Ritter sells to US life science company Avantor for 890 million euros

Schwab­mün­chen — A Gleiss Lutz team has advi­sed the family-owned Ritter Group on the sale of the company to US tech­no­logy group Avan­tor. The purchase price is appro­xi­m­ately €890 million, subject to further payments depen­ding on the achie­ve­ment of certain perfor­­mance-based mile­sto­nes. The tran­sac­tion is expec­ted to close in the 3rd quar­ter of 2021.

Ritter is head­quar­te­red in Schwab­mün­chen, Germany, and is one of the fastest growing manu­fac­tu­r­ers of high-quality consu­ma­bles for liquid hand­ling, auto­ma­ted analy­sis and clini­cal test­ing, inclu­ding conduc­tive pipette tips. These consu­ma­bles are central to a variety of mole­cu­lar scree­ning and diagno­stic appli­ca­ti­ons, inclu­ding real-time poly­me­rase chain reac­tion (PCR), or as part of drug deve­lo­p­ment and clini­cal trials for phar­maceu­ti­cal and
Biotech­no­logy Research.

Avan­tor is a New York Stock Exch­ange-listed global leader in products and services used in key rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment and manu­fac­tu­ring acti­vi­ties by custo­mers in the high-tech­­no­­logy, biotech­no­logy, health­care and public sectors. Globally, the company serves 225,000 custo­mer sites and works with rese­arch labo­ra­to­ries and scien­tists in more than 180 countries.

Advi­sor Ritter: Gleiss Lutz
Dr. Jochen Tyrolt (Part­ner, Stutt­gart), Dr. Chris­tian Cascante (Part­ner, Frank­furt, both Lead), Johan­nes Schrägle (Coun­sel, Stutt­gart), Dr. Patrick Moss­ler (Part­ner), Dr. Daniel Heck (Coun­sel, both Hamburg), Florian Schorn (Munich), Dr. Lucas Hert­neck, Nikolas
Frey (both Stutt­gart, all M&A), Dr. Dirk Wasmann (Part­ner, Stutt­gart), Dr. Thors­ten Gayk (Coun­sel, Hamburg, both Corpo­rate), Dr. Johann Wagner (Part­ner), Dr. Thomas Büche­ler (both Tax, Hamburg), Dr. Doris-Maria Schus­ter (Part­ner), Dr. Daniela Mayr (both Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Martin Diller (Part­ner), Dr. Sebas­tian Ernst (both Stutt­gart, all Labor Law), Dr. Alex­an­der Molle (Part­ner), Dr. Matthias Schilde, Jan Hinrichs (all IP/IT), Dr. Chris­tian Hamann (Part­ner), Simon Wegmann (both Data Protec­tion Law), Dr. Enno Burk (Coun­sel), Dr. Chris­tina Fröb
(both Health­care, all Berlin), Dr. Jacob von Andreae (Part­ner), Aylin Hoffs (both Foreign Trade Law, both Düssel­dorf), Dr. Moritz Holm-Hadulla (Part­ner), Dr. Andreas Schüs­sel (both Anti­trust), Dr. Simon Wagner (Coun­sel, Dispute Reso­lu­tion, all Stutt­gart), Frank Schlo­b­ach (Part­ner), Dr. Thomas Kulzer (Coun­sel, both Finance), Konrad Discher (Coun­sel, Real Estate, all Frankfurt).

Gleiss Lutz worked as lead coun­sel with teams in various jurisdictions.

About Gleiss Lutz 

Gleiss Lutz regu­larly advi­ses family-owned compa­nies on large-volume sales tran­sac­tions, inclu­ding the owners of ZKW on the sale of the company to the Korean tech­no­logy group LG for EUR 1.1 billion or the owners of Getrag on the sale to Magna for EUR 1.75 billion.