ALTERNATIVE FINANCING FORMS
FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND INVESTORS

Author: Tatjana Anderer

Gründerin des FYB-Verlag
News

Tuttlingen/ Munich — The share­hol­ders of HSTEC d.d. in Zadar/Croatia, system part­ner for inno­va­tive spindle drive tech­no­logy for CNC machine tools, for fixtures as well as for spindle services and repair, have sold 90% of their company shares to the CHIRON Group. The company, head­quar­te­red in Tutt­lin­gen, Germany, specia­li­zes in CNC-control­led verti­cal milling and mill-turn machi­ning centers as well as turn­key and auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons. Proven­tis Part­ners and Inter­Ca­pi­tal were the exclu­sive advi­sors to HSTEC on this transaction.

The tran­sac­tion
The share­hol­ders of HSTEC, which was foun­ded in 1997, had deci­ded to sell their shares as part of succes­sion plan­ning. With the CHIRON Group, an ideal stra­te­gic inves­tor could be found for the company, which can accom­pany HSTEC in its further growth with a world­wide sales network and high tech­ni­cal compe­tence in machine tool cons­truc­tion. With today’s acqui­si­tion of 90 percent of the Croa­tian HSTEC, the CHIRON Group, head­quar­te­red in Tutt­lin­gen, Germany, is consis­t­ently pursuing its global growth strategy.

The name HSTEC stands for High Speed Tech­ni­que, for system compe­tence in the deve­lo­p­ment, design and manu­fac­ture of high-speed motor spind­les for deman­ding machi­ning opera­ti­ons. Clam­ping devices for machine tools and auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons complete the port­fo­lio. In addi­tion, HSTEC is a leader in spindle services and repair for its own products and other manu­fac­tu­r­ers’ spindles.

With this acqui­si­tion, the CHIRON Group expands its capa­ci­ties and streng­thens three areas of exper­tise: the holi­stic deve­lo­p­ment, produc­tion and assem­bly of the key compon­ents motor spind­les and turning spind­les for the Group’s machi­ning centers. Turn­key projects can be even better desi­gned accor­ding to custo­mer speci­fi­ca­ti­ons with HSTEC’s work­hol­ding fixtures. In addi­tion, the CHIRON Group supple­ments its services world­wide with the area of repair, over­haul and opti­miza­tion of all motor spind­les in exis­ting machines.

With the future CHIRON Croa­tia, the CHIRON Group is present in Eastern Europe with another company of its own, can serve custo­mers in the region even better and will succes­si­vely deve­lop the loca­tion in Zadar. The more than 100 employees, 25 of them in engi­nee­ring alone, increase the number of Group employees world­wide to around 1,900.
The previous CEO, Mladen Šarlija, will serve as Mana­ging Direc­tor of CHIRON Croa­tia in the future. HSTEC’s agen­cies in Germany, the USA and China will remain in place, as will the repre­sen­ta­tive offices of Balluff, Bosch Rexroth, Hofmann and Mitutoyo for the Croa­tian market.
HSTEC will be contin­ued as a brand and will join the CHIRON Group brand network: CHIRON, STAMA, FACTORY5, CMS, GREIDENWEIS, HSTEC.

The role of Proven­tis Partners
Proven­tis Part­ners, toge­ther with Inter­Ca­pi­tal as exclu­sive M&A advi­sor, compre­hen­si­vely supported HSTEC in all phases of the prepa­ra­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of the tran­sac­tion in the DACH region. In addi­tion to the imple­men­ta­tion of a struc­tu­red sales process, the consul­ting services included the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and approach of poten­tial inves­tors as well as support in the due dili­gence and nego­tia­tion of the tran­sac­tion. This tran­sac­tion enab­led Proven­tis Part­ners to once again demons­trate its exper­tise in the auto­ma­tion, services in produc­tion and digi­tal solu­ti­ons segment. The tran­sac­tion was led by Dr. Axel Deich (Asso­ciate Part­ner, Munich) at Proven­tis Partners.

The role of InterCapital
Inter­Ca­pi­tal, toge­ther with Proven­tis Part­ners, acted as exclu­sive M&A advi­sor to HSTEC, provi­ding compre­hen­sive support in all phases of the prepa­ra­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of the tran­sac­tion. In addi­tion to the imple­men­ta­tion of a struc­tu­red sales process, the consul­ting services included the prepa­ra­tion of marke­ting and tran­sac­tion docu­ments, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and approa­ching of poten­tial inves­tors as well as support in the due dili­gence and nego­tia­tion of the tran­sac­tion. The tran­sac­tion team at Inter­Ca­pi­tal consis­ted of Andrej Erja­vec, Filip Džanko and Petra Mucić.

About HSTEC

HSTEC is a system part­ner for inno­va­tive spindle drive tech­no­logy for CNC machine tools, for fixtures and for spindle services and repair. The name HSTEC stands for High Speed Tech­ni­que, for system compe­tence in the deve­lo­p­ment, design and manu­fac­ture of high-speed motor spind­les for deman­ding machi­ning opera­ti­ons. Clam­ping devices for machine tools and auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons complete the port­fo­lio. In addi­tion, HSTEC is a leader in spindle services and repair for its own products and other manu­fac­tu­r­ers’ spindles.

HSTEC employs over 100 people, 25 of whom work in engi­nee­ring alone. The company has agen­cies in Germany, USA and China and is the repre­sen­ta­tive of Balluff, Bosch Rexroth, Hofmann and Mitutoyo for the Croa­tian market. www.hstec.hr

About the CHIRON Group
The CHIRON Group, head­quar­te­red in Tutt­lin­gen, Germany, is a specia­list for CNC-control­led verti­cal milling and milling-turning machi­ning centers as well as turn­key and auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons. Compre­hen­sive services, digi­tal solu­ti­ons and products for addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring complete the port­fo­lio. The Group has a global presence with produc­tion and deve­lo­p­ment sites, sales and service bran­ches, and commer­cial agen­cies. Around two thirds of the machi­nes and solu­ti­ons sold are expor­ted. Key user indus­tries are the auto­mo­tive indus­try, mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring, medi­cal and precis­ion engi­nee­ring, aero­space and tool manufacturing.

The CHIRON Group carries the brands CHIRON, STAMA and FACTORY5 for new machi­nes, GREIDENWEIS for auto­ma­tion, CMS for machine over­hauls and HSTEC for motor spind­les and fixtures. The machi­ning centers from CHIRON stand for the highest dyna­mics and precis­ion. STAMA focu­ses on stabi­lity and complete machi­ning, while FACTORY5 focu­ses on high-speed machi­ning of micro-engi­nee­red compon­ents. GREIDENWEIS is a system part­ner for indi­vi­dual, inte­gra­ted auto­ma­tion solu­ti­ons, CMS offers comple­tely over­hau­led machi­nes of the group. HSTEC specia­li­zes in the manu­fac­tu­ring and repair of high speed motor spind­les and fixtures. Products and solu­ti­ons for addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring comple­ment the core compe­ten­cies of the CHIRON Group.
Further infor­ma­tion about the CHIRON Group can be found at https://chiron-group.com/de.

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. With 116 successfully comple­ted tran­sac­tions tota­ling appro­xi­m­ately $4.5 billion in 2021, Mergers Alli­ance is one of the worl­d’s most successful finan­cial advi­sors in tran­sac­tions up to $500 million. www.proventis.com

About Inter­Ca­pi­tal
Inter­Ca­pi­tal is the leading inde­pen­dent advi­sor for the support, struc­tu­ring and execu­tion of M&A and capi­tal markets tran­sac­tions in the SEE region. Inter­Ca­pi­tal supports a wide range of inter­na­tio­nal and dome­stic corpo­rate and insti­tu­tio­nal clients with stra­te­gic and finan­cial advice and smooth tran­sac­tion execu­tion. Their exper­tise is based on their compre­hen­sive under­stan­ding of the regio­nal markets, their speci­fic indus­try know­ledge and their expe­ri­ence from nume­rous corpo­rate finance projects in which they have been invol­ved. https://inter.capital/

News

Frank­furt am Main / Mark­grö­nin­gen — VR Equi­typ­art­ner has sold its majo­rity stake in Kälte Eckert GmbH. The buyer is Triton Mittel­stands­fonds II, which is advi­sed by the inter­na­tio­nal invest­ment company Triton. The mana­ging direc­tors and co-part­ners of Kälte Eckert, the brot­hers Michael and Holger Eckert, will remain active in their manage­ment func­tion in the future and will take a reverse share­hol­ding as part of the transaction.

Kälte Eckert, based in Mark­grö­nin­gen, Germany, was foun­ded by Horst Eckert in 1966. The company, which specia­li­zes in refri­ge­ra­tion tech­no­logy, has a very good market posi­tion in special plant engi­nee­ring for commer­cial refri­ge­ra­tion with a focus on indus­trial kitchens, indus­trial refri­ge­ra­tion and air condi­tio­ning. It is also natio­nally reco­gni­zed as a tech­no­logy leader in alter­na­tive ecolo­gi­cal coolants. Custo­mers include major corpo­ra­ti­ons such as Merce­des-Benz, UniCre­dit and LBBW.

The Frank­furt-based invest­ment company VR Equi­typ­art­ner joined the company in 2017 with a majo­rity stake to support the company’s further growth. With the aim of advan­cing to become the leading supplier of refri­ge­ra­tion systems with a focus on natu­ral refri­ger­ants in southern Germany, Kälte Eckert and VR Equi­typ­art­ner pursued an active plat­form stra­tegy: the basis was formed by the merger of Kälte Eckert with Günther Kälte­tech­nik in 2019. Buil­ding on this, the family busi­ness acqui­red Gart­ner, Keil & Co, Klima- und Kälte­tech­nik and SOS Kälte­tech­nik (both 2020) as an add-on. The tech­ni­cal know-how — espe­ci­ally in the field of special plant engi­nee­ring, natu­ral refri­ger­ants and control soft­ware — has thus grown steadily within the Kälte Eckert Group. The in-depth opera­tio­nal and commer­cial inte­gra­tion of the add-ons has now been comple­ted. Syner­gies between the part­ners are conti­nuously exploi­ted and both the perfor­mance and service offe­rings are expan­ded accordingly.

In addi­tion to the company acqui­si­ti­ons and the accom­pany­ing compre­hen­sive inte­gra­tion, nume­rous other short- and medium-term value enhance­ment measu­res were successfully imple­men­ted as part of VR Equi­typ­art­ner’s invol­vement. Among other things, the second manage­ment level was estab­lished and expan­ded, the sales orga­niza­tion was broa­dened, gene­ral stan­dards and proces­ses were intro­du­ced, and a cross-company control­ling and ERP system was set up.

Chris­tian Futter­lieb, Mana­ging Direc­tor at VR Equi­typ­art­ner: “I am plea­sed that through our joint work over the past years we have been able to deve­lop Kälte Eckert into a strong plat­form that is now a good home for medium-sized refri­ge­ra­tion equip­ment manu­fac­tu­r­ers. We wish Holger and Michael Eckert and the new part­ner Triton much joy and success in their consis­tent further development.”

“With VR Equi­typ­art­ner, we have had a compe­tent and strong part­ner at our side for the past five years, who has helped us to imple­ment our ideas for the further growth of our company,” says Michael Eckert, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Kälte Eckert. “The team at VR Equi­typ­art­ner has exten­sive expe­ri­ence with successfully imple­men­ted buy-and-build stra­te­gies. We bene­fi­ted greatly from this stra­te­gic know­ledge and were able to further deve­lop the Kälte Eckert Group toge­ther,” adds Holger Eckert, also Mana­ging Direc­tor of the company. “We look forward to conti­nuing on the path we have taken with Triton.”

VR Equi­typ­art­ner at a glance

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.

Advi­sor VR Equitypartner:

M&A: Alan­tra (Wolf­ram Schmerl and Juan Carlos Montoya)

Stein­beis Consul­ting (Ulrich Praßler)

Legal: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek (Dr. Rainer Hersch­lein, Bene­dikt Raisch and Char­lotte Schmitt)

Financial/Commercial: Grant Thorn­ton AG (Klaus Schaldt and Jan Dembeck)

 

News

Frank­furt a. M. — From four new inves­tors and exis­ting inves­tors such as the High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) and renow­ned busi­ness angels node.energy raises Euro 7 million in fresh capi­tal. The selec­tion of the four new Series‑A inves­tors was quite deli­be­rate. For exam­ple, the funding round is led by Colo­gne-based VC BitStone Capi­tal, the leading PropTech fund with strong exper­tise in the real estate indus­try. As co-inves­tors, 10x Foun­ders brings exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the soft­ware-as-a-service sector and impact inves­tor BonVen­ture brings a clear sustaina­bi­lity focus. As an inter­na­tio­nal inves­tor from the energy sector, Helen Ventures from Finland is also parti­ci­pa­ting in the finan­cing round.

The soft­ware “opti.node” deve­lo­ped by node.energy simpli­fies the manage­ment of wind and solar plants. As the “digi­tal lubri­cant of the energy turn­around”, opti.node takes over the fulfill­ment of nume­rous bureau­cra­tic requi­re­ments in parti­cu­lar: With opti.node, plant opera­tors can easily auto­mate the crea­tion of invoices, tax forms and noti­fi­ca­ti­ons to the autho­ri­ties. The soft­ware is alre­ady being used to manage around 10,000 wind energy and solar plants. node.energy is thus the market leader in Germany.

“The future energy supply will be based on milli­ons of rene­wa­ble energy plants, and every major buil­ding will also be a power plant. Many new provi­ders, such as property mana­gers and citi­zen energy coope­ra­ti­ves, are driving change with new busi­ness models. In doing so, they are regu­larly confron­ted with the compli­ca­ted rules and bureau­cra­tic requi­re­ments of the energy market. This results in enorm­ous market poten­tial and further growth oppor­tu­ni­ties for us,” explains Matthias Karger, foun­der and mana­ging direc­tor of node.energy

“Rising energy and CO2 prices and the desire for secu­rity of supply are making rene­wa­ble energy instal­la­ti­ons for real estate more attrac­tive than ever. node.energy makes it easy for profes­sio­nal owners to evaluate this poten­tial and to operate the plants successfully and legally compli­ant. I am plea­sed to support the team in this soci­ally important task,” says Marc Stilke, Venture Part­ner at BitStone Capi­tal and future Chair­man of the Advi­sory Board at node.energy

node.energy will ther­e­fore invest the seven million euros recei­ved in Series A in the further deve­lo­p­ment of the soft­ware. The goal is to build a compre­hen­sive soft­ware plat­form that enables profes­sio­nal system opera­tors from the commer­cial and real estate sectors to easily imple­ment new busi­ness models such as solar power direct deli­veries (e.g. tenant power or power purchase agreements/PPAs) and self-supply. To this end, the soft­ware is being enhan­ced with addi­tio­nal func­tions and expan­ded into an end-to-end solu­tion platform.

About node.energy

node.energy GmbH, based in Frank­furt am Main, is a fast-growing company working towards a sustainable energy future. node.energy was foun­ded in 2016 by Matthias Karger and Lars Rinn and deve­lops and distri­bu­tes the SaaS solu­tion “opti.node” for profes­sio­nal opera­tors of rene­wa­ble energy plants. More than 9,500 wind turbi­nes in over 2,500 wind and solar farms as well as more than 400 commer­cial and indus­trial proper­ties are alre­ady using opti.node. 2020 node.energy was awarded the Handels­blatt Energy Awards. Curr­ently, node.energy employs about 50 people.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported more than 670 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of HTGF IV, more than EUR 400 million in fund volume will be added in the fall of 2022. The team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €4 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,900 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 160 companies.

The fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and nume­rous compa­nies from a wide range of industries.

 

News

Espoo (Finland) and Munich (Germany) — IQM Quan­tum Compu­ters (IQM), Euro­pe’s leading company for buil­ding super­con­duc­ting quan­tum compu­ters, has raised €128 million in a Series A2 finan­cing round. The lead inves­tor is Euro­pe’s largest climate tech venture capi­ta­list World Fund from Berlin. IQM intends to use the money to further expand and inter­na­tio­na­lize its leading role in Europe with offices in Espoo, Finland, and Munich, Germany, among others. “This round of funding shows the importance of our mission: to deve­lop quan­tum compu­ters for the well-being of huma­nity. It also shows confi­dence in our busi­ness model and in our team’s ability to shape the future of quan­tum tech­no­logy,” says IQM’s German foun­der and CEO Dr. Jan Goetz.

This funding round is the largest ever recei­ved by a Euro­pean quan­tum compu­ting company.

The finan­cing follows a Series A1 finan­cing of EUR 39 million in 2020 and includes the EUR 35 million risk loan from the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) announ­ced in early 2022. Bayern Kapi­tal, EIC Acce­le­ra­tor, OurC­rowd, QuIC SPV, Tofino and Varma as well as exis­ting inves­tors MIG Fonds, Tesi, Open­O­cean, Maki.vc, Matadero QED, Vsquared, Salvia GmbH, Santo Venture Capi­tal GmbH and Tencent parti­ci­pa­ted in the round.

Commen­ting on the round on behalf of the inves­tors, Dr. Sierk Poet­ting, CEO of IQM, said: “This finan­cing round is very important for the company. It is confir­ma­tion of the tech­no­lo­gi­cal mile­sto­nes achie­ved so far and will signi­fi­cantly acce­le­rate future deve­lo­p­ment. We are grateful for the rene­wed confir­ma­tion from exis­ting inves­tors and welcome the new inves­tors in this strong round.”

Euro­pean pioneer of quan­tum technology

Since its foun­ding in 2018, IQM has become the worl­d’s fastest growing quan­tum compu­ting company and has soli­di­fied its posi­tion as the Euro­pean leader in buil­ding super­con­duc­ting quan­tum compu­ters. IQM is the only Euro­pean company alre­ady supp­ly­ing complete quan­tum systems. The part­ners include a leading global auto­ma­ker. In doing so, IQM pursues an inno­va­tive co-design stra­tegy in which it works closely with indus­trial custo­mers to deve­lop appli­ca­tion-speci­fic processors.

Accor­ding to the Boston Consul­ting Group (BCG), quan­tum tech­no­logy could create up to $850 billion in value globally over the next 15 to 30 years as it scales and impro­ves accu­racy and stabi­lity. Quan­tum compu­ting is a foun­da­tio­nal tech­no­logy that has extreme speed advan­ta­ges over any super­com­pu­ter for certain calcu­la­ti­ons. It has great poten­tial for areas such as drug disco­very, encryp­tion, and more accu­ra­tely predic­ting move­ments in finan­cial markets. Google announ­ced back in 2019 that a quan­tum proces­sor they deve­lo­ped comple­ted a calcu­la­tion in 200 seconds that would have taken the worl­d’s fastest super­com­pu­ter 10,000 years.

Quan­tum compu­ting can help solve the climate crisis

Since its foun­ding, IQM’s goal has been to contri­bute to social progress with its own tech­no­logy, which includes helping to address the climate crisis. There is great poten­tial here for quan­tum compu­ters because it can be used to model solu­ti­ons that are not possi­ble with the current compu­ting power of clas­si­cal compu­ters. Accor­ding to McKin­sey, climate tech­no­logy deve­lo­ped using quan­tum compu­ting can reduce CO2 emis­si­ons by seven giga­tons per year by 2035.

The poten­tial of IQM’s tech­no­logy lies, for exam­ple, in the opti­miza­tion of energy networks or climate mode­ling. The company is alre­ady conduc­ting basic rese­arch for signi­fi­cantly better rech­ar­geable batte­ries as well as on comple­tely new methods for desig­ning materials.

A key metric used by lead inves­tor World Fund in its invest­ments is Climate Perfor­mance Poten­tial (CPP). The compa­nies and tech­no­lo­gies inves­ted in should have the poten­tial to avoid at least 100 million tons of CO2 emis­si­ons each year until 2040. The Fund’s CPP calcu­la­ti­ons show that IQM’s tech­no­logy has the poten­tial to exceed this thres­hold based on impro­ved battery perfor­mance and utiliza­tion alone.

Daria Saha­rova, co-foun­der of the World Fund, said.: “Quan­tum compu­ting has the poten­tial to be a driving force behind the breakth­roughs we need to solve the climate crisis. We are proud to lead this round of funding and support IQM’s ambi­ti­ons to create a quan­tum advan­tage for climate and sustaina­bi­lity goals. This invest­ment is in line with our commit­ment to only support compa­nies with the highest possi­ble Climate Perfor­mance Poten­tial (CPP). The goal is for the compa­nies we fund to save a total of two giga­tons of CO2 annu­ally by 2040 — that’s four percent of all current global emis­si­ons. IQM has alre­ady succee­ded in buil­ding a strong busi­ness focu­sed on high-perfor­mance data centers and rese­arch labs. We look forward to being part of their growth on the path to global market leadership.”

First invest­ment of the Bava­rian ScaleUp Fund laun­ched in 2021

The eight-figure invest­ment by Bayern Kapi­tal, the venture and growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, is the first invest­ment of the ScaleUp Fund Bava­ria, laun­ched in 2021 for stron­gly expan­ding high-tech compa­nies with invest­ments between 10 and 25 million euros. “Quan­tum compu­ters are a key tech­no­logy of the future today and Bava­ria, with its outstan­ding compe­ten­cies in science and indus­try in the field of quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies, is excel­lently posi­tio­ned here,” said Bava­rian Minis­ter of Econo­mic Affairs Hubert Aiwan­ger: “IQM is an active part­ner of Munich Quan­tum Valley and is making an important contri­bu­tion to inte­gra­ting quan­tum compu­ters into an envi­ron­ment of high-perfor­mance compu­ters and making these compu­ting capa­ci­ties available to users in science and industry.”

“For the first invest­ment with the ScaleUp Fund Bava­ria, we could hardly have wished for a better company with a signal effect for the entire region,” says Dr. Georg Ried, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal. IQM’s presence includes the new quan­tum compu­ter at the Leib­niz Compu­ting Center (LRZ) in Garching near Munich.

About IQM Quan­tum Computers

IQM is the pan-Euro­pean leader in buil­ding quan­tum compu­ters. IQM provi­des super­com­pu­ting data centers, labo­ra­to­ries and enter­pri­ses with on-site instal­la­tion of quan­tum compu­ters and allows full access to this hard­ware. For indus­trial custo­mers, IQM offers a quan­tum advan­tage through a unique appli­ca­tion-speci­fic co-design approach.

IQM is buil­ding the first commer­cial 54-qubit quan­tum compu­ter in Finland toge­ther with the non-profit Tech­ni­cal Rese­arch Centre of Finland (VTT), the largest contract rese­arch orga­niza­tion in Nort­hern Europe. The IQM-led consor­tium Q‑Exa is buil­ding a quan­tum compu­ter in Germany. This compu­ter will be inte­gra­ted with a high-perfor­mance super­com­pu­ter to acce­le­rate its rese­arch perfor­mance. IQM employs more than 180 people and has offices in Munich, Paris, Madrid and Espoo.
www.meetiqm.com

About World Fund

World Fund is the largest Euro­pean-focu­sed climate venture capi­tal fund and was foun­ded by Daria Saha­rova, Dani­jel Više­vić, Craig Douglas and Tim Schu­ma­cher. From energy, food, agri­cul­ture, and land use to buil­ding mate­ri­als, manu­fac­tu­ring, and trans­por­ta­tion, the World Fund is inves­t­ing in Euro­pean climate tech­no­lo­gies with a Climate Perfor­mance Poten­tial (CPP) of at least 100 million tons of CO2 emis­si­ons saved per year. As an inves­tor, the World Fund argues that start­ups with an appro­priate CPP will be among the most valuable compa­nies of the coming decade. www.worldfund.vc

About Bayern Kapital

Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, was foun­ded in 1995 as a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern on the initia­tive of the Bava­rian state govern­ment. As the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, Bayern Kapi­tal provi­des equity capi­tal to the foun­ders of inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies and inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies in Bava­ria. Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 700 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 370 million euros of venture capi­tal in around 300 inno­va­tive tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. Bayern Kapi­tal has supported the compa­nies EOS Elec­tro Opti­cal Systems, conga­tec, Morpho­Sys, voxel­jet, parcel­Lab, SimS­cale, proglove, Sirion Biotech and many others, some of which are listed on the stock exch­ange and are now market leaders in their sectors, from an early stage in the realiza­tion of their projects and also in large-volume finan­cing rounds. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable companies.

News

Wendlingen/ Valken­swaard (NL) — The Wend­lin­gen am Neckar-based CF Group, the second largest swim­ming pool manu­fac­tu­ring and equip­ment company in Europe, acqui­res the Dutch Star­line Group (“Star­line”). Both compa­nies announ­ced today the closing of the tran­sac­tion. CF Group thus increa­ses its sales by more than 12 percent and opens up new custo­mer segments in the Bene­lux market. In line with the contin­ued rapid and successful growth and the still very promi­sing outlook for CF Group, Crédit Mutuel Equity is inves­t­ing addi­tio­nal capi­tal in the company. Crédit Mutuel Equity is the inter­na­tio­nal direct invest­ment company of Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale and has alre­ady accom­pa­nied CF Group as an active mino­rity share­hol­der since the merger with FIJA in 2019.

Based in Valken­swaard, the Nether­lands, Star­line Group has been deve­lo­ping, desig­ning, manu­fac­tu­ring and distri­bu­ting private swim­ming pools, pool covers and various pool equip­ment products since 1973, with a clear focus on the luxury segment. With eight brands, the company is mainly active in the Bene­lux count­ries and exports its products to 13 other count­ries. With more than 130 employees and five produc­tion sites in the Nether­lands, Belgium and the United King­dom, Star­line 2021 gene­ra­ted sales of nearly 50 million euros.

CF Group was formed in 2019 by the merger of two family-owned compa­nies, Chemo­form (Germany) and FIJA (France), and has posi­tio­ned itself as one of the leading compa­nies in the manu­fac­ture and distri­bu­tion of equip­ment for private and public swim­ming pools and consu­ma­bles for water treat­ment. The company is repre­sen­ted in more than 40 count­ries with 15 brands and twelve produc­tion and logi­stics sites.

With the acqui­si­tion of Star­line, CF Group is expan­ding its posi­tion on the Belgian, Dutch and British markets and streng­thening its swim­ming pool cover busi­ness in parti­cu­lar. Star­line gene­ra­tes more than half of its sales in this busi­ness area and has excel­lent product know-how and exten­sive market know­ledge in this market segment. CF Group and Star­line Group expect the tran­sac­tion to create signi­fi­cant growth oppor­tu­ni­ties in cross-selling as well as poten­tial for effi­ci­ency gains in sourcing. Star­line CEO Victor de Vries will take a stake in the tran­sac­tion in order to parti­ci­pate in its further development.

Cedrik Mayer-Klenk, CEO of Chemo­form AG, said: “With this tran­sac­tion, we are conti­nuing our successful growth stra­tegy of ente­ring new markets or addi­tio­nal distri­bu­tion chan­nels by acqui­ring comple­men­tary compa­nies or long-stan­ding coope­ra­tion part­ners. Toge­ther with Star­line, we are moving into a new order of magni­tude. The basis for this step in the company’s deve­lo­p­ment is our dyna­mic orga­nic growth over the past three years and the support of Crédit Mutuel Equity, which contri­bu­ted equity, market exper­tise and profes­sio­nal advice on M&A processes.”

Sébas­tien Neiss, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Crédit Mutuel Equity in GermanySince our invest­ment almost three years ago, CF Group has grown orga­ni­cally by around 30 percent and has signi­fi­cantly conso­li­da­ted its posi­tion in the top three swim­ming pool equip­ment suppli­ers in Europe. We are of course happy to conti­nue to accom­pany this success story and are incre­asing our invest­ment for the second time since our invest­ment in 2019 in order to use it to support projects such as the acqui­si­tion of Star­line. As an inves­tor that exclu­si­vely invests equity from our banking group, we have the oppor­tu­nity to accom­pany our port­fo­lio compa­nies for as long as we wish and to let our invest­ment grow along with the company.”

Advi­sor to the transaction:

For the CF Group
M&A: Alan­tra (Wolf­ram Schmerl, Dr. Sven Harm­sen, Lode­wijk Sodder­land, Patrick Bobak)
Funding: Alan­tra (Robert von Fincken­stein, Phil­ipp Holst)
Legal: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek (Rainer Hersch­lein, Bene­dikt Raisch), Kullen Müller Zinser (Dr. Andreas Beyer)

For Star­line
M&A: Roth­schild & Co (Bastiaan Vaand­ra­ger, Fabien Lenoir, Pierre Scho­on­brodt, Tim Snelders)

About CF Group

CF Group is a leading Euro­pean company for swim­ming pool tech­no­logy, main­ten­ance and water treat­ment. The company was formed by the merger of Chemo­form AG, foun­ded in Wend­lin­gen (Germany) in 1962, and the FIJA Group, foun­ded in Brécé (France) in 1975. With its multi-brand port­fo­lio, CF Group covers the entire spec­trum from cons­truc­tion, equip­ment and main­ten­ance to clean­li­ness, hygiene and care of private and public pools. The group employs more than 1,000 people, opera­tes in more than 40 count­ries world­wide and gene­ra­tes sales of more than 300 million euros annu­ally. www.chemoform.com

About Crédit Mutuel Equity

Crédit Mutuel Equity bund­les the inter­na­tio­nal direct invest­ment busi­ness of the French banking group Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale. The subsi­diary offers medium-sized compa­nies solu­ti­ons in all areas of equity financing.

At Crédit Mutuel Equity, the focus is on the rela­ti­onship and close coope­ra­tion between the expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment team and the execu­ti­ves in the port­fo­lio compa­nies. With the long-term perspec­tive of a fund-inde­pen­dent “ever­green” approach, the company has alre­ady been successful for 40 years.

Crédit Mutuel Equity curr­ently has around 3 billion euros of equity inves­ted, and its port­fo­lio consists of around 300 compa­nies. Since 2016, the company has expan­ded its acti­vi­ties to Canada (Mont­real and Toronto), USA (New York and Boston), Germany (Frank­furt) and Switz­er­land (Geneva and Zurich). www.creditmutuel-equity.eu

About Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédérale

Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale is one of Fran­ce’s leading banks with more than 75,000 employees serving 26.7 million custo­mers. With a network of around 4,300 bran­ches, Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale offers a compre­hen­sive range of services for private custo­mers, the self-employed and compa­nies of all sizes. As one of Euro­pe’s leading banking groups, its equity amoun­ted to EUR 53.2 billion and its CET1 ratio was 18.8% as of Decem­ber 30, 2021.

The Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale is compo­sed of the Crédit Mutuel sub-asso­cia­ti­ons Centre Est Europe (Stras­bourg), Sud-Est (Lyon), Ile-de-France (Paris), Savoie-Mont Blanc (Annecy), Midi-Atlan­tique (Toulouse), Loire-Atlan­tique and Centre Ouest (Nantes), Centre (Orlé­ans), Normandy (Caen), Dauphiné-Viva­rais (Valence), Médi­ter­ra­néen (Marseille), Anjou (Angers), Massif Central (Cler­mont-Ferrand), Antil­les-Guyane (Fort-de-France) and Nord Europe (Lille).

Crédit Mutuel Alli­ance Fédé­rale also includes Caisse Fédé­rale de Crédit Mutuel, Banque Fédé­ra­tive du Crédit Mutuel (BFCM) and all its subsi­dia­ries, inclu­ding CIC, Euro-Infor­ma­tion, Assu­ran­ces du Crédit Mutuel (ACM), Targ­obank, Cofi­dis, Banque Euro­pé­enne du Crédit Mutuel (BECM), Banque de Luxem­bourg, Banque Trans­at­lan­tique and Homi­ris. www.creditmutuelalliancefederale.fr

News

Munich, Germany — AM Ventures, one of the worl­d’s leading addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring (AM) venture capi­ta­lists, was advi­sed by POELLATH on the struc­tu­ring and fund­rai­sing of its first venture capi­tal fund focu­sed on indus­trial 3D prin­ting. The fund was successfully closed at the hard cap of EUR 100 million. Inves­tors include estab­lished family offices, asset mana­gers, SMEs and multi­na­tio­nals, as well as start-up foun­ders that AM Ventures has alre­ady supported. The company will use the fund to expand its strong port­fo­lio of 17 compa­nies and further advance the indus­trial 3D prin­ting indus­try worldwide.

Foun­ded in 2021 and based in Munich, AM Ventures is a leading venture capi­tal firm in the field of indus­trial 3D prin­ting (addi­tive manu­fac­tu­ring, AM). The company has supported over 20 successful compa­nies in seven count­ries on three conti­nents. The team has exten­sive tech­no­lo­gi­cal know-how and is well networked with the most expe­ri­en­ced experts in the field. As an invest­ment part­ner, the company provi­des a world-leading ecosys­tem for sustainable invest­ment in AM and offers entre­pre­neurs access to a large pool of indus­try veterans with deca­des of engi­nee­ring, manu­fac­tu­ring and manage­ment experience.

POELLATH compre­hen­si­vely advi­sed AM Ventures on all aspects of fund struc­tu­ring, contract docu­men­ta­tion and nego­tia­ti­ons with dome­stic and foreign inves­tors with the follo­wing Berlin fund team:
— Amos Veith, LL.M. (Aber­deen) (Part­ner, Lead)
— Dr. Robert Eberius, LL.M. (Stel­len­bosch) (Coun­sel)

About POELLATH

POELLATH is a market-leading inter­na­tio­nal busi­ness and tax law firm with more than 150 lawy­ers and tax advi­sors in Berlin, Frank­furt and Munich. We stand for high-end advice on tran­sac­tions and asset manage­ment. We offer legal and tax services from a single source. In our selec­ted and highly specia­li­zed prac­tice groups, we not only know the law, but also shape best prac­tice in the market toge­ther with our clients. Natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal rankings regu­larly list our consul­tants as leading experts in their field.

We offer compre­hen­sive services in the follo­wing areas: Mergers & Acqui­si­ti­ons | Private Equity | Venture Capi­tal | Private Funds | Real Estate Tran­sac­tions | Corpo­rate and Capi­tal Markets | Finan­cing | Tax | Succes­sion and Wealth | Foun­da­ti­ons and Non-Profit Orga­niza­ti­ons | IP/IT, Distri­bu­tion and Anti­trust | Liti­ga­tion and Arbi­tra­tion. www.pplaw.de

About AM Ventures

www.amventures.com

News

Frank­furt am Main — McDer­mott Will & Emery has advi­sed Hanwha Q CELLS GmbH on the acqui­si­tion of 66% of the shares in LYNQTECH GmbH, a subsi­diary of ener­city AG (Stadt­werke Hanno­ver). LYQNTECH will conti­nue to exist as a company. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant regu­la­tory authorities.

Foun­ded in 2020, the modu­lar cloud energy plat­form LYNQTECH provi­des energy suppli­ers with digi­tal solu­ti­ons to opti­mize their sales proces­ses. With the acqui­si­tion of a majo­rity stake in LYNQTECH, Qcells conso­li­da­tes its posi­tion as a full-service provi­der of clean energy solu­ti­ons and expands its digi­tal services portfolio.

Part of the Hanwha Group since 2012, Qcells is play­ing a key role in shaping the tran­si­tion to a clean energy sector as a leading global manu­fac­tu­rer of solar products for resi­den­tial and commer­cial custo­mers. Qcells’ parent company is Hanwha Solu­ti­ons Corpo­ra­tion, a multi­na­tio­nal energy services, petro­che­mi­cal and real estate deve­lo­p­ment company head­quar­te­red in Seoul, South Korea.

The team led by Dr. Bernd Meyer-Witting and Florian Lech­ner has alre­ady recently advi­sed Hanwha Group on the acqui­si­tion of RES Médi­ter­ra­née SAS by Hanwha Solu­ti­ons Corpo­ra­tion (HSC).

Advi­sors to Hanwha Q CELLS GmbH: McDer­mott Will & Emery, Frankfurt

Dr. Bernd Meyer-Witting (Of Coun­sel), Florian Lech­ner (both Corpo­rate Law, both Lead), Stef­fen Woitz (IP/IT, Munich), Dr. Deniz Tschamm­ler (Regu­la­tory Law, Data Protec­tion, Munich), Hendrik Viaene (Anti­trust Law, Brussels), Chris­tian Krohs (Anti­trust Law, Düssel­dorf), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Clos­ter­meyer (Real Estate Law), Dr. Chris­tian Marz­lin (Corpo­rate Law, Coun­sel), Chris­toph Coenen (Finance Law), Marcus Fischer (Tax Law, Coun­sel), Dr. Thomas Gennert (Labor Law, Düssel­dorf), Carina Kant (Anti­trust Law, Coun­sel, Düssel­dorf); Asso­cia­tes: Hanne­lore Wiame, Karo­lien Van der Putten (both Anti­trust Law, both Brussels), Dr. Lea Hach­meis­ter (Regu­la­tory Law, Data Protec­tion), Tina Knecht (Real Estate Law), Michael Spirk (Finance Law), Johanna Grei­ßel (Tax Law)

News

Frank­furt a. M. — The Neur­ax­ph­arm Group has acqui­red two product port­fo­lios from Sanofi, which are marke­ted globally in over 50 count­ries. With the pending acqui­si­tion, Neur­ax­ph­arm aims to streng­then its posi­tion as a leading Euro­pean specialty phar­maceu­ti­cal company focu­sed on central nervous system disor­ders and expand its global foot­print. The acqui­si­tion of the port­fo­lios will increase Neur­ax­phar­m’s annual gross sales to appro­xi­m­ately €0.6 billion. — Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Clif­ford Chance advi­sed Neur­ax­ph­arm Group on the acqui­si­tion of the two product port­fo­lios from Sanofi.

The initial port­fo­lio includes a range of products targe­ting central nervous system disor­ders, cove­ring the areas of psych­ia­try and neuro­logy — inclu­ding the drugs Nozinan, Tran­xene, Tiapri­dal, Dogma­til and Largac­til. The second port­fo­lio includes Topal­gic and Tren­tal, two products for the treat­ment of pain and vascu­lar dise­a­ses. The drugs are used in a variety of pati­ents with diffe­rent condi­ti­ons, inclu­ding depres­sion, anxiety, psycho­sis, alco­hol depen­dence, myasthe­nia gravis and Parkin­son’s dise­ase. Both product port­fo­lios comprise 17 mole­cu­les marke­ted under 38 brands.

About Neur­ax­ph­arm

Neur­ax­ph­arm is a port­fo­lio group of the private equity fund Perm­ira. Clif­ford Chance had alre­ady advi­sed global private equity firm Perm­ira on the acqui­si­tion of Neur­ax­ph­arm Group in 2020.

Advi­sor Neur­ax­ph­arm Group: Clif­ford Chance
Led by part­ner Dr. Jörg Rhiel (Corporate/Private Equity, Frankfurt).

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.

News

Tübin­gen — SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment has recei­ved capi­tal commit­ments of over EUR 220 million for its now sixth fund at first closing. Faster than expec­ted, the Tübin­gen-based health­care inves­tor has thus alre­ady excee­ded its target of 200 million euros at the first closing of the subscrip­tion. The sixth gene­ra­tion of SHS funds also targets majo­rity and mino­rity invest­ments in the health­care indus­try. 12–15 enga­ge­ments are plan­ned. Inves­tors can still parti­ci­pate in SHS VI until the “final closing”.

As part of the place­ment of the sixth gene­ra­tion of funds, the inves­tor base was further inter­na­tio­na­li­zed. More than half of the SHS VI inves­tors have alre­ady inves­ted in prede­ces­sor funds, and some of them have signi­fi­cantly increased their subscrip­tion to the new gene­ra­tion of funds. SHS attri­bu­tes the strong demand to its unique selling propo­si­tion as a sector specia­list and the successful tran­sac­tions of the last fund generations.

“We would like to thank our inves­tors for their trust,” conti­nues Huber­tus Leon­hardt (photo © SHS), the SHS part­ner and mana­ging direc­tor respon­si­ble for fund­rai­sing. “With our sixth gene­ra­tion of funds, we are once again provi­ding access to private equity in the growing health­care market. In addi­tion to fund perfor­mance, our sector exper­tise and access to tran­sac­tions are key factors for our inves­tors. In addi­tion, our ESG and inves­tor rela­ti­ons exper­tise, as well as our range of co-invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, are also rele­vant to many of our clients. We are very plea­sed that with fund gene­ra­tion six we have been able to further inter­na­tio­na­lize our inves­tor base and expand it to include very pres­ti­gious addresses.”

The more than 60 inves­tors in the SHS VI Fund come from the fund of funds, insu­rance compa­nies, pension funds, foun­da­ti­ons, family offices, banks, health­care groups, church inves­tors and entre­pre­neurs. The largest inves­tors include, for exam­ple, the Euro­pean Invest­ment Fund, the Scan­di­na­vian foun­da­tion Reald­ania, the Swiss Hels­ana Healt­hIn­vest, the Baden-Würt­tem­berg-based L‑Bank and major family offices. Further­more, the SHS invest­ment team itself has inves­ted significantly.

Focus on growth finan­cing and corpo­rate succession

“We see in our deal flow a variety of fast-growing health­care compa­nies, both young and estab­lished, that are candi­da­tes for invest­ment by the new fund. Stric­ter regu­la­tion and a high need for inno­va­tion and inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion are leading to incre­asing capi­tal requi­re­ments in the indus­try. For other compa­nies, it is a matter of a successful hando­ver to the next gene­ra­tion. Here too, as an expe­ri­en­ced part­ner, we can provide compa­nies with targe­ted and compe­tent support, both with mino­rity and majo­rity share­hol­dings,” says Uwe Stein­ba­cher, Mana­ging Part­ner at SHS.

The fund focu­ses on corpo­rate tran­sac­tions of up to EUR 250 million. The fund can refi­nance the corre­spon­ding equity tran­ches with up to EUR 50 million from its own resour­ces. In case of higher equity requi­re­ments, SHS increa­ses the volu­mes by co-invest­ments of inves­tors inves­ted in the fund or syndi­ca­tes with friendly private equity houses. Expan­sion and inno­va­tion finan­cing, succes­sion situa­tions and share­hol­der chan­ges repre­sent the focus of the invest­ments sought. Majo­rity and mino­rity share­hol­dings are possible.

About SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment mbH

“SHS, an indus­try inves­tor, is a private equity firm foun­ded in 1993 that makes invest­ments in health­care compa­nies in Europe. The focus of invest­ments is on expan­sion finan­cing, share­hol­der chan­ges and succes­sion situa­tions. “Buil­ding Euro­pean Health­care Cham­pi­ons” is the invest­ment philo­so­phy accor­ding to which SHS finan­ces and deve­lops port­fo­lio compa­nies. The Tübin­gen-based inves­tor is taking both mino­rity and majo­rity stakes. SHS funds’ natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors include pension funds, funds of funds, foun­da­ti­ons, family offices, stra­te­gic inves­tors, entre­pre­neurs and the SHS manage­ment team. The equity invest­ment of the AIFM-regis­tered company is up to EUR 50 million. Volu­mes beyond this can be imple­men­ted with a network of co-inves­tors. When making invest­ment decis­i­ons, SHS places strong empha­sis on conside­ring ESG aspects and is ther­e­fore commit­ted to the UN PRI guide­lines. SHS is curr­ently inves­t­ing from its sixth fund, laun­ched in 2022, with a volume of more than EUR 200 million. www.shs-capital.eu

News

Eindhoven/Bochum — Emproof B.V. has successfully closed a €2 million seed finan­cing round, enab­ling the company to further expand its product range and serve custo­mers in Europe and the US. The finan­cing round is led by Dutch invest­ment company TIIN Capi­tal through its Dutch Secu­rity Tech­Fund, toge­ther with German High-Tech Grün­der­fonds and French venture capi­tal fund Cyber Impact.

Emproof has deve­lo­ped a unique tech­no­logy to protect resource-cons­trai­ned (I)IoT and embedded devices from cyber-attacks and IP devia­ti­ons. With redu­ced effort and easy inte­gra­tion into custo­mers’ firm­ware deve­lo­p­ment proces­ses, Empro­of’s NYX Suite makes a signi­fi­cant diffe­rence for OEMs with expo­sed IoT devices across multi­ple industries.

Most embedded and indus­trial IoT devices have mini­mal memory and compu­ting power to keep their manu­fac­tu­ring costs as low as possi­ble. There is ther­e­fore little scope for addi­tio­nal safety precau­ti­ons. Conse­quently, exis­ting firm­ware hardening solu­ti­ons are not suita­ble, which means that those very devices are not protec­ted against attacks from hackers. As a result, embedded systems can be easily hacked in large numbers and used as botnets, for crypto mining, as an entry point into back-end systems, or simply to extract and reverse engi­neer intellec­tual property or trade secrets that OEMs have spent milli­ons deve­lo­ping. The result: redu­ced compe­ti­tive advan­tage, lower returns on invest­ment in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment, product liabi­lity claims, and repu­ta­tio­nal damage.

To address these issues, Emproof has deve­lo­ped the NYX soft­ware suite that prevents reverse engi­nee­ring and firm­ware tampe­ring for Arm and Intel Corpo­ra­tion archi­tec­tures, with RISC V Inter­na­tio­nal support coming soon. Inte­gra­tion as a post-compi­ler step in any firm­ware deve­lo­p­ment pipe­line enables a fast and smooth start for the custo­mer. The ability to upgrade the secu­rity of field devices via an over-the-air update is also extre­mely valuable.

Over the next 12 months, the team will focus on road­map capa­bi­li­ties and func­tional safety certi­fi­ca­tion to meet requi­re­ments in key markets such as aero­space, auto­mo­tive and medi­cal devices.

About emproof B.V.

Emproof provi­des inno­va­tive secu­rity solu­ti­ons for embedded systems that address multi­ple layers of the soft­ware secu­rity stack. The company’s auto­ma­ted solu­ti­ons not only prevent cyber attacks such as the explo­ita­tion of soft­ware vulnerabi­li­ties, but also product piracy and tampe­ring. Empro­of’s solu­ti­ons address where tradi­tio­nal methods fail, helping custo­mers reduce costly risks asso­cia­ted with cyber attacks and increase confi­dence in IoT devices. www.emproof.com

News

Zurich (Switz­er­land) — b‑rayZ AG, a spin-off of the Univer­sity Hospi­tal Zurich (USZ) based in Schlie­ren (Switz­er­land), has closed an over­sub­scri­bed Series A finan­cing round of over four million Swiss francs with leading inves­tors from the life scien­ces and IT sectors. The finan­cing round was led by LifeCare Part­ners, Prot­agon AG and Conver­gence Part­ners and supported by the Ecken­stein-Geigy Foun­da­tion, the Swis­spre­neur asso­cia­tion and seve­ral private inves­tors. — Cancer diagno­stics should thus be signi­fi­cantly impro­ved with AI technology.

Foun­ded in 2019 by Prof. Dr. Dr. Andreas Boss (senior physi­cian at USZ Radio­logy), Prof. Dr. Cris­tina Rossi (data analyst and MR physi­cist) and PD Dr. Alex­an­der Cirit­sis (AI medi­cal scien­tist and data analyst), b‑rayZ is deve­lo­ping a unique and revo­lu­tio­nary AI-based plat­form to assist radio­lo­gists in the early detec­tion of breast cancer. The b‑box system from b‑rayZ has a CE mark and is used commer­ci­ally in leading breast centers in Europe. With the funds from the Series A round, b‑ray‑Z intends to expand distri­bu­tion in addi­tio­nal Euro­pean markets and achieve FDA appr­oval for the United States. It also plans to deve­lop new products for gyneco­lo­gists and radio­lo­gists based on its proprie­tary AI platform.

AI from b‑rayZ revo­lu­tio­ni­zes radio­lo­gi­cal diagnostics 

Low image quality and inade­quate diagno­sis in dense breast limit radio­lo­gists’ ability to diagnose breast cancer at a very early stage. b‑rayZ has deve­lo­ped an AI-based plat­form that supports the daily work of radio­lo­gists in mammo­gra­phy by asses­sing image quality and breast density in real time. Cris­tina Rossi, CEO and co-foun­der of b‑rayZ comm­ents, “Our AI tech­no­logy helps to signi­fi­cantly improve the quality of breast cancer diagno­stics by analy­zing mammo­grams in real time. The next gene­ra­tion product enables auto­ma­tic detec­tion of early-stage lesi­ons on mammo­gra­phy and ultra­sound, which are often missed or misdia­gno­sed in breast cancer pati­ents. Our easy-to-imple­ment AI plat­form is not only suita­ble for all imaging moda­li­ties in breast cancer, but also for all onco­logy appli­ca­ti­ons in radiology.”

Every 14 seconds, a pati­ent is diagno­sed with breast cancer

In 2020, more than 2.3 million women world­wide were diagno­sed with breast cancer and 685,000 of them died from it. “Every 14 seconds, a woman is diagno­sed with breast cancer some­where in the world. Since 2008, the global inci­dence of breast cancer has increased by more than 20% and, regrett­ably, the morta­lity rate has increased by 14%. With our plat­form, we can save thou­sands of lives through the earliest possi­ble diagno­sis and subse­quent support in the selec­tion of a perso­na­li­zed therapy,” Cris­tina Rossi contin­ued. The b‑rayZ system not only enables quality-control­led mammo­gra­phy to signi­fi­cantly reduce late diagno­ses, but also saves more than 25% time in the process and nearly 50% of previous quality assu­rance costs. The effec­ti­ve­ness of b‑rayZ’s deep lear­ning algo­rithms in daily diagno­stics has alre­ady been clini­cally proven with more than 35,000 pati­ents successfully exami­ned by leading radiologists.

“When we met the team at b‑rayZ, we were imme­dia­tely won over by their exper­tise and tech­no­lo­gi­cal approach. The deve­lo­ped AI plat­form is suita­ble for rapid and cost-effec­tive diagno­sis of a wide range of cancers. In addi­tion, we are abso­lut­ely fasci­na­ted by b‑rayZ’s unique capa­bi­li­ties to create a revo­lu­tio­nary virtual market­place for the exch­ange and preser­va­tion of radio­lo­gi­cal know­ledge and exper­tise. We are convin­ced of the long-term success of the b‑rayZ soft­ware plat­form as well as the highly expe­ri­en­ced and enthu­si­a­stic manage­ment team,” adds Dr. Gerhard Ries, Mana­ging Part­ner of LifeCare Part­ners.

“b‑rayZ is beco­ming an emer­ging leader in AI-powered cancer diagno­stics and work­flow SaaS. What sets the company apart from many compe­ti­tors is its deep clini­cal back­ground and exclu­sive access to high-quality data. The SaaS plat­form will enable impro­ved cancer care and help reduce the cost of diagno­sis and therapy,” added Mikael von Euw (photo © Conver­gence Part­ners), deal lead at Conver­gence Part­ners.
“We inves­ted in b‑rayZ because we believe the importance of digi­tal health is growing globally, they have one of the best AI teams in the world, but also because they have such a deep under­stan­ding of radio­logy and the clini­cal vali­da­tion requi­red to usher in this new era of cancer diagno­sis,” explains Seve­rin Weiss, Chair­man and foun­der of Prot­agon AG.

About b‑rayZ

Incor­rect breast cancer diagno­ses due to human error harm pati­ents, expose physi­ci­ans to high liabi­lity risk, and increase health­care costs. b‑rayZ is trans­forming breast cancer diagno­stics with its breakth­rough AI tech­no­logy for faster and better diagno­ses. b‑rayZ’s success is driven by a commit­ment to saving women’s lives through early breast cancer detec­tion. Every woman, ever­y­where. www.b‑rayz.ch.

About Conver­gence Part­ners AG

Conver­gence Part­ners AG (“Conver­gence”) is a Swiss Health­Tech venture capi­tal firm actively support­ing the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of its port­fo­lio compa­nies in the four largest health­care markets USA, China, India and Germany. Conver­gence, which has a presence in Switz­er­land, Germany, Spain and Hong Kong, was foun­ded in 2018 by expe­ri­en­ced health­care indus­try play­ers and venture capi­ta­lists with the aim of combi­ning tech­no­lo­gi­cal excel­lence in the EU with great inter­na­tio­nal scale-up and exit poten­tial. Conver­gence focu­ses on later-stage invest­ments in digi­tal health, medi­cal devices and diagno­stics. Current major invest­ment themes include mental health, women’s health, and compu­ta­tio­nal biology. www.convergence-partners.ch.

About LifeCare Part­ners GmbH

LifeCare Part­ners is an inde­pen­dent invest­ment advi­sory firm that provi­des finan­cing to private and public life science compa­nies. LifeCare Part­ners addres­ses the entire life science indus­try with a special focus on medi­cal tech­no­logy, diagno­stics, biophar­maceu­ti­cals, food and nutri­tion, indus­trial biotech­no­logy, bioma­te­ri­als, e‑health and bioen­ergy. The LifeCare Part­ners team, based in Basel, Switz­er­land, has successfully inves­ted in more than 50 life science compa­nies in recent years, a large number of which are alre­ady listed on the stock exch­ange or have been acqui­red by leading life science compa­nies. www.lifecare.partners.

About Prot­agon AG

Prot­agon AG is an invest­ment company that focu­ses on seed and growth finan­cing. The digi­tal revo­lu­tion is chan­ging all indus­tries at a rapid pace and promi­ses solid returns with sustained momen­tum for years to come. This under­pins Prot­agon’s belief that tradi­tio­nal compa­nies will conti­nue to be chal­len­ged by new digi­tal start­ups, with tech­no­logy compa­nies incre­asingly taking the helm. www.protagongroup.com.

News

Zug (Switz­er­land) — Never­mi­ned AG, a Web3 company provi­ding tools for reading, writing and owning digi­tal assets, announ­ced its first invest­ment round of €3 million, led by Signa­ture Ventures and Poly­mor­phic Capi­tal. The Never­mi­ned plat­form consists of modu­lar solu­ti­ons that make it easy for users to create and mone­tize digi­tal assets and parti­ci­pate in the read-write-own vision of Web3.

The plat­form provi­des the foun­da­ti­ons for buil­ding digi­tal ecosys­tems with compon­ents such as Toke­niza­tion Engine, Market­place Crea­tor, Royal­ties Engine, Decen­tra­li­zed Access Control, DAO Frame­work and DISC, or Data In-Situ Compu­ta­tion, for remote computation.

Don Gossen, CEO of Never­mi­ned, explains, “The best Inter­net is the one that ever­yone can access and own. And that is what Never­mi­ned enables people to do. When it comes to data rela­ted to Web3, our pedi­gree speaks for itself — our team has been working with cutting-edge tech­no­logy for over 20 years, first in Big Data and now in Web3. With these buil­ding blocks, we can help you realize your vision. I would argue that we are the best team in the world doing what we do.”

Accor­ding to a new report by Grand View Rese­arch, the global block­chain tech­no­logy market is expec­ted to reach $1,431 billion by 2030. Given this market oppor­tu­nity and its solid, proven tech­no­logy, Never­mi­ned will use this capi­tal increase to:

Become more complete and scalable by driving its product road­map: Never­mi­ned will enhance its digi­tal asset deve­lo­p­ment plat­form that makes the Web3 acces­si­ble by stream­li­ning the crea­tion, mone­tiza­tion and manage­ment of distri­bu­ted digi­tal assets. Key projects include:
● Company: A global energy company used the plat­form to estab­lish a peer-to-peer market­place for trading carbon credits.
● Crea­tive: Auto­no­mies uses Never­mi­ned to build a music NFT plat­form and DAO that enables a more equi­ta­ble distri­bu­tion of value between musi­ci­ans, labels, and collectors.
● Science: In a world first, Vita­DAO used Never­mi­ned to toke­nize the intellec­tual property of scien­ti­fic rese­arch conduc­ted by the Schei­bye-Knud­sen Lab in Copenhagen.

Improve acces­si­bi­lity by acce­le­ra­ting global presence: To drive busi­ness growth and a better custo­mer expe­ri­ence, Never­mi­ned will streng­then its presence in key areas such as product, engi­nee­ring, marke­ting and community.

Easier to use by expan­ding the breadth and depth of the part­ner ecosys­tem: Never­mi­ned will form both tech­ni­cal and crea­tive part­ner­ships to support its mission. In addi­tion to deepe­ning part­ner­ships with initia­ti­ves like Auto­no­mies, an NFT music plat­form that enables artists to become participants.

We only invest in outstan­ding teams that are the back­bone of the decen­tra­li­zed future,” said Signa­ture CEO Juliane Hahn. “We see a lot of start­ups trying to combine data with block­chains. Never­mi­ned is the first company to under­stand the comple­xity and provide concrete solu­ti­ons at the inter­sec­tion of data and Web3. In the future, every data-driven company will need the ability to trans­form its data silos into data ecosys­tems. Never­mi­ned provi­des the complete product stack to do just that.”

“We are very impres­sed with the Never­mi­ned team,” says Vitaly Spassky, foun­der of Poly­mor­phic Capi­tal. “They have both the vision and the tech­ni­cal talent and pedi­gree to make it happen. For us, digi­tal assets are a criti­cal buil­ding block for the decen­tra­li­zed web. And the Never­mi­ned plat­form makes it super easy for teams and projects to inte­grate Web3 tech­no­logy. We’re very exci­ted to see what people will build with Nevermined.”

Never­mi­ned star­ted as an incu­ba­tion project within Keyko AG to solve problems rela­ted to data sharing through toke­niza­tion and smart contract gate­ways. From there, it evol­ved from a data-centric solu­tion to a decen­tra­li­zed digi­tal asset solu­tion with much broa­der applicability.

About Never­mi­ned

Never­mi­ned is a Web3 company that provi­des tools to read, write and own your digi­tal assets. It was foun­ded by CEO Don Gossen, CTO Aitor Argo­ma­niz and CIO Dimi­tri De Jonghe. They met while foun­ding Ocean Proto­col, the worl­d’s first decen­tra­li­zed data market­place. In 2019, they foun­ded Keyko out of a shared belief in the power of digi­tal ecosys­tems. They helped a variety of orga­niza­ti­ons deve­lop Web3 ecosys­tems that are coll­ec­tively valued at $3 billion. In 2022, they deci­ded to spin off Never­mi­ned as a stan­da­lone tech­no­logy platform.

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About Signa­ture Ventures

Signa­ture Ventures is an early-stage venture capi­tal fund that invests in block­chain, distri­bu­ted ledger tech­no­logy, and Web3 tech­no­logy. The fund is based in Germany and invests in pre-seed to Series A, globally with a focus on Europe. Signa­ture Ventures is led by Juliane Hahn, Foun­ding Part­ner, and Dr. Georg Stri­cker, Tech Part­ner. They combine an exten­sive track record in VC invest­ments with deep block­chain expertise.

About Poly­mor­phic Capital

Poly­mor­phic Capi­tal is a venture capi­tal firm that invests globally in teams shaping the future of the Inter­net with decen­tra­li­zed proto­cols and digi­tal assets. The company specia­li­zes in infra­struc­ture, finance and gaming.

Trans­la­ted with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

 

News

Munich — Gimv has the ambi­tion to build a group of instal­la­tion compa­nies and coope­ra­tes with Lenaerts/LVR and ABN Clima­tiza­tion. Toge­ther, they are seeking further acqui­si­ti­ons to create a leading company specia­li­zing in inte­gra­ted B2B multi-tech­no­logy projects.

Lenaerts/LVR and ABN Clima­tiza­tion form the foun­da­tion of the new group. Lenaerts/LVR (Houtha­len-Helch­te­ren — www.lenaertsnv.be, €16 million turno­ver, 45 employees) was foun­ded in 1981 and has become an estab­lished player in the world of indus­trial instal­la­tion, with a focus on elec­tri­cal engi­nee­ring. ABN Clima­tiza­tion (Muns­ter­bil­zen — www.abn.be, €11 million turno­ver, 47 employees) was foun­ded in 1996 and specia­li­zes in retail, office and indus­trial HVAC.

To realize the energy tran­si­tion, there is a growing need to make buil­dings more energy effi­ci­ent, elec­trify heating and mobi­lity, and imple­ment new tech­no­lo­gies and busi­ness models. In this context, there is room for a large instal­la­tion company that offers cross-tech­no­logy solu­ti­ons. Brin­ging toge­ther diffe­rent busi­nesses will enable acce­le­ra­ted invest­ment in digi­tiza­tion, auto­ma­tion and talent manage­ment to better serve custo­mers. The current owners of Lenaerts/LVR and ABN Clima­tiza­tion will reinvest in the new group and remain enga­ged in their respec­tive busi­nesses. They will actively support the further expan­sion of the instal­la­tion company. The group is led by Geert Fostier, who has previous buy-and-build expe­ri­ence in the sector.

Ilse Lenaerts, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Lenaerts & LVR, says: “We want to prepare our company for the fast-chan­ging future that lies ahead. Crea­ting syner­gies within this new group will provide tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties for us and for future members of the group. This will also allow us to focus more on the resi­li­ence and well-being of the driving force in our busi­ness, our people.”

Rosa­line Wijnen & Jo Nelis­sen, foun­ders of ABN Clima­tiza­tion, state, “We stron­gly believe that ABN Clima­tiza­tion is guaran­teed sustainable growth with this inno­va­tive inte­gra­ted model that goes beyond HVAC alone. Gimv offers ABN Clima­tiza­tion the oppor­tu­nity to be at the fore­front of the energy tran­si­tion and deve­lop our inno­va­tive products in a broa­der context.”

Geert Fostier, CEO of the new group, added: “In the context of the energy tran­si­tion and incre­asing tech­no­lo­gi­cal comple­xity, custo­mers are looking for indus­trial part­ners who can offer an inte­gra­ted concept around elec­tri­cal engi­nee­ring and HVAC and take the burden off them comple­tely. We are plea­sed that with Lenaerts and ABN Clima­tiza­tion we have laid a promi­sing foun­da­tion for a new group that will enable us to successfully meet tomor­ro­w’s social and tech­no­lo­gi­cal trends.”

Ruben Monbal­lieu (photo © Gimv), Sustainable Cities Part­ner at Gimv, summa­ri­zes: “We are convin­ced that we need strong multi-tech­no­logy instal­lers to realize the energy tran­si­tion. Lenaerts and ABN Clima­tiza­tion form a strong base for conso­li­da­tion in the frag­men­ted sector of tech­ni­cal instal­la­tion compa­nies. We have the ambi­tion to further expand this new group through addi­tio­nal acqui­si­ti­ons. We look forward to reali­zing this vision toge­ther with the manage­ment. In addi­tion, at Gimv Sustainable Cities, we can draw on our expe­ri­ence in Germany, where we are buil­ding an “e‑group.”

This new group will be part of Gimv’s Sustainable Cities plat­form, which focu­ses on B2B services and sustaina­bi­lity in various sectors. Climate change and urba­niza­tion are important drivers of busi­ness growth in these sectors.

 

News

Zug (Switz­er­land) — Part­ners Group, a leading global private markets firm, announ­ces the appoint­ment of Wolf-Henning Schei­der as Part­ner and Head of Private Equity. Mr. Schei­der will be based at the company’s head­quar­ters in Baar-Zug, Switz­er­land. Mr. Schei­der to replace David Layton, Part­ners Group’s Chief Execu­tive Offi­cer (“CEO”), as Head of Private Equity. Mr. Layton had retai­ned leader­ship of the private equity divi­sion after being named co-CEO in 2018 and sole CEO in 2021.

Mr. Schei­der is curr­ently CEO and Chair­man of the Board of Manage­ment of the ZF Group, a global
Tech­no­logy company that manu­fac­tures systems for passen­ger cars, commer­cial vehic­les and indus­trial tech­no­logy and gene­ra­tes sales of over 38 billion euros.
Previously, he served as CEO and Chair­man of the Manage­ment Board of the MAHLE Group. Mr. Schei­der began his career at Robert Bosch in 1987 and later became a member of the company’s Board of Management.

At Part­ners Group, Mr. Schei­der will focus speci­fi­cally on the firm’s control private equity port­fo­lio, which is focu­sed on four verti­cals: Goods & Products, Health & Life, Services and Tech­no­logy. This port­fo­lio includes more than 100 compa­nies in 23 count­ries and and employs more than 250,000 people as of March 31, 2022.

David Layton, Part­ner and CEO of Part­ners Group, says: “We are deligh­ted to welcome Wolf to Part­ners Group. While the term ‘private equity’ conju­res up a Wall Street image for some, our private equity approach today is about buil­ding busi­nesses — it’s about entre­pre­neu­rial leader­ship, strategy,
opera­tio­nal excel­lence and culture. With more than three deca­des of senior manage­ment expe­ri­ence, Wolf is ideally posi­tio­ned to deepen the opera­tio­nal exper­tise that under­lies our trans­for­ma­tive invest­ment efforts.”

Wolf-Henning Schei­der, comm­ents: “After a long career in indus­try leading compa­nies to success, I am deligh­ted to have the oppor­tu­nity to contri­bute my expe­ri­ence to Part­ners Group’s broad port­fo­lio. I look forward to working with the impres­sive private equity team to execute the firm’s stra­tegy of trans­for­ma­tive inves­t­ing. Part­ners Group’s empha­sis on entre­pre­neu­rial owner­ship as a driver of invest­ment perfor­mance means that Part­ners Group places a high value on opera­tio­nal experience.

With its unique opera­ting model and strong track record, Part­ners Group Part­ners Group has attrac­ted a number of top opera­tors to its invest­ment teams. The firm recently announ­ced the appoint­ment of Ben Breier as Part­ner and Head of the U.S. Private Equity Health & Life indus­try verti­cal. Prior to joining Part­ners Group, Mr. Breier had many years of expe­ri­ence in the health­care sector,
most recently as CEO of Kind­red Health­care, one of the largest provi­ders of health­care services in the United States.

Stef­fen Meis­ter, Execu­tive Chair­man of the Board, Part­ners Group, added: “At Part­ners Group, we believe that the public and private markets are swap­ping roles and that the private market will be the one respon­si­ble for the growth and sustaina­bi­lity of the real economy in the future. As the indus­try grows into this role, we can learn from successful indus­trial and tech­no­logy conglo­me­ra­tes that share the seve­ral charac­te­ristics with today’s private market compa­nies and their diver­si­fied asset port­fo­lios. The best compa­nies are charac­te­ri­zed by stra­te­gic rigor, indus­trial logic and opera­tio­nal value crea­tion — all criti­cal tools for buil­ding busi­nesses. For this reason, we selec­tively recruit expe­ri­en­ced employees from market-leading compa­nies into manage­ment posi­ti­ons within our invest­ment busi­ness. We welcome Wolf and Ben to Part­ners Group and look forward to working with them.”

About Part­ners Group

Part­ners Group is a leading global private markets firm. Since 1996, the firm has inves­ted over USD 170 billion in private equity, private real estate, private debt and private infra­struc­ture on behalf of its clients around the world. Part­ners Group is a commit­ted, respon­si­ble inves­tor and stri­ves to
through active parti­ci­pa­tion in and deve­lo­p­ment of growing compa­nies, attractive
Real estate and important infra­struc­ture. With over $127 billion in assets under manage­ment as of Decem­ber 31, 2021, Part­ners Group mana­ges a broad range of insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors, sove­reign wealth funds sove­reign wealth funds, family offices and indi­vi­du­als around the world. The company employs more than 1,500
profes­sio­nals in 20 offices world­wide and has regio­nal head­quar­ters in Baar-Zug, Switzerland;
Denver, USA, and Singa­pore. The company has been listed on the SIX Swiss Exch­ange since 2006 (symbol: PGHN). www.partnersgroup.com

News

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.

News

Bonn/ Luxem­bourg — ECBF invests in its 8th port­fo­lio company Biosyn­tia ApS from Denmark. Biosyn­tia is a precis­ion fermen­ta­tion company focu­sed on repla­cing a fossil-based produc­tion process with a bio-based process for products such as vitamins and other ingre­di­ents. ECBF joins Novo Seeds and Sofin­nova Part­ners in the share­hol­der struc­ture and leads the current round of 11.5 million euros

Biosyn­tia has closed its EUR 11.5 million Series B round. The indus­trial biotech company provi­des ingre­di­ents from nature on a large scale in a cost-effec­tive and sustainable manner. Using advan­ced biotech­no­logy and proprie­tary R&D tools and know­ledge, the company is deve­lo­ping unique precis­ion fermen­ta­tion proces­ses to replace fossil alter­na­ti­ves. The company’s vision is to deve­lop a natu­ral and envi­ron­men­tally friendly produc­tion process for essen­tial nutri­tio­nal active ingre­di­ents that redu­ces the use of petro­che­mi­cal proces­ses and has a posi­tive impact on the envi­ron­ment. Today, the company has seve­ral commer­cial part­ner­ships, inclu­ding colla­bo­ra­ti­ons with major market play­ers such as Givau­dan and WACKER.

The Euro­pean Circu­lar Bioe­co­nomy Fund supports Biosyntia

Estab­lished in 2020, the ECBF fund (www.ecbf.vc) provi­des finan­cial support to compa­nies deve­lo­ping inno­va­tive tech­no­lo­gies, circu­lar busi­ness models and sustainable, bio-based products. This includes the indus­trial BioTech company Biosyn­tia, which produ­ces nutri­tio­nal psycho­logy active ingre­di­ents sustain­ably and natu­rally. The produc­tion of these active ingre­di­ents, such as biotin, has so far been domi­na­ted by the use of petro­che­mi­cal proces­ses. Using biotech­no­logy and proprie­tary know­ledge and tools from rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment, the company deve­lops unique precis­ion fermen­ta­tion proces­ses to replace fossil resources.

The €11.5 million finan­cing round was secu­red through the invest­ment of ECBF and the two exis­ting inves­tors Sofin­nova Part­ners and Novo Seeds, the early-stage invest­ment and start-up team of Novo Holdings A/S.

Finan­cing enables expan­sion of product range and start of production
Biosyn­tia intends to use the Series B finan­cing to expand its product range on the one hand and to start the produc­tion phase of sustain­ably produ­ced nutri­tio­nal active ingre­di­ents on the other. The first product to be commer­cia­li­zed is a bio-based biotin (vitamin B7) that can be used in dietary supple­ments, food and beauty products.

“Our team is really proud of the reco­gni­tion this invest­ment brings. The invest­ment enables us to finally offer our custo­mers the first and only natu­ral as well as sustainable alter­na­tive to the nutri­tio­nal active ingre­di­ents available to them today,” says Martin Plam­bech, CEO of Biosyn­tia, and conti­nues: “With ECBF joining inves­tors Sofin­nova Part­ners and Novo Seeds, we are impro­ving an alre­ady strong inves­tor base. Combi­ned with our promi­sing ingre­di­ent port­fo­lio, we are poised to create a new global fermen­ta­tion-based ingre­di­ent manu­fac­tu­rer that can chall­enge today’s incumbents.”

“We are very exci­ted to streng­then ECBF’s indus­trial biotech­no­logy port­fo­lio by part­ne­ring with Biosyn­tia and its current inves­tors to create a sustainable trans­for­ma­tion that has a very strong commer­cial base. Vitamins and other ingre­di­ents should be produ­ced from bio-based and not fossil sources, which unfort­u­na­tely is mostly not the case today. Biosyn­tia is in a promi­sing posi­tion to change this, start­ing with its B vitamin programs, where the company is alre­ady a tech­no­logy leader,” said Jowita Sewer­ska, invest­ment direc­tor at ECBF.

About the Euro­pean Circu­lar Bioe­co­nomy Fund (ECBF).

The Euro­pean Circu­lar Bioe­co­nomy Fund (ECBF) (www.ecbf.vc) invests growth capi­tal in ambi­tious and visio­nary entre­pre­neurs and encou­ra­ges private and public inves­tors to support the deve­lo­p­ment of late-stage bioe­co­nomy compa­nies. The fund aims to make sustainable invest­ments in our future and acce­le­rate the tran­si­tion from a fossil-based to a circu­lar, bio-based economy. The ECBF, which is based in Bonn and has a total fund volume of EUR 300 million, to which the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) has contri­bu­ted EUR 100 million, will be an important finan­cial instru­ment for achie­ving the goals of the Euro­pean Green Deal, inclu­ding making Europe climate neutral by 2050.

About Biosyn­tia

Biosyn­tia (www.biosyntia.com) is an indus­trial biotech company that deve­lops bioba­sed manu­fac­tu­ring proces­ses and brings all mission-criti­cal capa­bi­li­ties in-house — from micro­bial deve­lo­p­ment to fermen­ta­tion opti­miza­tion, product puri­fi­ca­tion, formu­la­tion and distri­bu­tion. The company today consists of 20 scien­tists and busi­ness deve­lo­pers working from Biosyn­tia’s labo­ra­tory and offices in Copen­ha­gen, Denmark.
Biosyn­tia focu­ses prima­rily on deve­lo­ping more natu­ral and sustainable proces­ses for active ingre­di­ents used in the beauty and nutri­tion indus­tries, such as vitamins, anti­oxi­dants and simi­lar ingre­di­ents. The company has deve­lo­ped proprie­tary tech­no­lo­gies such as Biosyn­the­tic Selec­tions™ that drama­ti­cally reduce the risk, cost and time requi­red to deve­lop fermen­ta­tion proces­ses. The company has recei­ved more than 15 reco­gni­tion awards, inclu­ding one of the most inno­va­tive SMEs in Europe.

News

Munich — The share­hol­ders of Munich-based mobileX AG, a leading provi­der of soft­ware solu­ti­ons for Field Service Manage­ment (FSM), have sold 100% of their shares to Solva­res Group, a port­fo­lio company of Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG, Frank­furt am Main. mobileX has been a premium provi­der in the FSM market for over 20 years and supports medium-sized and large compa­nies with its deploy­ment plan­ning and mobile solu­ti­ons for tech­ni­cal custo­mer service and maintenance.

The tran­sac­tion

mobileX AG, foun­ded in Munich in 2000, is one of the German pioneers as a provi­der of field service manage­ment soft­ware solu­ti­ons. Over 12,000 users world­wide use soft­ware products from mobileX. The FSM market itself is growing about 15% p.a. and is esti­ma­ted to exceed $7 billion by 2027. Proven­tis Part­ners has been enga­ged by the Company and its share­hol­ders to provide a stra­te­gic part­ner for mobileX to address growth oppor­tu­ni­ties as they arise, both geogra­phi­cally and sectorally.

The Solva­res Group won the struc­tu­red, global process. The Solva­res Group, a port­fo­lio company of Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG (DBAG) and the DBAG Expan­sion Capi­tal Fund (ECF), which it advi­ses, is the Euro­pean market leader for resource opti­miza­tion and was formed from the mergers of FLS, portatour, Städt­ler and opheo. mobileX is the fifth acqui­si­tion since DBAG and DBAG ECF joined the company.
The decisive factors were both the stra­te­gic and tech­ni­cal fit and the cultu­ral fit between the two compa­nies. The result is that the manage­ment board of mobileX remains comple­tely on board to shape the joint perspec­tive for mobileX in the Solva­res Group.

Hannes Heck­ner, CEO of mobileX AG, says: “We would like to thank the entire Proven­tis team for their empa­thy with our special requi­re­ments, their nego­tia­ting skills as well as their commit­ment, helpful­ness and avai­la­bi­lity during the entire course of the project. Espe­ci­ally as an entre­pre­neur going through such a process for the first time, it has more than proved its worth for us to be able to fall back on the know­ledge and many years of expe­ri­ence of the Proven­tis team. This has given us a sense of secu­rity and sove­reig­nty in every phase of the project.”
“We would like to thank the mobileX team for the plea­sant coope­ra­tion over the last months” says Jan Pörsch­mann, Mana­ging Part­ner at Proven­tis Part­ners, “this was a chal­len­ging tran­sac­tion with many facets. And it was worth it! We are more than confi­dent that the symbio­sis of the two compa­nies will result in a market leader with German roots for global FSM applications.”

The role of Proven­tis Partners
Proven­tis Part­ners acted as exclu­sive M&A advi­sor to the share­hol­ders of mobileX in the prepa­ra­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of the tran­sac­tion. In addi­tion to the imple­men­ta­tion of a struc­tu­red sales process, the consul­ting services included the prepa­ra­tion of marke­ting and tran­sac­tion docu­ments, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and approach of poten­tial inves­tors inclu­ding manage­ment presen­ta­ti­ons as well as support in the due dili­gence and nego­tia­tion of the tran­sac­tion. In the sales process, the Solva­res Group was quickly iden­ti­fied by the sellers as the part­ner of choice, as the two soft­ware plat­forms comple­ment each other perfectly. For Proven­tis, the focus was not only on provi­ding tech­ni­cal tran­sac­tion advice, but also on harmo­ni­zing the seller’s inte­rests, since four of the five sellers remain opera­tio­nally in the company (three of them on the manage­ment board) and one seller had only a share­hol­der role. The tran­sac­tion team of Proven­tis Part­ners consis­ted of Jan Pörsch­mann (Mana­ging Part­ner, Munich), Florian Liepert (Direc­tor, Munich) and Maxi­mi­lian Gluchow­ski (Senior Asso­ciate, Munich).

About mobileX AG
Foun­ded in 2000, mobileX AG deve­lops and distri­bu­tes soft­ware for tech­ni­cal service and main­ten­ance. The appli­ca­ti­ons support the opti­miza­tion of various busi­ness proces­ses, such as deploy­ment plan­ning and control in tech­ni­cal field service. Solu­ti­ons from mobileX give field workers access to order data from the ERP system and trans­mit feed­back and reports directly to the back office. Custo­mers of the Munich-based soft­ware provi­der include TK Eleva­tors, Melitta, MVV, M‑net and Olym­pus Surgi­cal Tech­no­lo­gies Europe. www.mobilexag.de

About Solva­res Group

Solva­res Group is the Euro­pean cham­pion for resource opti­miza­tion along the entire value chain. The port­fo­lio includes solu­ti­ons for the entire supply and service chain — from trans­port logi­stics to sales and field service. The focus is always on intel­li­gent resource opti­miza­tion through best-of-breed solu­ti­ons for the custo­mer. Solva­res Group was formed in 2018 with the acqui­si­tion of FLS GmbH. The expan­sion with impac­tit GmbH from Vienna, Städt­ler Logis­tik GmbH from Nurem­berg and Opheo Solu­ti­ons GmbH from Hamburg in 2021 crea­ted a market leader for resource opti­miza­tion in Europe. In June 2022, mobileX AG from Munich was added as the fifth company. Solva­res Group employs 339 people at 9 loca­ti­ons in 4 count­ries. Head­quar­ters is Heiken­dorf near Kiel. https://solvares.com

About Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG
Deut­sche Betei­li­gungs AG is a listed private equity company. The focus of the invest­ments is on medium-sized compa­nies. Since its foun­da­tion more than 50 years ago, equity capi­tal has been provi­ded to over 300 compa­nies. https://www.dbag.de/

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 35 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 as well as far close to 400 comple­ted tran­sac­tions. The M&A advi­sors with offices in Düssel­dorf, Hamburg, Munich and Zurich are active in the sectors Indus­tri­als, Chemi­cals & Advan­ced Mate­ri­als, 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. Mergers Alli­ance members, with over 200 M&A profes­sio­nals, provide Proven­tis Part­ners’ clients with direct access to local markets in Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia.

News

Berlin — Corpo­rate law firm YPOG is expan­ding its fund struc­tu­ring prac­tice in Berlin and has streng­the­ned its team with Poellath foun­ding part­ner Andreas Rodin. The lawyer with a docto­rate in law joins the firm as an Asso­cia­ted Part­ner. Beyond fund struc­tu­ring exper­tise, he is known for his wealth of expe­ri­ence in regu­la­tory and tax law.

At YPOG, Rodin will conti­nue his work focu­sed on the struc­tu­ring of private equity and venture capi­tal funds and will be invol­ved in the trai­ning and deve­lo­p­ment of junior lawyers.

“With Andreas Rodin joining YPOG as an Asso­cia­ted Part­ner, YPOG is speci­fi­cally streng­thening its exper­tise in the area of fund struc­tu­ring. Espe­ci­ally our young colle­agues will bene­fit from his exper­tise and wealth of expe­ri­ence” says YPOG part­ner Fabian Euhus.

“I am very much looking forward to the exci­ting task and unique oppor­tu­nity to help shape the funds prac­tice of this dyna­mi­cally growing law firm. Being part of a young and ambi­tious team at YPOG allows me to contri­bute my expe­ri­ence gained over many years and to accom­pany espe­ci­ally the young colle­agues on their way”, Andreas Rodin adds.

About Andreas Rodin

Andreas Rodin was a foun­ding part­ner of the renow­ned law firm Poellath+ in 1997, where he played a major role in buil­ding up the inter­na­tio­nally reco­gni­zed funds prac­tice. After leaving at the end of 2021, he briefly worked at Poellath spin-off Orbit. He was a board member of the German Private Equity and Venture Capi­tal Asso­cia­tion (BVK), where he was respon­si­ble for the legal and tax concerns of the German private equity sector. Since 2004, he has been consul­ted as an expert by the Finance Commit­tee of the German Bundes­tag on all legis­la­tive proce­du­res concer­ning private equity. Andreas Rodin is regu­larly named in leading and inde­pen­dent rankings as one of the most important experts for fund struc­tu­ring and tax advice in Germany.

About YPOG

YPOG is a specialty tax and busi­ness law firm prac­ti­cing in the core areas of Corpo­rate, Funds, Corpo­rate Liti­ga­tion, Tax, Tran­sac­tions, IP/IT, Notary Services, Banking + Finan­cial Services, FinTech + Block­chain, Family Busi­nesses and High Net Worth Individuals/Family Offices. 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 100 expe­ri­en­ced lawy­ers, tax advi­sors, tax specia­lists and a notary in three offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Colo­gne. www.ypog.law .

News

Munich — SCP Group has sold real Group to the family office of the Tisch­endorf family of entre­pre­neurs and a team of real Group mana­gers. Inter­na­tio­nal law firm Clif­ford Chance advi­sed SCP Group (SCP) and real Group on the complex dive­st­ment process of retailer real.

Since the purchase of real Group by inves­tor SCP from METRO AG in June 2020, real Group has under­ta­ken far-reaching measu­res for the dispo­sal of loca­ti­ons to compe­ti­tors in the food indus­try and the trans­for­ma­tion of its opera­ting busi­ness, which were accom­pa­nied by Clif­ford Chance.

The dive­st­ment of the remai­ning 63 sites was contrac­tually agreed in Decem­ber 2021 and comple­ted on July 1, 2022. In addi­tion to the actual tran­sac­tion, Clif­ford Chance also advi­sed on a new supply rela­ti­onship with REWE and a complex carve-out of parts of the real Group in prepa­ra­tion for the change of ownership.

The new owners of the real Group are the family office of the Tisch­endorf entre­pre­neu­rial family and a team of mana­gers from the real Group. The successful comple­tion of the tran­sac­tion as the final step in the trans­for­ma­tion process means that real stores can now conti­nue to operate under the new brand name “mein real” at 63 loca­ti­ons across Germany.

On the side of the purcha­sers, the tran­sac­tion was compre­hen­si­vely accom­pa­nied by the law firm act legal Germany (AC Tisch­endorf Rechtsanwälte).

The Clif­ford Chance team advi­sing SCP and real Group was led by part­ner Dr. Cris­tina Weid­ner (Restruc­tu­ring & Insol­vency, Frank­furt) and part­ner Frede­rik Mühl (Corporate/Private Equity, Frankfurt).

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.

News

Munich — ORDA Tech­no­lo­gies GmbH, an inno­va­tive tech­no­logy start-up from Munich, had to file for insol­vency procee­dings in May 2022. With the support of Concen­tro Manage­ment AG, insol­vency admi­nis­tra­tor Henrik Bran­den­burg found a compe­tent inves­tor to ensure the conti­nua­tion of the company’s technology.

ORDA Tech­no­lo­gies GmbH, foun­ded in 2018, has focu­sed on the digi­ta­liza­tion of the cate­ring indus­try with the app of the same name and has deve­lo­ped a complete solu­tion for cate­ring busi­nesses. In doing so, ORDA offers the end user the option of both pre-orde­ring meals in parti­ci­pa­ting restau­rants for pickup and orde­ring digi­tally in the restau­rant itself and proces­sing the payment cashl­essly. Further­more, ORDA offers an in-app marke­ting plat­form for better custo­mer reten­tion as well as the possi­bi­lity of selling off remai­ning stock.

The Concen­tro tran­sac­tion team around Lars Werner (Part­ner), Andreas Jaburg (Project Mana­ger and Prin­ci­pal) and Sönke Storm (Senior Consul­tant) was exclu­si­vely manda­ted as sell-side advi­sors. Despite the still partly tense market situa­tion in the cate­ring indus­try, it was possi­ble to sell the assets of ORDA Tech­no­lo­gies GmbH to Gastro­Soft GmbH, foun­ded by Mr. Timur Türel, in an inves­tor process and thus find a sustainable solu­tion for the tech­no­logy. Gastro­Soft is a provi­der of POS systems and POS soft­ware and now serves 7,500 custo­mers in the restau­rant, retail and other industries.
Gastro­Soft GmbH, based in Krefeld on the Lower Rhine, takes up the ideas of the company’s foun­der as a new inves­tor and merges “ORDA” while preser­ving its econo­mic inde­pen­dence. “We are very plea­sed that we were able to find a solu­tion for ORDA and that we can now inte­grate them into our network. Of course, we alre­ady have many inno­va­tive plans for the future,” empha­si­zes Gastro­Sof­t’s Mana­ging Direc­tor, Timur Türel.

“I am very plea­sed that, despite the chal­len­ging market situa­tion, we have seen great inte­rest in ORDA and have been able to accom­plish a trans­fer­ring reor­ga­niza­tion within a short window of time,” said insol­vency admi­nis­tra­tor Henrik Brandenburg.
Concen­tro’s tran­sac­tion team adds, “The inves­tor solu­tion around Timur Türel and Gastro­Soft GmbH proved ideal for the acqui­si­tion of ORDA during the process.”

Concen­tro Project Team:
Lars Werner (Part­ner), Andreas Jaburg (Prin­ci­pal), Sönke Storm (Senior Consultant)

News

Munich/ San Fran­cisco — A Gleiss Lutz team has advi­sed US private equity firm Greenoaks Capi­tal Part­ners as lead inves­tor in the second closing of its Series E round finan­cing of soft­ware company Perso­nio. This was a further $200 million increase on the initial finan­cing raised in Octo­ber 2021. The new finan­cing brings the capi­tal raised through the Series E to $470 million.

Foun­ded in 2012 in San Fran­cisco, Greenoaks is a leading global tech inves­tor based in San Fran­cisco. In its invest­ments, the company focu­ses on long-term invest­ments in tech­no­logy-based compa­nies around the world.

The soft­ware company Perso­nio offers a people opera­ting system for small and medium-sized compa­nies with 10 to 2,000 employees. Its all-in-one HR soft­ware, which includes person­nel manage­ment, recrui­ting and payroll, is now used by more than 6,000 custo­mers throug­hout Europe.

Advi­sor Greenoaks: Gleiss Lutz

Dr. Jan Bals­sen (Part­ner, M&A/Private Equity, Munich), Dr. Kai Birke (Part­ner, Finance, both Lead), Dr. Stefan Mayer (Part­ner, Tax, both Frank­furt), Dr. Olaf Hohle­fel­der, Dr. Stepha­nie Daus­in­ger, Maxi­mi­lian Imre (all M&A/Private Equity, Munich).

A team from Gunder­son Detmer advi­sed on US law.

News

Boston/ Berlin — A YPOG team co-led by Martin Scha­per and Tim Schlös­ser advi­sed Boston-based private equity firm Great Hill Part­ners on its invest­ment in German sales intel­li­gence provi­der Echo­bot and Finnish online plat­form Lead­fee­der. The merger, offi­ci­ally announ­ced by both compa­nies, is supported by a €180 million invest­ment from Great Hill Part­ners. Great Hill will use the capi­tal to support the newly formed group in its product deve­lo­p­ment, sales expan­sion and inter­na­tio­nal growth. A further €50 million was allo­ca­ted to future stra­te­gic acquisitions.

The combi­ned group is led by Echo­bot foun­der Bastian Karweg as CEO and Lead­fee­der foun­der Pekka Koski­nen as CPO. Head­quar­te­red in Germany, the company opera­tes with a globally networked team of 250 employees at six loca­ti­ons in Europe and the U.S., serving 8,500 customers.

The YPOG team of Martin Scha­per (photo) and Tim Schlös­ser worked with a team from Choate Hall & Stewart LLP led by Daniel P. Riley. Marius Fritz­sche and Luca Rawe of Pusch Wahlig Work­place Law advi­sed on labor law issues, Pascal Friton and Florian Wolf of Blom­stein were invol­ved for sanc­tions law issues. A team from the Finnish law firm Meri­lampi, led by Antti Kahri, advi­sed on the Finnish part of the transaction.

Advi­sor Great Hill Part­ners: YPOG
Dr. Martin Scha­per (Co-Lead, Corporate/Transactions), Partner
Dr. Tim Schlös­ser (Co-Lead, Corporate/Transactions), Partner
Dr. Stephan Bank (Corporate/Transactions), Partner
Dr. Malte Berg­mann (Tax), Partner
Ann-Kris­tin Loch­mann (Tax), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Dr. Bene­dikt Flöter (IP/IT), Asso­cia­ted Partner
Dr. Karen Freh­mel-Kück (Corporate/Transactions), Senior Associate
Dr. Martyna Sabat (Tran­sac­tions), Senior Associate
Barbara Hasse (Corporate/Transactions), Associate
Alex­an­der Sekunde (Corporate/Antitrust), Associate
Melisa Keme (Corporate/Transactions), Associate
Benja­min Müller (Corporate/Transactions), Associate

About Great Hill Partners

Great Hill Part­ners is a Boston-based private equity firm seeking invest­ments of $25 million to $500 million in high-growth compa­nies in soft­ware, digi­tal commerce, finan­cial tech­no­logy, health­care and digi­tal infra­struc­ture. Over the past two deca­des, Great Hill has recei­ved more than twelve billion dollars in commit­ments and inves­ted in more than 90 compa­nies. Great Hill has an exten­sive track record of buil­ding long-term part­ner­ships with entre­pre­neurs and provi­ding flexi­ble resour­ces to help mid-sized compa­nies expand. Great Hill was recently reco­gni­zed for its leader­ship in the indus­try, ranking #5 in the HEC — DowJones.

About Echo­bot

Echo­bot is a leading sales intel­li­gence plat­form for Euro­pean markets. Over 1,500 custo­mers bene­fit from high-quality B2B data and thus easily digi­tize their sales & marke­ting proces­ses. Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and the dyna­mic company data­base help to select the target group in a fine-granu­lar way and thus gene­rate more B2B leads, new custo­mers and sales. Echo­bot deli­vers the most important infor­ma­tion about the desi­red custo­mer in seconds — comple­tely DSGVO-compliant!

About Lead­fee­der

Lead­fee­der is B2B lead gene­ra­tion soft­ware that uses your anony­mous web traf­fic to gather data about custo­mer buying inten­ti­ons. Lead­fee­der iden­ti­fies the compa­nies that visit your website, how they got there, their beha­vior and their purchase inten­ti­ons. With over 60,000 users world­wide, Lead­fee­der is the sales and marke­ting tool of choice to improve lead generation.

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. Further infor­ma­tion: www.ypog.law

News

Zurich/ Berlin — Baker McKen­zie advi­sed infra­struc­ture funds mana­ged by B Capi­tal Part­ners AG, Zurich, on the estab­lish­ment of BCP Battery Holding as a plat­form to acquire a pipe­line of battery storage faci­li­ties in Germany with a total capa­city of over 300 MW. As its first invest­ment in the pipe­line, the plat­form has acqui­red a 60 MW battery storage project in Eisen­ach, Thurin­gia, which is curr­ently under cons­truc­tion and will be the largest indus­trial battery in the German battery storage market when completed.

The infra­struc­ture funds mana­ged by B Capi­tal Part­ners imple­men­ted the tran­sac­tion as part of a newly formed joint venture toge­ther with other invest­ment funds as co-inves­tors mana­ged by another Zurich-based asset manager.

Baker McKen­zie’s work included, in parti­cu­lar, advi­sing on a frame­work agree­ment to secure the pipe­line, project-rela­ted agree­ments (such as lease, EPC, O&M and marke­ting agree­ments), joint venture struc­ture, finan­cing and tax struc­tu­ring, and tran­sac­tion agree­ments rela­ted to the acqui­si­tion of each project.

“The Baker McKen­zie team, led by Claire Dietz-Polte and Holger Engel­kamp, was able to assist us with all rele­vant aspects of the tran­sac­tion and the project agree­ments due to their in-depth indus­try know­ledge and outstan­ding M&A as well as project expe­ri­ence,” commen­ted Dr. Barbara Weber (photo), foun­der of B Capi­tal Part­ners.

“I am plea­sed to see that such inno­va­tive and future-orien­ted invest­ments are growing and thus contri­bu­ting to the energy tran­si­tion in Germany,” commen­ted Claire Dietz-Polte. Holger Engel­kamp added: “A parti­cu­lar chall­enge in this tran­sac­tion was the imple­men­ta­tion of various ESG requi­re­ments based on an ESG tool deve­lo­ped by our client to ensure that it was truly a sustainable investment.”

Follo­wing its first invest­ment in battery storage in Germany in 2020, B Capi­tal Part­ners, a Zurich-based asset manage­ment firm specia­li­zing in sustainable infra­struc­ture, has assem­bled an exclu­sive pipe­line of battery storage assets in Germany from seve­ral leading battery storage deve­lo­pers. The pipe­line consists of more than 300 MW of battery storage that the newly formed BCP Battery Holding will acquire and build over the next twelve months. Once the cons­truc­tion of the pipe­line projects is comple­ted, BCP Battery Holding will be the largest company of its kind in Germany.

Legal advice of B Capi­tal Part­ners AG: Baker McKenzie

Lead: Corporate/Projects: Dr. Claire Dietz-Polte LL.M. (Part­ner, Berlin), Holger Engel­kamp LL.M. (Coun­sel, Berlin)
Team: Corporate/Projects: Jasmin Mayerl (Asso­ciate, Berlin)
Public Law: Dr. Janet Butler (Coun­sel, Berlin), Dr. Maxi­mi­lian Voll LL.M. (Asso­ciate, Berlin)
Anti­trust: Prof. Dr. Chris­tian Burholt LL.M. (Part­ner, Berlin), Dr. Katrin Kurz (Asso­ciate, Berlin)
Real Estate: Dr. Daniel Bork (Coun­sel, Dusseldorf)
Insu­rance: Dr. Peter Stan­ke­witsch (Senior Coun­sel, Frankfurt)
Tax: Dr. Stephan Behnes (Part­ner, Frank­furt), Florian Gimm­ler (Part­ner, Frank­furt), Dr. Astrid Ruppelt (Coun­sel, Frank­furt), Corne­lia Hoene (Asso­ciate, Frankfurt)
Banking & Finance: Kath­rin Marchant (Part­ner, Frankfurt)

About B Capi­tal Partners

B Capi­tal Part­ners AG is a part­ner-owned invest­ment house, estab­lished in 2003 and Zurich-based. We exclu­si­vely focus on core sustainable infra­struc­ture. Since 2010, we have inves­ted and advi­sed capi­tal in excess of EUR 2.6bn across Europe. Our goal is to select supe­rior infra­struc­ture assets for our clients, while adhe­ring to the highest corpo­rate ethic as well as to state-of-the-art ESG stan­dards. We are a signa­tory to UN PRI as well as to WEPs (Women Empower­ment Prin­ci­ples) and a member of GRESB.

News

Munich — G+D Ventures, the venture capi­tal arm of the Giesecke+Devrient Group (G+D), toge­ther with the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB), has laun­ched a co-invest­ment plat­form with a total volume of EUR 50 million to finance Euro­pean start­ups in the trust tech envi­ron­ment. The aim of the fund is to invest in the deve­lo­p­ment of inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons that help to streng­then trust (confi­dence) in a digi­tal (tech) society. These include cyber­se­cu­rity solu­ti­ons, privacy protec­tion tech­no­lo­gies, digi­tal iden­tity manage­ment, and secure authen­ti­ca­tion and payment systems. Giesecke+Devrient was advi­sed by POELLATH.

G+D is a global secu­rity tech­no­logy group head­quar­te­red in Munich, Germany. As a relia­ble part­ner for inter­na­tio­nal custo­mers with the highest demands, G+D’s solu­ti­ons safe­guard the essen­tial values of this world. The company deve­lops custo­mi­zed tech­no­logy with passion and precis­ion in four core areas: Payment, Connec­ti­vity, Iden­ti­ties and Digi­tal Infra­struc­tures. In fiscal year 2021, the Group gene­ra­ted sales of EUR 2.38 billion with around 11,800 employees.

The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank is the bank of the Euro­pean Union and also the largest multi­la­te­ral finan­cing insti­tu­tion in the world. Toge­ther, G+D and the EIB pursue the goal of support­ing young Euro­pean start­ups in the Trust­Tech envi­ron­ment. This helps to close the funding gap for Euro­pean early stage start­ups in this topic area and to advance young compa­nies dedi­ca­ted to deve­lo­ping inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons for more security.

Advi­sor Giesecke+Devrient: POELLATH advi­sed G+D on all contrac­tual, tax and regu­la­tory aspects of the fund struc­tu­ring with the follo­wing Berlin team:

Dr. Philip Schwarz van Berk, LL.M. (London) (Part­ner, Private Funds)
Nele Frie (Asso­ciate, Private Funds)
Dennis Fordan (Asso­ciate, Private Funds)

News

Munich, Germany — Quan­tum compu­ting start-up planqc today announ­ced a €4.6 million funding round led by UVC Part­ners and Speed­in­vest. With this funding, planqc will deve­lop highly scalable room-tempe­ra­ture quan­tum compu­ters based on atoms in opti­cal latti­ces. planqc was foun­ded by a team of scien­tists from the Max Planck Insti­tute of Quan­tum Optics and the Ludwig Maxi­mi­lian Univer­sity of Munich and is the first spin-off of the Munich Quan­tum Valley, one of the leading centers for quan­tum tech­no­logy in Europe.

Current digi­tal quan­tum compu­ters are limi­ted by both the number of qubits used and their gate quality. While the number of qubits limits the amount of infor­ma­tion that can be proces­sed, the limi­ted gate quality inevi­ta­bly leads to errors in the result of a compu­ta­tion (so-called noise). While these NISQ (short for noisy inter­me­diate-scale quan­tum) compu­ters have recently outper­for­med clas­si­cal compu­ters on some abstract problems, they are still far from a “quan­tum advan­tage” for indus­try-rele­vant problems. TWAICE has increased sales by about 250 percent since May 2021. The company’s growing custo­mer base includes more than five of the worl­d’s leading auto­ma­kers, as well as seve­ral major rene­wa­ble energy storage deve­lo­pers and operators.

plan­qc’s unique combi­na­tion of quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies is the fastest way to scale to thou­sands of qubits, which is a prere­qui­site for an indus­try-rele­vant quan­tum advan­tage. Quan­tum compu­ters from planqc store infor­ma­tion in indi­vi­dual atoms — by nature the best qubits — and arrange them in highly scalable arti­fi­cial light crys­tals. Quan­tum gates based on precis­ely control­led laser pulses are used to process quan­tum infor­ma­tion. planqc bene­fits from basic rese­arch at the Max Planck Insti­tute and the worl­d’s leading laser and photo­nics indus­try in Germany.

Plan­qc’s foun­ding team brings toge­ther deca­des of inter­na­tio­nal rese­arch on neutral-atom quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies at world-leading insti­tu­ti­ons such as Harvard Univer­sity, Oxford Univer­sity, Univer­sity of Cali­for­nia Berke­ley, Univer­sity of Colo­rado, Univer­sity of Inns­bruck, CQT Singa­pore, and MPQ. The foun­ding team is comple­ted by multi-super­vi­sor and finan­cial expert Ann-Kris­tin Achleit­ner and serial entre­pre­neur Markus Wagner, foun­der of i5invest.

Support for planqc conti­nues to be provi­ded by scien­ti­fic advi­sors Imma­nuel Bloch and J. Igna­cio Cirac. Both are direc­tors at MPQ and are known for their pionee­ring work on quan­tum simu­la­tion and quan­tum infor­ma­tion. In addi­tion, quan­tum algo­rithm expert Dieter Jaksch, profes­sor of physics at Oxford Univer­sity and the Univer­sity of Hamburg, was recrui­ted as an advi­sor. “This world-class team combi­nes the tech­ni­cal and commer­cial exper­tise to build the worl­d’s most powerful quan­tum compu­ters,” said Amanda Birken­holz, invest­ment mana­ger at UVC Partners.

About UVC Partners

UVC Part­ners is a Munich and Berlin based early-stage venture capi­tal firm inves­t­ing in Euro­pean B2B start-ups within the enter­prise soft­ware, indus­trial tech­no­lo­gies and mobi­lity sectors. The fund typi­cally invests between €0.5 million and €10 million at the outset and up to €30 million in total per company. The port­fo­lio compa­nies bene­fit from the exten­sive invest­ment and exit expe­ri­ence of the manage­ment team as well as from the close coope­ra­tion with Unter­neh­mer­TUM, Euro­pe’s leading center for inno­va­tion and busi­ness crea­tion. With over 300 employees and more than 100 indus­try part­ners, Unter­neh­mer­TUM can draw on many years of expe­ri­ence in buil­ding young compa­nies. This colla­bo­ra­tion allows UVC Part­ners to provide start­ups with unique access to talent, indus­try clients and other finan­cial part­ners. www.uvcpartners.com

About planqc

planqc builds quan­tum compu­ters and stores quan­tum infor­ma­tion in indi­vi­dual atoms — inher­ently the best qubits. Quan­tum infor­ma­tion is proces­sed by arran­ging these qubits in highly scalable regis­ters and then mani­pu­la­ting them with precis­ely control­led laser pulses. planqc features a unique combi­na­tion of quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies that opens the fastest path to quan­tum proces­sors with thou­sands of qubits, crea­ting the neces­sary condi­ti­ons for an indus­try-rele­vant quan­tum advan­tage. planqc was foun­ded in April 2022 by Alex­an­der Glätzle, Sebas­tian Blatt, Johan­nes Zeiher, Lukas Reichs­öll­ner toge­ther with Ann-Kris­tin Achleit­ner and Markus Wagner. planqc is based in Garching near Munich. www.planqc.eu

News

Munich — SKW Schwarz has advi­sed French Travel­soft SAS on the acqui­si­tion of Berlin-based online travel plat­form Traffics.

Traf­fics, foun­ded in 1999, opera­tes an online market­place for services in the tourism indus­try. The company has more than 6,000 custo­mers, inclu­ding travel agen­cies, airlines and hotels, and arran­ges travel sales of up to 1.3 billion euros annually.

Travel­soft has been opera­ting Orches­tra, now the market-leading travel SaaS plat­form, in France since 2000, enab­ling profes­sio­nals in the tourism indus­try to compile leisure and travel offers. Travel sales proces­sed via Orches­tra amount to almost 2 billion euros per year.

A team led by part­ners Dr. Stephan Morsch and Dr. Matthias Orthwein perfor­med the legal due dili­gence for the tran­sac­tion and advi­sed on various IT and data protec­tion issues.

Advi­sor Travel­soft SAS: SKW Schwarz, Munich
Dr. Stephan Morsch, Photo (Corporate/M&A), Dr. Matthias Orthwein (IT/Data Protec­tion Law), Dr. Angela Poschen­rie­der (Coun­sel, Corporate/M&A); Asso­ciate: Niko­lai Schmidt (IT/Data Privacy)

About SKW Schwarz

SKW Schwarz is an inde­pen­dent full-service law firm. With more than 120 lawy­ers at four loca­ti­ons in Germany, the firm advi­ses in all rele­vant areas of busi­ness law. At the end of 2018, the firm foun­ded SKW Schwarz @ Tech GmbH, in which the lawy­ers bundle all acti­vi­ties in the area of legal tech across loca­ti­ons and disciplines.

News

Paris/ Frank­furt a. M. — Ardian, one of the worl­d’s leading inde­pen­dent invest­ment compa­nies, has acqui­red a stake in SERMA Group, Euro­pe’s leading inde­pen­dent provi­der of consul­ting and services in the fields of elec­tro­nic tech­no­lo­gies, inte­gra­ted systems and infor­ma­tion systems. The closing of the tran­sac­tion is still subject to appr­oval by the rele­vant anti­trust authorities.

The Ardian Expan­sion team had alre­ady inves­ted in SERMA Group in 2015 and has supported the company’s growth since then, in parti­cu­lar through acqui­si­ti­ons and the foun­ding of the “SERMA Safety & Secu­rity” busi­ness unit.

The rene­wed parti­ci­pa­tion of Ardian Expan­sion along­side the manage­ment and employees of SERMA Group, who conti­nue to hold the majo­rity of the company, is another important step in the company’s deve­lo­p­ment. In addi­tion to the main share­hol­der Ardian, Chequers Capi­tal and Bpifrance remain as further mino­rity share­hol­ders.

SERMA Group is excel­lently posi­tio­ned in nume­rous niche solu­ti­ons of elec­tro­nic compon­ents and systems with high value added depth in various high-growth sectors. The company controls the entire value chain, from deve­lo­p­ment, test­ing, produc­tion and main­ten­ance to trai­ning. The Group has unique tech­no­lo­gi­cal exper­tise in elec­tro­nics, energy, cyber­se­cu­rity and tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons for sectors such as aero­space, trans­por­ta­tion, energy, medi­cal and telecommunications.

Ardian will support SERMA Group in its further growth stra­tegy. In recent years, the Group has successfully deve­lo­ped beyond its estab­lished range of products and services and ente­red new markets, which include, for exam­ple, the energy market and the nuclear indus­try. The estab­lish­ment of SERMA Energy, a compe­tence and test plat­form for batte­ries, power elec­tro­nics and elec­tric drive trains with a wide range of appli­ca­ti­ons, will further acce­le­rate the company’s growth in the energy sector.

In the last ten years, the company’s sales have almost tripled to almost 150 million euros and the number of employees curr­ently exceeds 1,300.

“We have known SERMA Group for twelve years and have built a very trus­ting rela­ti­onship with the company and its manage­ment team over the course of our long-term invol­vement. We are looking forward to working with the highly expe­ri­en­ced team again and in parti­cu­lar to further acce­le­rate the Group’s growth. The company is ideally posi­tio­ned to bene­fit from key mega­trends, parti­cu­larly in the context of the digi­ta­liza­tion of the economy. Our goal is to conti­nue to drive exter­nal growth and increase inter­na­tio­nal market share based on the Group’s inno­va­tion capa­bi­li­ties.” So Arnaud Dufer (photo, © Ardian), Mana­ging Direc­tor and head of France of the ARDIAN EXPAN­SION-teamS.

“We are very plea­sed that Ardian has once again inves­ted in SERMA Group. In recent years, despite an envi­ron­ment marked by the effects of the pande­mic, we have gradu­ally deve­lo­ped into one of the leading compa­nies in Europe, thanks to the support of Chequers Capi­tal. We have now reached a criti­cal size that allows us to enter a new phase of our deve­lo­p­ment. We see parti­cu­lar poten­tial in the growing importance of decar­bo­niza­tion of the economy and in the area of cyber­se­cu­rity. We are proud that, in addi­tion to the manage­ment team, nearly 500 employees have a stake in SERMA Group — proof that they believe in the success of the company,” explains Phil­ippe Berlié , Presi­dent of SERMA GROUP.

“Chequers Capi­tal has successfully supported SERMA’s deve­lo­p­ment along­side its manage­ment team over the last twelve years. The key to the company’s success lies in the quality of its teams, the constant pursuit of excel­lence and opera­tio­nal effi­ci­ency, and a strong tech­ni­cal compe­tence that charac­te­ri­zes the company in all its busi­ness areas. We are proud of the progress and deve­lo­p­ments achie­ved in the fields of elec­tro­nics, elec­tric drives and safety, which meet the growing, essen­tial and long-term needs of our society. Chequers supports SERMA Group with Phil­ippe Berlié and his team in this new phase, which will be charac­te­ri­zed by acce­le­ra­ted orga­nic growth as well as inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion. Chequers, Ardian and BPI will bring all their expe­ri­ence to the successful conti­nua­tion of this project,” says Aure­lien Klein, Mana­ging Direc­tor at chequers capi­tal.

Compa­nies invol­ved in the transaction:

Ardian Expan­sion
Arnaud Dufer, Maxime Séquier, Romain Gautron, Pierre Peslerbe
Legal Advi­sors: McDer­mott Will & Emery (Grégo­ire Andrieux, Fabrice Piol­let, Côme de Saint-Vincent, Boris Wolkoff)

Chequers Capi­tal
Auré­lien Klein, Emeric Boo d’Arc, Jérôme Kinas
Legal Advi­sors: Hogan Lovells (Stéphane Huten, Arnaud Deparday)

Advi­sors of Ardian Expan­sion and Chequers Capital
Legal, tax and social due dili­gence: McDer­mott Will & Emery (Grégo­ire Andrieux, Fabrice Piol­let, Côme de Saint-Vincent, Boris Wolkoff)
Commer­cial Due Dili­gence: The Boston Consul­ting Group (Benja­min Sarfati, Julien Vialade)
Finan­cial Due Dili­gence: Ernst & Young (Emma­nuel Picard, Elsa Abou Mrad, Alban Molle)
ESG Due Dili­gence: PwC (Sylvain Lambert, Chloé Szpirglas)
Insu­rance Due Dili­gence: Finaxy (Débo­rah Hauchemaille)
IT Due Dili­gence: Netsys­tem (Olivier Cazzulo, Lionel Gros)

SERMA Group
Phil­ippe Berlié, Xavier Morin, Mirentxu Boutet, Olivier Duch­mann, Bernard Ollivier
Legal Advi­sors: Apollo (Florence Savouré, Laura Smyr­lia­dis, Iyad El Borini, Delphine Dille­man), Chepeau Lumeau & Asso­ciés (Frédé­ri­que Lumeau)

About SERMA Group
SERMA Group is an inde­pen­dent French company with exper­tise in elec­tro­nics, energy, cyber­se­cu­rity and tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons. The tradi­tio­nal medium-sized company recently achie­ved sales of €150 million with 1,300 employees. The Group has deve­lo­ped signi­fi­cantly in recent years through nume­rous invest­ments in resour­ces as well as exter­nal growth. These rela­ted in parti­cu­lar to the areas of design, test­ing, know-how and technology.

The Group’s various busi­ness units accom­pany their custo­mers throug­hout the entire life cycle, which includes the control of their products, their relia­bi­lity, safety and func­tion. The Group’s exper­tise is based on its elec­tro­nics tech­ni­cal labo­ra­to­ries, its mate­ri­als labo­ra­tory, its various test plat­forms (compon­ents, boards, devices, power elec­tro­nics, elec­tric motors, batte­ries, safety), its deve­lo­p­ment offices and experts who act as a point of cont­act for its customers.

The SERMA Group is foun­ded on five stra­te­gic pillars:
— Elec­tro­nic tech­no­lo­gies and materials
— System secu­rity and cybersecurity
— Embedded systems development
— Microelec­tro­nic design and assembly
— Exper­tise and energy test­ing (batte­ries, drive chains)

The group has 20 sites in France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Tuni­sia, each close to its custo­mers, who come from diffe­rent indus­tries. serma.com

About ARDIAN

Ardian is a leading global inde­pen­dent invest­ment firm. The company mana­ges or advi­ses on appro­xi­m­ately US$130 billion in assets for more than 1,300 inves­tors world­wide. Thanks to its exten­sive exper­tise in private equity, real assets and credit, Ardian offers a wide range of invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties as well as custo­mi­zed invest­ment solu­ti­ons — tail­o­red to inves­tors’ needs: Ardian Custo­mi­zed Solu­ti­ons enables insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors to access best-in-class mana­gers across all asset clas­ses through a custo­mi­zed port­fo­lio. Ardian Private Wealth Solu­ti­ons also offers a range of services speci­fi­cally geared to high net worth indi­vi­du­als. Ardian is majo­rity owned by its employees and places great empha­sis on their deve­lo­p­ment, as well as a culture of colla­bo­ra­tion based on an active exch­ange of know­ledge and expe­ri­ence. The more than 900 employees at 15 office loca­ti­ons in Europe, North and South America and Asia, follow the prin­ci­ples of respon­si­ble inves­t­ing. Ardian’s mission is to make a posi­tive contri­bu­tion to society through its invest­ments and to create value that lasts. Ardian aims to deli­ver excel­lent returns in line with high ethi­cal stan­dards and social respon­si­bi­lity. At Ardian, ever­yone is dedi­ca­ted to buil­ding successful compa­nies for the long term. ardian.com

About Cher­quers Capital

Chequers is one of the oldest private equity invest­ment compa­nies in conti­nen­tal Europe and was foun­ded in Paris almost 50 years ago. Chequers is curr­ently inves­t­ing in its 17th invest­ment vehicle, which can take majo­rity or mino­rity stakes in growth compa­nies in France, Germany, Switz­er­land, Italy, Bene­lux and Iberia. The team of 23 expe­ri­en­ced profes­sio­nals from six nati­ons contri­bu­tes its expe­ri­ence and exper­tise to the deve­lo­p­ment of curr­ently around 20 invest­ments. chequerscapital.com

 

News

Munich — The River­side Company, a global private equity firm that invests in small and medium-sized compa­nies, has appoin­ted Dörte Höpp­ner (photo) to the newly crea­ted posi­tion of Chief Sustaina­bi­lity Offi­cer. She will lead and drive ESG initia­ti­ves at River­side globally. Dörte Höpp­ner, who joined River­side in 2017, will conti­nue to be based in Europe and report directly to River­si­de’s co-CEOs, Stewart Kohl and Béla Szigethy.

“Crea­ting this posi­tion is the next logi­cal step for us, and Dörte is the perfect person for the job,” said River­side Co-CEO Béla Szige­thy. “She has been at the fore­front of our firm’s ESG initia­ti­ves for some time and is reco­gni­zed in the private equity commu­nity for her deep under­stan­ding and commit­ment to ESG and all its dimen­si­ons. This appoint­ment reflects the great work she has done on ESG in Europe.”

In her new role, Dörte will iden­tify and drive ESG initia­ti­ves and inte­grate them into River­si­de’s various fund areas. In doing so, it will work closely with the mana­ging part­ners of the indi­vi­dual funds.

“Diver­sity and inclu­sion, envi­ron­men­tal respon­si­bi­lity and high stan­dards of corpo­rate gover­nance have rightly become core busi­ness issues in recent years,” says River­side co-CEO Stewart Kohl. “Profes­sio­nal inves­tors expect private equity firms to have good ESG prac­ti­ces, and we in turn expect this from our port­fo­lio companies.”

Dörte will retain her leader­ship role in fund­rai­sing and inves­tor rela­ti­ons for River­side in Europe, in addi­tion to her expan­ded ESG respon­si­bi­li­ties, and will conti­nue to serve as the primary Euro­pean inves­tor cont­act for the global River­side company. She has been promo­ted to Mana­ging Direc­tor, Fund­rai­sing & IR.

“I have great respect for these tasks, but at the same time I am highly moti­va­ted,” Höpp­ner said. “As a company, we want to be a beacon for respon­si­ble ESG prac­tice, and I look forward to working with my extre­mely know­led­geable colle­agues, who are all passio­nate about ESG as well.”

The River­side Company is a signa­tory to the Prin­ci­ples for Respon­si­ble Invest­ment (UN PRI) and supports the ESG Data Conver­gence Project, which was laun­ched last year by leading private equity firms and their inves­tors to agree on an indus­try stan­dard of ESG metrics that would allow compa­ra­tive reporting.

The River­side Company

River­side Company is a global private equity firm focu­sed on inves­t­ing in growing compa­nies valued up to $400 million. Since its foun­ding in 1988, River­side has made more than 870 invest­ments. The company’s inter­na­tio­nal private equity and struc­tu­red capi­tal port­fo­lios include more than 130 compa­nies. River­side Europe is an inte­gral part of the company’s broad global network and has been inves­t­ing in Europe since 1989. River­side belie­ves that having a global presence provi­des special insight and access into each local context, culture and busi­ness prac­ti­ces, making River­side employees better inves­tors and busi­ness partners.

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