac­tions in the language tech­no­logy sector are private place­ments, with the rema­in­der being mergers and acqui­si­ti­ons, ranging from the largest deals of around EUR 800 million to smal­ler invest­ment rounds of EUR 10,000.

About Sepro­Tec

Sepro­Tec Multi­l­in­gual Solu­ti­ons is a multi­l­in­gual service provi­der ranked among the top 30 language service provi­ders in the world. Sepro­Tec, foun­ded in 1989, is one of the world’s largest provi­ders of trans­la­tion and inter­pre­ting services and has been part of the port­fo­lio of Spanish private equity inves­tor Nazca Capi­tal since fall 2021. The acqui­si­tion of TSD marks the company’s entry into the German market.

About tsd
Foun­ded in 1978 and head­quar­te­red in Colo­gne, Germany, tsd Tech­nik-Spra­chen­dienst GmbH has been successfully opera­ting in the trans­la­tion and loca­liza­tion indus­try for over 45 years. With perso­nal and compre­hen­sive services, tsd has become an estab­lished and expe­ri­en­ced provi­der of a wide range of language services in Germany and worldwide.

tsd pursues a holi­stic service approach that goes beyond the stan­dards of a clas­sic trans­la­tion agency. The company’s core compe­ten­cies are multi­l­in­gual projects: Trans­la­tion, review, vali­da­tion, termi­no­logy, MT solu­ti­ons, post-editing, tran­screa­tion, language consul­ting. Inno­va­tive and effi­ci­ent proces­ses in areas such as quality assu­rance (DIN ISO 900, ISO 17100 and ISO 18587, ISO 27001) and tech­no­logy charac­te­rize the working methods of tsd. In parti­cu­lar, the in-house team of lingu­ists enables tsd to cover complex custo­mer requests, respond quickly and flexi­bly, and provide high quality services. A close and trans­pa­rent custo­mer rela­ti­onship, coupled with custo­mi­zed, effi­ci­ent proces­ses, is part of tsd’s self-image. www.tsd-int.com

Advi­sor to the share­hol­der of tsd Diana Frei­bott: McDer­mott Will & Emery 
Dr. Niko­laus von Jacobs (Corporate/M&A, lead), Nina Siewert, Marcus Fischer (Coun­sel; both Tax Law, both Frank­furt), Dr. Phil­ipp Schäuble (Labor Law); Asso­cia­tes: Matthias Wein­gut, Dr. Robert Feind, LL.M., Dr. Fabian Appa­doo, Sebas­tian Gerst­ner (all Corporate/M&A)

About Proven­tis Partners

Proven­tis Part­ners is a part­ner-led M&A advi­sory firm whose clients include a majo­rity of mid-sized family busi­nesses, corpo­rate subsi­dia­ries and private equity funds. With more than 30 M&A advi­sors, Proven­tis Part­ners is one of the largest inde­pen­dent M&A consul­tancies in the German-spea­king region and looks back on more than 20 years of M&A expe­ri­ence and well over 300 comple­ted tran­sac­tions. The M&A consul­tants with offices in Düssel­dorf, Hamburg, Munich and Zurich are active in the sectors Indus­tri­als & Chemi­cals, Busi­ness Services, Consu­mer & Retail, TMT, Health­Care and Energy & Sustaina­bi­lity. Exclu­sive member­ship in Mergers Alli­ance — an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner­ship of leading M&A specia­lists — enables Proven­tis Part­ners to assist clients in 30 count­ries in key markets world­wide. The members of the Mergers Alli­ance, with its more than 200 M&A profes­sio­nals, provide Proven­tis Part­ners and thus its clients with unique access to local markets in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia and Africa.

Stock market debut for About You: Otto Group subsidiary valued at € 3.9 billion

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Hamburg/ Frank­furt a. M. — About You cele­bra­tes its debut on the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange today, Wednes­day, June 16. The offer price for the private place­ment is set at 23.00 euros per share. CEO Tarek Müller holds a share of 4.3 percent, Sebas­tian Betz 3.7 percent and Hannes Wiese 2.7 percent.

The offer price for the private place­ment is 23.00 euros per share. The Otto Group subsi­diary is thus valued at 3.9 billion euros.

Accor­ding to Textil­wirt­schaft, the foun­ders hold the follo­wing shares: Tarek Müller has a share of 4.3 percent, Sebas­tian Betz 3.7 percent. Hannes Wiese has 2.7 percent. Howe­ver, the trio intends to sell just under 3.3 million shares, which will bring them a total of 76 million euros. After the private place­ment, Müller, Betz and Wiese will have stakes of 3.0 percent, 2.6 percent and 1.7 percent respectively.

Net, 627 million euros remain. — In addi­tion, from the holdings of the exis­ting owners GFH (Gesell­schaft für Handels­be­tei­li­gun­gen mbH), Seven­Ven­tures GmbH, GMPVC German Media Pool GmbH and Fashion Media Pool GmbH, up to 4.8 million ordi­nary bearer shares will be gran­ted as an option to cover over-allot­ments (green­shoe option).

The IPO will gene­rate gross proceeds of 657 million euros for About You. Net, 627 million euros remain. The company plans to spend 150 million euros on inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion, 115 million euros on tech­no­lo­gi­cal infra­struc­ture and 50 million euros on the further deve­lo­p­ment of its B2B tech­no­logy divi­sion. 80 million euros is to be used to repay share­hol­der loans. About You is also conside­ring acqui­si­ti­ons. 80 million euros is reco­gni­zed as a reserve for M&A transactions.

Tarek Müller, Co-Foun­der and Board Member Marke­ting & Brand: “Today is a great day for About You. Toge­ther with some of the world’s most renow­ned brands and compa­nies, we are now part of the exch­ange family. Today we cele­brate the successful listing of About You, but our focus is alre­ady fully on the future.”

In addi­tion to Deut­sche Bank, Gold­man Sachs and JPMor­gan , Numis Secu­ri­ties, Société Géné­rale and UBS also supported the IPO.

Sales development

Benko’s SIGNA Sports United merges with US SPAC Yucaipa Acquisition Corporation

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Frank­furt a.M. — McDer­mott Will & Emery advi­sed SIGNA Sports United GmbH (SSU) in connec­tion with its merger with Yucaipa Acqui­si­tion Corpo­ra­tion (YAC), a publicly traded special purpose acqui­si­tion company (SPAC). The merger also includes the acqui­si­tion of the British online bicy­cle retailer Wiggle/CRC Group.

In the course of this so-called De-SPAC tran­sac­tion, the group struc­ture of SSU will be funda­men­tally chan­ged. Upon comple­tion of the tran­sac­tion, SSU’s shares will be traded on the NYSE; SSU, as well as the publicly traded TopCo, will have their corpo­rate head­quar­ters in Berlin.

A McDer­mott team led by Dr. Kian Kauser and Sebas­tian Bonk advi­sed SIGNA Sports United GmbH and its majo­rity share­hol­der SIGNA Inter­na­tio­nal Sports Holding GmbH on the corpo­rate and tax struc­tu­ring of the group as well as on the acqui­si­tion of Wiggle/CRC Group.

The tran­sac­tion unders­cores McDer­mott Will & Emery’s strong posi­tion in provi­ding corpo­rate and tax advice on complex cross-border transactions.

Advi­sors to SIGNA Sports United GmbH and SIGNA Inter­na­tio­nal Sports Holding GmbH: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Düsseldorf/Frankfurt
Dr. Kian Tauser (Tax Law, Frank­furt), Sebas­tian Bonk (Asso­ciate, Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf; both Lead), Dr. Matthias Kamp­s­hoff, Dr. Phil­ipp Gren­ze­bach (both Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Heiko Kermer (Tax Law, Frank­furt), Elea­nor West (Corporate/M&A, London), Dr. Jan Hückel (Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf; both for take­over Wiggle/CRC Group), Chris­tian Krohs (Anti­trust, Düssel­dorf); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Florian Schie­fer (Tax, Frank­furt), Sebas­tian Klein (Corporate/M&A, Düssel­dorf), Daniel Ross (Corporate/M&A, London), Carina Kant (Anti­trust, Düsseldorf)

Dr. Kai Kerger, Partner at Bird & Bir

Bird & Bird advises Investec on investment in Capitalmind Int.

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

London — Bird & Bird LLP has advi­sed Inves­tec Bank plc (“Inves­tec”) on its stra­te­gic mino­rity invest­ment in three Capi­tal­mind Inter­na­tio­nal (“Capi­tal­mind”) compa­nies in France, Germany and the Nether­lands. The tran­sac­tion expands the rela­ti­onship between Inves­tec and Capi­tal­mind and repres­ents an acce­le­ra­tion of both firms’ consul­ting strategies.

Investec’s parent company, Inves­tec plc, is listed on the two stock exch­an­ges in London and Johan­nes­burg. Investec’s banking busi­ness works with growth compa­nies, insti­tu­ti­ons and private equity funds, advi­sing clients on capi­tal and treasury risk management.

Focus on medium-sized transactions
Medium-sized tran­sac­tions (€20 — €250 million) in the form of group spin-offs, succes­sion solu­ti­ons, share­hol­der buy-outs, acqui­si­ti­ons and finan­cing are now taking place in an inter­na­tio­nal envi­ron­ment. While large corpo­ra­ti­ons have access to a wide range of profes­sio­nal consul­ting and finan­cing services via inter­na­tio­nal banks and brokers with their specia­li­zed depart­ments, the services for medium-sized tran­sac­tions are still quite regio­nally struc­tu­red, very frag­men­ted and confusing.

Capi­tal­mind is a leading Euro­pean finan­cial advi­sory firm working with family busi­nesses, entre­pre­neurs, private equity houses and corpo­ra­ti­ons. Investec’s invest­ment in mino­rity stakes in each of the three compa­nies provi­des Capi­tal­mind with a link to the UK, Ireland, Asia and Africa, while Capi­tal­mind links Investec’s consul­ting busi­ness to most of Western Europe, inclu­ding Germany, France, Bene­lux, Scan­di­na­via and Switzerland.

The follo­wing Bird & Bird attor­neys, toge­ther with Investec’s in-house team in London, advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion in four jurisdictions:

The inter­na­tio­nal corpo­rate team was led by part­ner Clive Hope­well, who was supported by senior asso­ciate Richard Bloom­field and asso­ciate Char­lotte Hart (all corpo­rate, London). The French invest­ment was led by part­ner Gildas Louvel, who was supported by asso­ciate Pierre Lagresle (both Corpo­rate, Paris). The German invest­ment was made by part­ner Dr. Kai Kerger (photo), who was supported by asso­ciate Johanna Schind­ler (both Corpo­rate, Frank­furt), and the invest­ment in the Nether­lands was led by part­ner Michiel Wurf­bain, who was supported by part­ner and notary René Rieter and asso­cia­tes Nikita Gomme­ren and Musa Dinc (all Corpo­rate, The Hague).

Charles Barlow, who heads Investec’s cross-border corpo­rate finance busi­ness, said, “Bird & Bird under­stands what this tran­sac­tion means to us stra­te­gi­cally, and we are plea­sed to have them on board with their pan-Euro­pean office network to support the deve­lo­p­ment of our rela­ti­onship with Capitalmind.”

Clive Hope­well added: “We are deligh­ted to have been able to successfully assist Inves­tec in comple­ting this important stra­te­gic invest­ment in Euro­pean M&A advi­sory services. We wish the teams at Inves­tec and Capi­tal­mind every success in deve­lo­ping this exci­ting new plat­form for M&A advi­sory services across much of Western Europe, parti­cu­larly at a time when demand is expec­ted to be signi­fi­cant post-pandemic.”

DBAG portfolio companies vitronet and DING merge

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Frank­furt am Main — vitro­net GmbH (“vitro­net”) and Deut­sche Infra­struk­tur und Netz­ge­sell­schaft mbH (“DING”), two invest­ments from the port­fo­lio of the private equity fund DBAG ECF mana­ged by Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG), are merging and will in future operate as the vitro­net Group in the fiber optic and energy infra­struc­ture market. The merger now agreed will create a group whose pro forma sales in 2020 amoun­ted to around 340 million euros and which now employs around 2,300 people at more than 30 loca­ti­ons in Germany.

In the fast-growing market for the expan­sion of fiber-optic and energy infra­struc­ture, a provi­der is emer­ging with broad regio­nal coverage and a range of services that covers all the main value-adding steps, from plan­ning and cons­truc­tion of the faci­li­ties to opera­tion and service. The vitro­net Group conti­nues to see good oppor­tu­ni­ties to actively drive forward the conso­li­da­tion of this frag­men­ted market.

In 2017, Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) initi­ally struc­tu­red the manage­ment buy-out (MBO) of vitro­net GmbH along­side DBAG ECF. This was follo­wed in 2019 by the MBO of the STG Brauns­berg Group, which has since been opera­ting under the name Deut­sche Infra­struk­tur und Netz­ge­sell­schaft mbH. In the year of acqui­si­tion, vitro­net gene­ra­ted sales of 42 million euros, DING 18 million euros. In recent years, both compa­nies have grown stron­gly; 15 corpo­rate acqui­si­ti­ons to date have contri­bu­ted to this to a considera­ble extent. The Group’s pro forma sales have thus increased almost six-fold.

Since the start of the invest­ment, DBAG and DBAG ECF have inves­ted 49 million euros in the two compa­nies, of which DBAG accounts for 22 million euros. DBAG will hold a stake of around 39 percent in the newly formed vitro­net Group, while DBAG ECF will hold 46 percent; most of the remai­ning shares will be held by the Group’s manage­ment. The tran­sac­tion will have no further impact on the valua­tion of the invest­ments in DBAG’s balance sheet. Howe­ver, as of the most recent report­ing date of March 31, 2021, the value of the latest company acqui­si­ti­ons has been increased; these have also alre­ady been included in the fore­cast for fiscal 2020/2021, which was raised on March 26, 2021.

vitro­net, based in Essen, Germany, has so far focu­sed on acting as a gene­ral contrac­tor for fiber-optic projects. In recent years, various specia­list compa­nies along the value chain have been acqui­red and inte­gra­ted. vitro­net has thus deve­lo­ped into one of Germany’s leading end-to-end part­ners in what is known as FttH expan­sion (FttH: fiber to the home), meaning that it can offer all the essen­tial process steps for this expan­sion. DING, based in Bochum, has so far stood for effi­ci­ent infra­struc­ture expan­sion in the areas of tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons (fiber optics, FttH, mobile commu­ni­ca­ti­ons), energy (district heating, elec­tri­city, eMobi­lity) and utili­ties (gas, water, pipe­line) in Germany.

High market demand meets tight capacity

The Group is bene­fiting from the dyna­mic growth in demand for high-perfor­mance Inter­net connec­tions. This is trig­ge­ring strong demand for network expan­sion services, which is being met by a shortage of corre­spon­ding capa­city in the market. To date, around 70 percent of reve­nue has been gene­ra­ted by the fiber-optic infra­struc­ture busi­ness. The Group’s services range from project plan­ning for new networks and their cons­truc­tion to the opera­tion and servicing of fiber-optic networks. The service share in parti­cu­lar is to grow. Busi­ness in the energy and utili­ties market, which has so far accoun­ted for around 30 percent of sales, is set to bene­fit from the energy tran­si­tion, among other things: To enable eMobi­lity on a large scale, for exam­ple, the infra­struc­ture will have to be trans­for­med. The Group sees itself as one of the leading service provi­ders for infra­struc­ture expan­sion in Germany.

In 2013, DBAG began inves­t­ing in compa­nies that expand or operate fiber-optic networks. The first two invest­ments (inexio and DNS:Net) were sold in 2019 and March 2021. In addi­tion to vitro­net and DING, DBAG, toge­ther with DBAG ECF and DBAG Fund VIII, holds invest­ments in three other compa­nies in the sector (netz­kon­tor nord, BTV and Deut­sche Giga Access).

Larger projects of tele­phone compa­nies, utili­ties and public utilities

“We have inves­ted in a growing market in which, howe­ver, speed in the further deve­lo­p­ment of the compa­nies is decisive for invest­ment success,” expres­sed Tors­ten Grede, Spokes­man of the Manage­ment Board of DBAG on the occa­sion of the tran­sac­tion with regard to the 15 company acqui­si­ti­ons. “We will also support the newly formed group to conti­nue to watch inor­ga­ni­cally.” This invol­ves, for exam­ple, closing exis­ting gaps in the regio­nal offering.

“Our custo­mers are incre­asingly looking for provi­ders who can inde­pendently handle ever-larger projects throug­hout Germany,” says Marc Lützen­kir­chen, Chair­man of vitronet’s Manage­ment Board. “We can now fulfill this claim even better with the syner­gies of the Group and the deca­des of expe­ri­ence of our subsi­dia­ries.” Last but not least, the new size of the Group will also improve its access to the capi­tal market and thus the finan­cing opti­ons for further corpo­rate acquisitions.

About DBAG

DBAG has made six plat­form invest­ments rela­ted to broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons expan­sion in Germany since 2013. — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, a listed company, initia­tes closed-end private equity funds and invests — predo­mi­nantly along­side DBAG funds — in well-posi­tio­ned medium-sized compa­nies with poten­tial. One focus for many years has been indus­try. An incre­asing propor­tion of equity invest­ments are in compa­nies in the growth sectors of broad­band tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, IT services/software and health­care. The long-term, value-enhan­cing entre­pre­neu­rial invest­ment approach makes DBAG a sought-after invest­ment part­ner in the German-spea­king region. Assets mana­ged or advi­sed by the DBAG Group amount to €2.5 billion.

Simon white

McDermott advises Paragon portfolio company APONTIS PHARMA AG on IPO

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Frank­furt a.M. — McDer­mott Will & Emery, as tran­sac­tion coun­sel, advi­ses the issuer APONTIS PHARMA AG, its main share­hol­der, the invest­ment company Para­gon Part­ners, as well as the joint book­run­ners Hauck & Aufhäu­ser and M.M.Warburg on the IPO at the Frank­furt Stock Exchange.

The place­ment price for the IPO was set at 19.00 euros per share. The place­ment volume totals 101 million euros. A total of 5,290,000 shares were placed with inves­tors as part of the IPO, which also included a U.S. tran­che in accordance with Rule 144A of the U.S. Secu­ri­ties Act. The place­ment includes 2,000,000 new shares from a cash capi­tal increase as well as 1,600,000 exis­ting shares in connec­tion with a base deal, 1,000,000 exis­ting shares in connec­tion with a top-up option and 690,000 exis­ting shares in connec­tion with an over-allot­ment option from the holdings of the main share­hol­der Para­gon Part­ners. The first day of trading on the Frank­furt Stock Exch­ange is sche­du­led for May 11, 2021. The exis­ting share­hol­ders Para­gon Part­ners and the manage­ment of APONTIS PHARMA will remain share­hol­ders in the company after the place­ment with a stake of 31% and 7%, respectively.

APONTIS PHARMA AG is a leading phar­maceu­ti­cal company for single pills in the German market. The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the issu­ance of the new shares prima­rily for selec­ted invest­ments in the deve­lo­p­ment of new single pills, acce­le­ra­ting the deve­lo­p­ment and licen­sing of the exis­ting near-term product pipe­line, and expan­ding marke­ting and sales acti­vi­ties to capture addi­tio­nal market share and product acquisitions.

McDer­mott provi­ded compre­hen­sive capi­tal markets legal advice to all parties invol­ved. The McDer­mott team was also respon­si­ble for the corpo­rate struc­tu­ring in the run-up to the IPO.

Advi­sors APONTIS, Para­gon Part­ners and banks Hauck & Aufhäu­ser and M.M.Warburg:
McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frank­furt a.M./Düsseldorf
Capi­tal Markets/IPO Work­stream: Simon Weiß (Project Coor­di­na­tion; Capi­tal Markets), Joseph W. Marx (US Capi­tal Markets; joint lead), Gregory M. Weig­and (Miami), Edwin C. Lauren­son (Coun­sel, San Fran­cisco; both US Law), Dr. Deniz Tschamm­ler (Munich), Dr. Monika Rich­ter (both Coun­sel, both Life Scien­ces); Asso­cia­tes: Dr. Marion von Grön­heim, Isabelle Suzanne Müller, Chris­toph Schä­fer, Ardalan Zargari (Staff Attor­ney); Corpo­rate Work­stream: Dr. Phil­ipp Gren­ze­bach (Lead), Dr. Thomas Gennert (both Corpo­rate, both Düssel­dorf); Asso­ciate: Tom Schäfer

Audibene plans IPO on Nasdaq under hear.com brand

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Berlin — With its plan­ned IPO, hear.com, the online hearing aid provi­der known in Germany as audi­bene, has finally joined the top league of inter­na­tio­nal TOP online start­ups. On April 19, the regis­tra­tion was submit­ted to the SEC (U.S. Secu­ri­ties and Exch­ange Commis­sion). Hear.com’s “HCG” paper is thus to be traded on Nasdaq.

Audi­bene is taking a small detour, which is not unusual for German compa­nies: The Dutch company and the simul­ta­neous brand hear.com N.V. submit­ted the docu­ments because of the more favorable condi­ti­ons under stock exch­ange law for an IPO in the USA.

From startup to listed company

Berlin, Mainz, Miami, Denver, Toronto, Utrecht, Seoul, Gura­gon (India) and Kuala Lumpur: it is impres­sive what has become of the former startup foun­ded in the capi­tal in 2012 that wanted to “shake up the hearing aid market”.

Now, almost 10 years later, the success story is to be crow­ned by an IPO. Among the first inves­tors are none other than Morgen Stan­ley, J.P. Morgan, Deut­sche Bank and Gold­man Sachs. The former two are acting as Lead Book-Running Mana­gers for the propo­sed offe­ring and as repre­sen­ta­ti­ves of all signa­to­ries to the propo­sed offering.

Hear.com facts and figures

World­wide, hear.com had nearly 5,200 part­ner compa­nies as of the report­ing date of Sept. 30, 2020, inclu­ding 1,000 in Germany. 106,000 hearing aids were sold world­wide and exclu­ding returns at an average price of €1,426 per hearing aid. — This results in sales of 151 million euros (+26% compared to 2019 120 mill. euros). Over­all, the company gene­ra­ted a loss of €23.1 million (2019: €17.34 million). More than 1,500 employees work for hear.com, inclu­ding almost 200 techs.

Deve­lo­p­ment
Online hearing aid retailer Audi­bene was sold to hearing aid manu­fac­tu­rer Sivan­tos in 2015. The two foun­ders Paul Crusius and Marco Vietor remained on board as mana­ging direc­tors. As part of the tran­sac­tion, both foun­ders, who previously held a majo­rity stake in Audi­bene, will receive shares in Sivan­tos Group.

Venture capi­ta­lists Acton Capi­tal Part­ners and Sunstone Capi­tal, as well as an unknown number of busi­ness angels such as entre­pre­neur Stephan Schu­bert, had all sold their stakes in Sivan­tos. Berlin scene heads such as Project-A-Ventures CEO Florian Heine­mann, Edar­ling foun­ders Lukas Bros­se­der and David Khalil, as well as Zalando’s former head of marke­ting, Oliver Roskopf, were also inves­ted in the startup.

Invest­ments for more growth and independence

The company aims to raise $100 million through the IPO. Among other things, this will be used to repay share­hol­der loans to WS Audio­logy that fall due between 2021 and 2023. In addi­tion, a plan­ned restruc­tu­ring is to be put on a stable footing, and the rema­in­der is to be used for gene­ral corpo­rate purpo­ses, inclu­ding finan­cing further growth and imple­men­ting the busi­ness stra­tegy. Further acqui­si­ti­ons are also being considered.

The speci­fic areas in which further invest­ments are to be made remain open. But this is of course where the months after the IPO will be parti­cu­larly exci­ting. For inves­tors, howe­ver, the success story of the model itself and the expec­ted global increase in demand and the resul­ting growth fore­casts in gene­ral should be reason enough for an invest­ment. Whether they then jump into the topics of multich­an­nel sales (online and tradi­tio­nal retail), tech­no­logy (online hearing tests, consu­mer jour­ney) or remote fitting will certainly be some­thing to read about.

VDS traffic engineering flash device

FGvW advises on the sale of VDS Verkehrstechnik to Quarterhill

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Toronto, Frank­furt, Löbau — Cana­dian intel­li­gent trans­por­ta­tion systems provi­der Quar­terhill Inc. through its wholly owned subsi­diary Inter­na­tio­nal Road Dyna­mics Inc. (“IRD”) acqui­red all shares in VDS Verkehrs­tech­nik GmbH, a German-based provi­der of high-precis­ion traf­fic moni­to­ring equipment.

VDS, based in Löbau, Germany, deve­lops, manu­fac­tures and distri­bu­tes statio­nary and mobile traf­fic moni­to­ring devices that measure vehicle speed and record red light viola­ti­ons. VDS’s devices are curr­ently the only radar-based products certi­fied under the new regu­la­ti­ons in Germany, allo­wing direct track­ing of traf­fic viola­ti­ons. VDS has a produc­tion faci­lity and two service centers in Germany and will be inte­gra­ted into Sensor Line GmbH, which was acqui­red by Quarterhill/IRD in Janu­ary 2021. Sensor Line is one of the largest suppli­ers of VDS for opto­elec­tro­nic sensors (www.vds-verkehrstechnik.de).

Quar­terhill is a growth-orien­ted company in “Intel­li­gent Trans­por­ta­tion Systems” and a leader in intellec­tual property licen­sing (for more infor­ma­tion: www.quarterhill.com). IRD is a dyna­mic ITS tech­no­logy company enga­ged in the deve­lo­p­ment of key compon­ents and advan­ced systems for the next gene­ra­tion of trans­por­ta­tion networks (for more infor­ma­tion: www.irdinc.com).

In the tran­sac­tion, the share­hol­der and the mana­ging direc­tor of VDS were compre­hen­si­vely legally advi­sed by an M&A team of the commer­cial law firm Fried­rich Graf von West­pha­len & Part­ner (FGvW) in Frei­burg and Frank­furt under the leader­ship of part­ner Dr. Hendrik Thies. The share­hol­der was exten­si­vely advi­sed in the area of commer­cial, stra­te­gic and orga­niza­tio­nal M&A tran­sac­tion advice by MNI Part­ners LLC under the leader­ship of part­ner Domi­nik Lutz. FGvW regu­larly carries out complex, often inter­na­tio­nal M&A projects toge­ther with MNI Partners.

Advi­sor Quar­terhill: Norton Rose Fulbright
Paul Amirault (Part­ner, Corpo­rate, Ottawa), Nils Rahlf (Part­ner), Dr. Ariane Theis­sen (Asso­ciate) and Andre Hart­mann (Asso­ciate) (Corpo­rate, Frank­furt); Clau­dia Poslu­schny (Coun­sel), Micha­els Zenkert (Asso­ciate); Olivia Reinke (Asso­ciate) (Employ­ment, Munich); Michael Mehler (Coun­sel), Daniela Kowalsky (Senior Asso­ciate) (Real Estate, Frank­furt); Tino Duttiné (Part­ner), Sarah Heufel­der (Asso­ciate) (Tax, Frank­furt); Tiffany Zilliox (Senior Asso­ciate, Intellec­tual Property, Munich).

Advi­sor to share­hol­der and mana­ging direc­tor VDS Verkehrs­tech­nik GmbH: Fried­rich Graf von West­pha­len & Part­ner, Frei­burg and Frankfurt
Dr. Hendrik Thies (Lead Part­ner, Corpo­rate Law, M&A)
Dr. Till Bött­cher (Real Estate Law)
Annette Rölz (Labor Law)

MNI Part­ners LLC
Domi­nik Lutz, Part­ner (Lead Part­ner, M&A Tran­sac­tion Advisory)

About MNI Part­ners: MNIP is a specia­li­zed boutique M&A stra­tegy and tran­sac­tion advi­sory firm in the U.S., Germany and India with a focus on smal­ler and mid-sized tran­sac­tions that are hand-picked, often cross-cultu­ral and below the radar of typi­cal market parti­ci­pants and invest­ment banks. MNIP’s clients, prima­rily on the sell side, are profi­ta­ble compa­nies owned by fami­lies and foun­ders or smal­ler corpo­rate spin-offs with $3 — $30 million in annual revenues.

About Fried­rich Graf von West­pha­len & Partner
Fried­rich Graf von West­pha­len & Part­ner is one of the leading inde­pen­dent German commer­cial law firms. The firm’s appro­xi­m­ately 100 lawy­ers, 35 of whom are part­ners, advise compa­nies world­wide from offices in Colo­gne, Frei­burg, Berlin, Frank­furt am Main, Alicante and Brussels. In total, the firm has around 250 employees. www.fgvw.de.

Adrian von Prittwitz

Scintomics sells PentixaPharm stake to Eckert & Ziegler

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Munich — Scin­to­mics GmbH has sold its stake in Pentix­a­Ph­arm GmbH to Eckert & Zieg­ler Strah­len- und Medi­zin­tech­nik AG. It was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by Gütt Olk Feld­haus (GOF). Part of the conside­ra­tion consis­ted of shares in Eckert & Zieg­ler. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

Pentix­a­Ph­arm is deve­lo­ping a radio­phar­maceu­ti­cal combi­na­tion product against lymphoma and a number of rela­ted tumors that can be used for both the diagno­sis and treat­ment of cancer. In Febru­ary 2021, Pentix­a­Ph­arm had recei­ved confir­ma­tion from the Euro­pean Medi­ci­nes Agency (EMA) that its drug candi­date Pentix­a­For can advance directly into Phase III clini­cal trials.

Scin­to­mics is active in the deve­lo­p­ment, licen­sing and commer­cia­liza­tion of radio-phar­maceu­ti­cal know-how and radio­phar­maceu­ti­cals and was a foun­ding share­hol­der in PentixaPharm.

Eckert & Zieg­ler is a listed company head­quar­te­red in Berlin, Germany, which holds inte­rests in compa­nies in the fields of medi­cal and isotope tech­no­logy as well as radio-phar­macy and nuclear medi­cine, among others.

Legal advi­sors to Scin­to­mics GmbH: Gütt Olk Feld­haus, Munich
Adrian von Prit­t­witz (Part­ner, Lead), Dr. Ricarda Theis (Asso­ciate, both Corporate/M&A)

About Gütt Olk Feldhaus
Gütt Olk Feld­haus is a leading inter­na­tio­nal law firm based in Munich. We provide compre­hen­sive advice on commer­cial and corpo­rate law. Our focus is on corpo­rate law, M&A, private equity and finan­cing. In these specia­list areas we also take on the litigation.

WuXi Biologics purchases biologics and COVID-19 vaccines facility from Bayer

Posted on by Tatjana Anderer

Wupper­tal — The globally active Chinese group WuXi Biolo­gics has comple­ted the acqui­si­tion of a plant for biolo­gi­cal subs­tances from Bayer AG in Wupper­tal. The closing took place in Colo­gne on April 30, 2021. A team led by Dirk W. Kolven­bach, Part­ner at the Düssel­dorf office, and Michael Pauli from the Colo­gne office of Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek provi­ded legal advice to the Chinese group on the purchase. The tran­sac­tion volume, inclu­ding the lease, is around €150 million. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the first half of 2021 and is subject to regu­la­tory review.

The new faci­lity in Wupper­tal is one of the largest vaccine produc­tion sites in Germany and will be used to manu­fac­ture highly sought-after subs­tances for COVID-19 vacci­nes and other biolo­gics. WuXi Biolo­gics plans addi­tio­nal invest­ments in process equip­ment at the Wupper­tal site. “We are very proud to have provi­ded legal support for the purchase of this major vaccine produc­tion faci­lity,” said attor­ney Dirk W. Kolven­bach. “Through this tran­sac­tion, we can also make an important contri­bu­tion on an advo­cacy level for vaccine manu­fac­tu­ring, inclu­ding COVID-19 vacci­nes, in Germany.”

With the conclu­sion of the agree­ment, Bayer and WuXi Biolo­gics have at the same time ente­red into a long-term sublease and a service agree­ment. Bayer will provide various services to WuXi Biolo­gics during the start-up of the plant, contri­bu­ting its own resour­ces. The signing alre­ady took place on Decem­ber 21, 2020. The tran­sac­tion volume, inclu­ding the lease, is over 150 million euros.

WuXi Biolo­gics is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exch­ange and is a leading global open access biolo­gics tech­no­logy plat­form. The company provi­des end-to-end solu­ti­ons to help compa­nies disco­ver, deve­lop and manu­fac­ture biolo­gics from concept to commer­cial produc­tion. For Kolvenbach’s team, this is not the first tran­sac­tion for WuXi. Heuking had alre­ady advi­sed WuXi Biolo­gics on the acqui­si­tion of a drug formu­la­tion plant from Bayer in 2020.

Advi­sor to WuXi Biolo­gics: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dirk W. Kolven­bach (Corpo­rate Law/ Project Coor­di­na­tion), Düsseldorf
Michael Pauli, LL.M. (Corpo­rate Law/Project Coor­di­na­tion), Cologne
Mathis Dick, LL.M. (Real Estate), Düsseldorf
Michael Below, (Public Law), Düsseldorf
Dr. Bodo Dehne (invest­ment control), Düsseldorf
Wolf­ram Meven (Tax Law), Düsseldorf
Dr. Rainer Velte (Anti­trust Law), Düsseldorf
Fabian Gerst­ner, LL.M., Munich, Bettina Nehe­i­der (both Cons­truc­tion Law), Munich
Dr. Tobias Plath, LL.M. (Insu­rance Law), Tors­ten Groß, LL.M. (Labor Law), Sarah Radon, LL.M. (Commer­cial), all Düsseldorf

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