Year: 2018

Frank­furt am Main — Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) is inves­t­ing in Sjølund A/S (Sjølund), a manu­fac­tu­rer of alumi­num and steel compon­ents for the wind power, rail­road, cons­truc­tion and engi­nee­ring indus­tries. In a manage­ment buy-out (MBO), DBAG ECF, which is mana­ged by DBAG, will acquire around 51 percent of the shares in Sjølund from the current sole owner and CEO Søren Ravn Jensen.

DBAG will invest up to 4.5 million euros from its balance sheet for its co-invest­ment; in future, it will account for around 21 percent of the shares in Sjølund. The remai­ning appro­xi­m­ately 49 percent of the shares will in future be held by Søren Ravn Jensen, who will conti­nue to serve as CEO of the company, and other members of the manage­ment team. The purchase agree­ment was signed at the end of Decem­ber and is expec­ted to be comple­ted in Janu­ary 2018. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

Sjølund is the first invest­ment since the start of the first new invest­ment period of the DBAG ECF, or DBAG ECF I, in June 2017. The manage­ment buyout is also the second majo­rity invest­ment by the fund, which has also selec­tively provi­ded funds for MBOs since expan­ding its invest­ment crite­ria in 2016. Previously, the DBAG ECF had exclu­si­vely inves­ted in compa­nies on a mino­rity basis in order to promote their growth.

Since the previous sole owner and CEO Søren Ravn Jensen joined the company in 1994, Sjølund (www.sjoelund.com) has deve­lo­ped into one of the largest suppli­ers in the niche market for complex compon­ents made of bent alumi­num and steel. At the company’s head­quar­ters in Sjølund, Denmark, and at a produc­tion site in China, around 110 employees manu­fac­ture compon­ents that account for only a small propor­tion of their custo­mers’ mate­rial costs, but are nevert­hel­ess complex in many cases and often safety-rele­vant. These compon­ents are always manu­fac­tu­red accor­ding to the speci­fic requi­re­ments of the respec­tive custo­mer and distri­bu­ted globally — also via a third loca­tion in the USA. Sjølund also advi­ses its custo­mers on adap­ting products to the manu­fac­tu­ring process (“Design for Manu­fac­tu­ring”). In this way, the company has built up stable custo­mer rela­ti­onships and a strong market posi­tion. It gene­ra­ted a good half of its total sales of around 31 million euros in the wind power indus­try in fiscal year 2016/2017 (Septem­ber 30), mainly with compon­ents for the nacel­les of wind turbi­nes. In the rail segment, Sjølund supplies train manu­fac­tu­r­ers with struc­tu­ral profiles and compon­ents for exte­rior clad­ding, for exam­ple for the front of the rail­car, the window frames or the boar­ding area.

Sjølun­d’s sales markets, some of which are not very cycli­cal, are expec­ted to grow signi­fi­cantly in the coming years. Drivers of this deve­lo­p­ment are mega­trends such as the use of rene­wa­ble ener­gies, global popu­la­tion growth and incre­asing urba­niza­tion. On this basis, Sjølund is to conti­nue to grow and expand inter­na­tio­nally — orga­ni­cally and through acqui­si­ti­ons: Busi­ness with exis­ting custo­mers in growth markets such as China and the USA is to be expan­ded; compon­ents for wind turbi­nes are also to be manu­fac­tu­red at the Chinese produc­tion site in the future. German custo­mers curr­ently account for around 35 percent of Sjølun­d’s sales. Another start­ing point for the stra­te­gic deve­lo­p­ment of the company is the realignment of its sales acti­vi­ties. They are to focus more stron­gly on the highly profi­ta­ble mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring sector.

“Sjølund is active in seve­ral growth markets at the same time and has by no means exhaus­ted its poten­tial to serve these markets,” said Dr. Rolf Schef­fels (photo), member of DBAG’s Manage­ment Board, on the occa­sion of today’s contract signing. “We see this, in combi­na­tion with its long-estab­lished custo­mer rela­ti­onships, as the promi­sing basis for the company’s contin­ued posi­tive deve­lo­p­ment — and thus an attrac­tive invest­ment oppor­tu­nity in one of DBAG’s core sectors.”

“Further inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of the busi­ness is a prere­qui­site for Sjølund to reach the next stage of its deve­lo­p­ment,” commen­ted Søren Ravn Jensen, former sole owner and CEO of Sjølund. “We are plea­sed to have an expe­ri­en­ced part­ner in DBAG at our side who can support us with capi­tal and exper­tise in this important phase.”

About DBAG
Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, a listed company, initia­tes closed-end private equity funds and invests along­side DBAG funds in well-posi­tio­ned medium-sized compa­nies with deve­lo­p­ment poten­tial. DBAG focu­ses on indus­trial sectors in which German SMEs are parti­cu­larly strong by inter­na­tio­nal stan­dards. With this expe­ri­ence, know-how and equity, it streng­thens the port­fo­lio compa­nies in imple­men­ting a long-term, value-enhan­cing corpo­rate stra­tegy. The entre­pre­neu­rial invest­ment approach makes DBAG a sought-after invest­ment part­ner in the German-spea­king region. The capi­tal mana­ged and advi­sed by the DBAG Group amounts to appro­xi­m­ately 1.8 billion euros.

Hamburg - IDEX Health & Science today announ­ced the acqui­si­tion of thinXXS Micro­tech­no­logy AG. The acqui­si­tion is expec­ted to acce­le­rate growth in the micro­flui­dics consu­ma­bles busi­ness. The share­hol­ders of thinXXS Micro­tech­no­logy AG, inclu­ding the majo­rity share­hol­der PRICAP Venture Part­ners AG, were advi­sed by Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek on the sale of their shares to a subsi­diary of IDEX Corpo­ra­tion. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose the purchase price.

thinXXS Micro­tech­no­logy, based in Zwei­brü­cken, Germany, is a leading company in the deve­lo­p­ment and manu­fac­ture of plas­tic disposable systems for the life scien­ces, point-of-care and vete­ri­nary markets. The acqui­si­tion estab­lishes IDEX Health & Science as a tech­no­logy leader in micro­flui­dics and streng­thens its growth focus on inte­gra­ted opto­flui­dic systems, compon­ents and advan­ced solu­ti­ons for its target industries.

Advi­sors to thinXXS Micro­tech­no­logy AG: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Part­ner Dr. Michael Dröge, Part­ner Julia Cramer (both lead and M&A/Corporate), Fabian G. Gaffron (Tax), all Hamburg
Dr. Thors­ten Kuthe (Stock Corpo­ra­tion Law), Cologne
Dr. Frede­rik Wiemer (Anti­trust Law)
Dr. Florian Wenk, LL.M. (Corpo­rate Law)
Dr. Chris­tina Etzel,
Sven Johann­sen (both Vendor Due Dili­gence), all Hamburg

Hamburg — Allen & Overy LLP has advi­sed Hamburg-based private bank M.M. Warburg & CO (AG & Co.) KGaA (“Warburg”) on the sale of its subsi­dia­ries Warburg Invest Luxem­bourg S.A. and M.M. Warburg & CO Luxem­bourg S.A. to Apex Group Ltd (“Apex”), a port­fo­lio company of Genstar Capi­tal. The two dive­s­ted subsi­dia­ries manage $50 billion in assets under manage­ment. Apex had previously acqui­red Deut­sche Bank’s Alter­na­tive Fund Service busi­ness, among others. — Warburg and Apex will enter into a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship for Luxem­bourg-based asset manage­ment services.

The tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by various regu­la­tory autho­ri­ties. Comple­tion is plan­ned for the second quar­ter of 2018. The parties have agreed not to disc­lose further details of the transaction.

By selling its two subsi­dia­ries, Warburg Bank intends to focus even more on growth in the German market and reduce the comple­xity of regu­la­tory requirements.

Advi­sor M.M. Warburg & CO: Allen & Overy Hamburg
The lead part­ner was Hamburg part­ner Dr. Nico­laus Ascher­feld (Corporate/M&A), with part­ners Dr. Heike Weber (Tax, Frank­furt), Dr. Alex­an­der Behrens (Inter­na­tio­nal Capi­tal Markets, Frank­furt), Dr. Börries Ahrens (Anti­trust, Hamburg) and Daniela Trötscher (Tax, Frank­furt); Of-Coun­sel Frank Herring (Inter­na­tio­nal Capi­tal Markets, Frank­furt), Coun­sel Max Lands­hut (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg), Senior Asso­ciate Marco Zingler (Inter­na­tio­nal Capi­tal Markets, Frank­furt) and Asso­cia­tes Dr. Stefan Witte (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg), Dr. Moritz Meis­ter (Corporate/M&A, Hamburg) and Dr. David Wagner (Labor Law, Hamburg).

From the Luxem­bourg office, part­ners Andre Marc (Corporate/M&A) and Henri Wagner (Inter­na­tio­nal Capi­tal Markets) as well as coun­sel Cathe­rine Di Lorenzo, Yannick Arbaut, Serge Hoff­mann, Gary Cywie and asso­ciate Franz Kerger advised.

The tran­sac­tion was advi­sed in-house by Dr. Chris­toph Greiner.

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

Allen & Overy is repre­sen­ted in Germany at its offices in Düssel­dorf, Frank­furt am Main, Hamburg and Munich with appro­xi­m­ately 220 lawy­ers, inclu­ding 49 part­ners. The lawy­ers advise leading natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal compa­nies prima­rily in the areas of banking, finance and capi­tal markets law, corpo­rate law and M&A, tax law as well as other areas of busi­ness law.